Like thousands of migrants arriving in the US before him, José was forcibly separated from his family under Trump administration policy

On 30 March, José arrived in El Paso, Texas, after a weeks-long journey from his home in El Salvador.

The 27-year-old had traveled with his cousin and her son, escaping relentless gang violence back home. Like thousands of migrants arriving before them, under the Trump administration they were forcibly separated by the authorities after crossing the US-Mexico border.

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After being detained and questioned, José handed over a clutch of documents to the officials, before being ordered back to Mexico, under a recently instated Trump administration policy.

Among the papers that José, now alone, had given to the officials was a statement from his doctor, back in El Salvador. It said that José had the cognitive age of a four-year-old child.

Since the Trump government implemented the so-called Remain in Mexico, or Migrant Protection Protocols policy, in March, tens of thousands of people have been sent back to Mexico after arriving at the border to apply for asylum. They are told to wait there, sometimes for months at a time, before returning to the US for a court hearing.

But while they wait in Mexican border towns, families and individuals have become the targets of gangs and criminals. People have been extorted, raped and killed in the crowded towns along the border, while many have been forced to sleep on the streets as charity-run shelters have become overcrowded.

José was held in a detention center in El Paso for two weeks before being loaded on to a bus and sent to Juarez. There he stayed with people he had met in the shelter before finding his way – José is unable to explain how – to the Buen Pastor shelter, a 10-minute drive south-west from the bridge that links Juarez with El Paso.

By that time it had been almost three weeks since he had been separated from his 30-year-old cousin Malene, who had been his main caretaker in El Salvador, and her 13-year-old son, Jonathan, who describes José as “like a brother”. José’s family had no idea where he was, and his mother, Rosa, who lives in Virginia, has been unable to sleep through worry.

“I was really shocked, really surprised. I didn’t expect him to be left alone,” Rosa said.

“I thought: ‘How can they do that?’ I couldn’t believe it had happened.”

Rosa spoke to the Guardian at her home in suburban Virginia, a 40-minute drive south from Washington DC. A gold-framed photo of José, her son posing on one knee, gazing into the camera, was sitting on a glass table next to Rosa’s sofa. Rosa said she hadn’t been able to sleep through worrying for José. She wept as she spoke about her son. The Guardian agreed not to use his real name.

“He’s like a child,” she said. “He’s very loving, and when we talk he says he wants to hug me and and protect me. And laugh, and be together. He has no evil in his heart.”

Volunteers at Buen Pastor helped José to contact his mother and his brothers and sisters, who had already made the journey north to the US. But with José stuck in the opaque immigration legal system, they were powerless to help.

He had been living at the shelter for six weeks before his situation was noticed, by chance, by immigration advocates in El Paso’s immigration court. José had been summoned to court on 8 May, and once there it was clear he could not understand the judge or prosecution. He is able to tell people his name, and the names of some family members, but is unaware of his date of birth or age – or where he is.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rosa, an immigrant from El Salvador, in her kitchen. Photograph: Jason Andrew/The Guardian

Immigration advocates in court flagged José’s lack of comprehension with officials, but it didn’t make a difference. After that hearing, José was bussed back to Juarez for the second time.

The people who had been so concerned by his appearance in court weren’t told where he was heading, and José dropped off the radar for weeks. He had been on his own in Mexico for nearly three months before Edith Tapia, an El Paso-based policy research analyst at the Hope Border Institute, found him by chance at Buen Pastor.

“It shows how easy it is for vulnerable people to fall through the cracks,” Tapia said. She has been working with José and his family to try and aid his case.

“I don’t believe this would have happened before. I’m not saying the system was perfect before – absolutely there were situations happening for a long time.

“But I don’t think they were ever as inhumane, and never at this level – never with such intentionality of being cruel.”

The Buen Pastor shelter, in the La Montada neighborhood of Juarez, is just two miles from the US border, but a world away in terms of environment. It is set back along a series of winding, loose rock roads, in a gritty neighborhood of one story, breeze block buildings. On a Tuesday in mid-July, when the Guardian traveled to meet José, four dogs were idling in the heat outside.

José was in the sunbaked concrete courtyard when we arrived. About 5ft 10in, with short dark hair, he was wearing a Minions T-shirt and blue shorts. He smiled shyly and avoided eye contact when he was introduced.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carmen and her brother Antonio hold each other while talking with their brother José, who is stuck in Juarez, Mexico. Photograph: Jason Andrew/The Guardian

On Tuesday he was going for a new cognitive ability assessment, which advocates believed would help his case. We drove out from Buen Pastor just before midday, Tapia chatting to José in the back of the car, and stopped for lunch in the old downtown area of Juarez. José had beef enchiladas and a coke, and we strolled down to the sandstone Juarez cathedral before driving 25 minutes south-east, to a psychiatrist’s office.

