Deported to Mexico, Parents Face Hurdles to Reunite with US-Citizen Children Jill Replogle - KPBS.org
go to original June 25, 2013

Tania Velasquez, a Mexican national, hopes to regain custody of her 3-year-old daughter, who is a U.S. Citizen. (Jill Replogle/KMPS)

SAN DIEGO — On a hot Monday afternoon in Tijuana, Daniel Bribiescas is taking a new client, 24-year-old Tania Velasquez, to the local office of Mexico’s child welfare agency.

Bribiescas is a lawyer who works for the Madre Asunta shelter for migrant women and children. His job is to help deportees piece back together their lives, and often, their families.

Velasquez, like many of Bribiescas’s clients, is working to regain custody of her child. The 3-year-old girl has been staying with a friend of the family since Velasquez’s run-in with the law in Anaheim, Calif. last year.

Velasquez must now prove to an Orange County caseworker and a family court judge that she can provide a suitable life for her daughter in Mexico.

Nearly one in four immigrants deported from the United States between July 2010 and September 2012 has a child who is a U.S. citizen, according to the online journal Colorlines. That's more than 200,000 people.

Read the rest at KPBS.org

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