Photo: Marie D. De Jesus/Houston Chronicle Photo: Johnny Hanson, Staff Photo: Bob Owen, Staff Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle

Esteban Pastor hoped U.S. Border Patrol agents would free him and his 18-month-old son after they were arrested for crossing the southern border illegally last summer.

He had mortgaged his land in Guatemala to fund his sick toddler’s hospital stay, and needed to work in the United States to pay off the loan.

Instead agents imprisoned the 28-year-old in July for coming back into the country after having been deported, a felony. They placed the toddler in a federal shelter, though where, Pastor didn’t know. Three months later, in October, the father was deported — alone. His child, he said agents told him, was “somewhere in Texas.”

“I cried. I begged,” he said. “No one could tell me anything.”

Photo: Submitted

As President Donald Trump’s administration ramps up the prosecutions of parents crossing the border illegally and separates their children, Pastor’s case offers a glimpse into how challenging it is to reunite them. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has defended the practice, saying children are taken from any criminals imprisoned for breaking the law.

But once immigrant families, many asylum seekers from Central America, are separated at the border, they struggle to find each other among the three behemoth federal agencies in charge of their care. Advocates say few procedures are in place to ensure they reunify.

“In many cases they may never,” said Michelle Brané, executive director of the migrant rights program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, a national advocacy group. “We have seen children as young as 18 months deported without their parents and more commonly, parents deported without their children. Parents arrive in Central America with no idea of how to get their children back.”

Previously most parents with children weren’t prosecuted for crossing the border illegally, a misdemeanor for first offenders, but deported or freed together to pursue their civil immigration cases under a practice called “catch and release.” The crime of illegal entry swamps federal dockets at the border and prosecutors typically prioritized serious offenders.

Read more: Trump pressing for mass criminalization of illegal border crossers

Trump and his supporters say a federal settlement prevents the prolonged detention of children and that families often don’t show up for hearings if they are freed. They point to rising arrivals at the border, saying families take advantage of “loopholes” protecting children to stay here. Prosecuting parents sends a “powerful message of deterrence,” U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, told a Homeland Security committee this week.

Advocates say no systematic policies exist to ensure families don’t lose each other after the separation. U.S. Rep. Filemón Vela, a Texas Democrat, echoed those concerns at the congressional hearing.

“I worry that there are no reliable mechanisms in place,” he said.

After they are removed from their parents, children are deemed "unaccompanied" and placed in the custody of Health and Human Services, which houses minors in federal shelters until it can release them to relatives or provide long-term foster care.

Patrick Fisher, a spokesman for that agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement in charge of migrant children, said in a statement that the agency works with Homeland Security and other authorities to find parents. He said it has done so in about 700 cases between October and April where parents were in DHS custody. The agency couldn’t say how many were reunified, saying that data is not “in a reportable format.” It didn’t track separations before that period.

Fisher said the agency is “not routinely informed about how or when the (unaccompanied child) became separated from their parent(s) or the whereabouts of the parents.”

In some cases, he said, children report that information. In others, parents, attorneys and relatives contact the agency.

Read more: Trump moves to end 'catch and release', prosecuting parents and removing children who cross border

Sometimes, advocates say, families fall through the cracks.

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Pastor first entered the U.S. illegally in 2009 to work at a Mexican restaurant in Tennessee and save money for a house back home.

His village, Lancetillo la Parroquia, is in a remote mountainous areas of Guatemala, where 80 percent of the mostly indigenous Mayan residents are poor, according to the World Bank. There’s no electricity or paved roads, and residents make $3 a day farming the spice cardamom.

In 2014, police stopped Pastor as he left work, and asked for his license. He didn’t have one, so officers booked him into jail and deported him.

In Guatemala, he married and bought a 100-square-foot slip of land, growing corn. He and his wife had a baby, Edwards Yunior.

But he said the child began suffering excruciating bouts of fever and stomach pain. Blood came out of his nose and buttocks. He had seizures. They made the 12-hour journey to the capital, Guatemala City, where the baby was hospitalized.

Pastor, whose native language is Quiche, said he doesn’t understand what ailed his baby, who later recovered. But to pay for the treatment, Pastor signed over his land to a neighbor. The practice is common among indigenous communities where few qualify for formal loans.

Such money-lenders charge exceptional interest and Pastor worried he would lose his home. He couldn’t find enough work to make bigger payments. He knew it would be difficult to return to the United States, but heard that if he brought along his child he might be released.

Pastor thought he would stay only a few months to repay his debt. He had another baby on the way.

