NPR

Searching For Deported Parents In Guatemala, While Children Wait In The U.S.

The ACLU and other groups are scouring Guatemala to track down parents who were separated from their children in the United States and deported back home without them.
Juan Valiente Velazquez's phone shows a picture of his son, Derickson, who remains in a youth shelter in New York. They were separated by the Border Patrol in Texas in May. Velazquez was deported to Guatemala. Derickson calls his parents three times each week.

A rumpled New York lawyer in khakis and a pin-stripe shirt is standing incongruously in the shaded plaza central of Chimaltenango, Guatemala, with a cellphone glued to his cheek. Lee Gelernt — a senior lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union — is a long way from the San Diego federal courthouse where he's been wrestling with the U.S. government for much of the summer.

This week, he came here to join the daunting search for the deported parents.

"I can't remember a time when we had to go out in the field

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