A family torn apart by a Trump-era policy
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 November 2023
⏱️ 23 minutes
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Summary
In 2017, Magdalena Hernández Pérez was separated from her children by the Trump-era family separation policy. Reunification would take nearly six years. The Post’s Kevin Sieff followed their story.
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When Magdalena Hernández Pérez and her daughters crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017 to request asylum, it would be the last time they would be together for years. Like thousands of families, they were broken apart under the Trump administration’s family separation policy. Eventually, Magdalena was deported to her home country of Guatemala, while her daughters were assigned to a foster home in the United States.
In 2021, the Biden administration’s pledge to reunite separated families gave Magdalena new hope. But there were further complications for the family.
The Post’s Kevin Sieff joins “Post Reports” today to tell us their story.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Martin. I am so excited to be coming back to post reports very soon. So you might |
| 0:08.6 | have heard I've been working on a new podcast. It's called the Empty Grave of Comrad Bishop. |
| 0:13.9 | If you haven't yet checked it out, you'll be able to listen to the first two episodes of the series |
| 0:18.4 | right here in your post report's feed tomorrow and Saturday. In the meantime, I just wanted to say |
| 0:24.6 | thank you to all of the guest hosts in the newsroom who have taken such good care of you while I've |
| 0:29.6 | been away. Today, you will hear from my colleague, Kevin Seaf. All right, here's the show. |
| 0:39.1 | In February of last year, I was outside of a comfort inn in Nashville. I was there to meet a woman |
| 0:44.6 | named Magdalena Perez. Magdalena is 43 years old. She works in the hotel's laundry room and she was |
| 0:54.6 | on a break. So she was wearing her blue working uniform and touching a red quilted rosary |
| 1:00.0 | hanging around her neck. She sat down at a picnic table next to the hotel parking lot and took |
| 1:05.6 | at her phone. It might have been one of the most important moments of her life. She joined a |
| 1:11.3 | Zoom call and a man's face flashed on the screen of her phone and then disappeared. Magdalena |
| 1:17.7 | speaks Spanish. We'll use a voiceover to translate. No, no, no, no, no, no, I can't hear anything. |
| 1:28.4 | The call is coming in, but you can't hear. You can't hear anything. They're not telling me anything. |
| 1:36.3 | I, Dios mĂo. I can't lose more time for work. I can't. |
| 1:39.9 | Magdalena was grinding her teeth and frantically pushing buttons on her phone's screen. That Zoom |
| 1:49.7 | call was a court hearing. The face that flashed on the screen for a second was the judge who would |
| 1:55.1 | decide when she could see her daughter again. They had been separated at the U.S. Mexico border |
| 2:00.8 | in 2017 and now a foster family in California was fighting to keep the child. |
| 2:07.2 | I'm calling the lawyers so I can ask if they're already at the hearing and they're not answering. |
| 2:14.3 | Yeah, I'm still here outside. I could get in, but I couldn't hear anything. Did they cancel the hearing? |
| 2:23.6 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. It's Thursday, November 2nd. |
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