A 3-year-old was separated from his father at the border. Now his parents are dealing with his trauma
LOS ANGELES - In the living room of the one-bedroom Van Nuys apartment, the boy tried to explain, in the words of a 3-year-old, what happened to his father.
"Papa cae en piso," he said, turning briefly from a game on his mother's phone.
Andriy Ovalle Calderon recounted the moment his father was restrained by Customs and Border Protection officers four months ago as he tried to cross into Texas illegally.
The boy spent more than a month with a foster family in California before being released in April to his mother, who separately had turned herself in at a port of entry with her younger son. Claudia Calderon has been allowed to stay with her mother-in-law while she waits for an immigration judge to hear her asylum claim.
Her husband, Kristian Francisco Ovalle Hernandez, was deported to Guatemala.
At night, Andriy sometimes wakes up screaming in the bunk bed he shares with his mother and