The results didn’t make for encouraging reading. His condition hadn’t changed since his exam in El Salvador. José had a mental age of a four or five-year-old, the psychiatrist said. She said he had no concept of time or space, and no real idea of where he was. He was also confused, depressed, had low self-esteem and was suffering from anxiety.

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If there was a glimmer of hope, it was that José’s lawyer, Marysol Bretado of Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services, now had proof of his condition. The test had been completed just in time – José had a court hearing the next day that advocates hoped would be key in finally reuniting him with his family in Virginia.

José’s two brothers and two sisters, along with his mother, had traveled to the US individually in recent years. He had stayed in El Salvador with his grandma, cousin and her son, until things became too precarious.

“Of course the plan was to bring him up [to the US] as well but we were always bit afraid because of his situation,” said José’s oldest sister, Carmen.

“So we were trying to be careful and we were finding out the way to bring him up at the right time. But things got so bad in El Salvador that it would be really, really difficult for him to stay there.”

The family, including several young children who smiled coyly as the grown-ups talked, crowded into Rosa’s two-bedroom apartment on Thursday, sometimes crying as they spoke of José, the middle-child of the five.

Rosa described a different person to the shy man the Guardian had met in Juarez a week earlier. She remembered José as being happy and carefree in El Salvador.

“José enjoyed going out with his grandfather, out in the fields,” she said.

“He would not really help much, but he would just joke around and, like, throw seeds or pick up things, scare the birds away and he would laugh. He was playing.”

On 18 July, Bretado accompanied José to court, for a pivotal hearing. With his new test results in hand, the hope was that he could be released into the US.

José sat next to Bretado, occasionally glancing around the courtroom. He didn’t look at the judge or the lawyers as they discussed his case. He’d picked up a cold, and occasionally would sneeze.

When the hearing began, Bretado argued that José should be disqualified from the Remain in Mexico program, and allowed to be with his family. She submitted José’s recently conducted medical evaluation, and spelled out the situation in plain language.

“On 8 May his cognitive disability issue was put on the record,” Bretado said.

“He has now been returned to Mexico twice. He’s got the brain capacity of a four-year-old.”

Before this the court had watched as the interpreter spoke to José on behalf of the judge, Nathan Herbert.

“Can you hear and understand the interpreter?” Herbert asked.

“No,” José said softly.

The hearing continued, with José a silent passenger, as the attorney for the Department of Homeland Security, Sarah Calvillo, fought against the test being admitted as evidence.

“We don’t have the résumé of the doctor” who performed the test, Calvillo said, pushing back aggressively against Bretado’s presentation to the judge. Calvillo also questioned the veracity of how it was conducted.

Herbert ordered that José undergo evaluation to determine if he should be removed from the Remain in Mexico program. It was an important step, but just one in an increasingly confusing system.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carmen, Maria, Kevin, Rosa and Antonio hug during a family portrait. Photograph: Jason Andrew/The Guardian

After the hearing, José was taken into US custody so the examination could take place. He was held for three days, but then abruptly sent back to the Buen Pastor shelter. José later managed to tell his lawyer he had been teased by officials while in custody. They had told him he would be sent to a mental asylum, José said, away from his mother. When he got back to the shelter, he was upset and scared.

Back in Virginia, José’s family knew none of this, because he hadn’t been able to call them while in custody. The first update they, and José’s lawyer, had on his case after he went back to Mexico most recently, was when they got a call from Buen Pastor shelter. After all the hope that José would be reunited with his mother and family, he instead continues to wait there, hoping for an update to emerge from the Kafkaesque immigration court system.

It remains unclear what will happen to José. Under the ever-shifting immigration policies of the Trump administration, few can predict what will happen next.

He might be ordered to remain in Mexico for an asylum hearing, months from now. He might be detained on the US side of the border. José’s family hope he will be allowed to enter the US to be with them while his case is processed, but there is no predicting when that might happen.

“It would be a blessing. It’s the thing we want the most,” Maria, José’s sister, told the Guardian.

For now, the family are forced to wait in limbo. They held a birthday party for José in June, and he has a space ready to sleep in Rosa’s apartment. On Thursday, Tapia helped them Skype with José for the first time since he was stranded in Mexico. Everyone was in tears as they waved at each other down the phone, 3,000 miles apart.

“I have five children and four of them are here,” Rosa said, after saying goodbye to her son.

“We’re all together now. He’s the only one who is not here.”