*

Photo: Marie D. De Jesus, Houston Chronicle

Last July, Border Patrol agents found the father holding his baby in the New Mexican desert north of El Paso, and discovered his old deportation. He had no other criminal history beyond two tickets for driving without a license, according to their records.

“Your kid is going to go to a shelter,” Pastor said the agents told him. “You’re going to jail.”

“Let me go back to Guatemala,” he begged. “Don’t separate us.”

By the time Meghan McLoughlin, a New Mexico federal public defender, met with Pastor to represent him on the re-entry charge, he was frantic. Listening to his account, she became concerned.

“Who is caring for this baby? How will he get back to his father?” she worried. “It just seemed so crazy logistically. The kid can’t even talk.”

Border Patrol agents said in their report that they removed the toddler because Pastor couldn’t prove he was the father. The agency has said such separations are often necessary to determine adults are not trafficking the children and lying about their relationship.

Pastor insists he gave them a birth certificate. McLoughlin said she called the Guatemalan consulate and obtained verification of Pastor’s paternity, providing it to immigration officials herself.

No one could tell her what had happened to the toddler.

In August, Pastor pleaded guilty to re-entering the country illegally and a federal judge sentenced him to time-served for the 22 days he had spent in prison. He was transferred to a civil immigrant detention facility in El Paso, where McLoughlin, as his criminal attorney, lost oversight.

But she worried how such a young child could ever find his father. Knowing federal prisoners have their phones confiscated and don’t always have them returned before deportation, she scribbled down a number for Pastor’s wife in Guatemala before he was transferred. She shared it with the consulate.

Across the country federal defenders say they are increasingly on the front lines of helping parents find their children. Often they are the only counsel migrants ever see as they move rapidly from Justice Department to Homeland Security detention and then speedily deported.

“These cases move so quickly,” McLoughlin said. “There isn’t one person with the client through all of this.”

Miguel "Andy" Nogueras, a federal public defender in McAllen, said he recently represented a woman who was prosecuted for illegal entry last fall and had her child removed. She was coming back to find her this month when she was imprisoned for returning.

Read more: Her husband murdered, her son taken away, a mother seeking asylum tells a judge, 'I have lost everything'

Photo: Houston Chronicle

Detained in El Paso, Pastor said he tried to obtain information about his son’s whereabouts, but was unable.

Leticia Zamarripa, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement that Pastor told officials about his son on Sept. 1, days after transferring from prison. She said officials arranged for him to receive an update on his son’s case and “make telephonic contact.”

Pastor said that never happened. He said the facility was overwhelmed with the transfer of immigrants from detention centers impacted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and the official said she was too busy. He later again told immigration agents and consular staff that he wanted to return to Guatemala with his toddler.

“Please,” he begged. “I want to go back to my country with my son.”

In October, federal agents piled him into a van crammed with other migrants and drove them to the airstrip to board the government plane.

Where is my son? Pastor asked.

The agents shrugged. One made a call.

“Your son’s not going back today,” he announced.

No one could tell him more.

Zamarripa, the spokeswoman, said Pastor’s son was in federal foster care at the time and represented by a pro bono attorney.

*

According to ICE policy, officials should “to the extent practicable” allow detained parents to make arrangements for their children before they are deported, including guardianship in the U.S. or travel documents to go home together.

But advocates say that once minors are deemed “unaccompanied,” they require certain legal and privacy protections and have their own potential asylum cases. They land in federal shelters across the country often with little information on their parents. By the time advocates find parents, who are not told where their children are until their relationship is established, they have already sometimes been deported.

“The steps to coordinating anything like this is mind-boggling, even if they have a system,” said Brané with the refugee commission. “But they don’t.”

Read more: ACLU challenges Trump administration practice of separating migrants and their children

Trump administration looking to military bases in Texas to house immigrant children

Photo: JERRY LARA / San Antonio Express-News

Even supporters of the hard-line policy say parents and children should be kept geographically close after they have been separated and allowed contact, said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank supporting reduced immigration. The government must ensure they are deported together if the parent wants that.

“It’s just unconscionable not to reunite the families when the parent is removed,” Vaughan said. “They need to develop a system that allows them to keep track of these individuals so they can be reunited efficiently and promptly.”

Once Pastor landed in Guatemala, he begged the consulate for help. He made dozens of calls to the U.S. Two months after returning home and four months after the last time he saw his toddler, a social worker reached him at the end of November.

A Harlingen immigration judge ordered the child returned to Guatemala on or before Jan. 2, the day before his second birthday. The father was elated to pick him up at the airport.

“I didn’t know if I would see him again,” Pastor said.

lomi.kriel@chron.com

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