Migrant mother and son split up at US border reunited (Details)

Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia cried as she hugged seven-year-old Darwin at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, and vowed she would never be away from him again.

The pair were reunited at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, after she took legal action in the federal court to secure her son’s release.

They had entered the US in May following a trek from Guatemala and sought political asylum.

But her young son was taken away from her two days later under a policy to split up families who entered the country illegally while they go through the court system.

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The move sparked global condemnation after pictures emerged of crying children being kept in cages, leading to the US president to reverse the measure, however uncertainty continues to face migrants arriving at the border.

An official from the president’s office has said about 500 of the more than 2,300 children separated from their families have been reunited since May.

However, it was unclear how many of the children were still being detained with their families.

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Federal agencies have been working to set up a centralised reunification process for the remaining separated children and their families at a detention centre just north of border in Texas, said the official.

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The federal public defender’s office for the region that covers cases from El Paso to San Antonio said on Thursday the US Attorney’s Office would be dismissing cases in which parents were charged with illegally entering or re-entering the country and were subsequently separated from their children.

“Going forward, they will no longer bring criminal charges against a parent or parents entering the United States if they have their child with them,” wrote Maureen Scott Franco, the federal public defender for the Western District of Texas.

Elsewhere, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia ordered an investigation into claims by children at an immigration detention facility that they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump has again used social media to lambast the Democrats, accusing the party of refusing to elp tackle America’s “pathetically weak and ineffective Immigration laws”.

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He also wrote in a tweet: “We must maintain a Strong Southern Border. We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the elections.

“Obama and others had the same pictures, and did nothing about it!”