‘It’s heartbreaking.’ More children leave U.S. as parent deportations continue

Immigration admin June 25, 2026 0 Comments

‘It’s heartbreaking.’ More children leave U.S. as parent deportations continue

Cristina, 7, walked steadily into Miami International Airport holding the hand of her 3-year-old sister and a giant teddy bear.

“God is good,” read the white, cubed beads attached to her pink and blue shoes.

On Wednesday morning, eight children from three families boarded a flight to reunite with their family members in Guatemala. Three are U.S. citizens, and, for most of them, the nearly three-hour flight to Guatemala City would be their first time on a plane.

As the Trump administration continues a mass-deportation campaign, no data says how many children — some U.S. citizens — are left behind without their parents or are leaving the country.

The Guatemalan-Maya Center, a nonprofit organization based in Lake Worth Beach, has flown dozens of children to be reunited with their families in Latin America, and organized travel documents and assistance for dozens more. Thus far, the center has helped children travel to Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Some of the children who left this week will be reunited with their deported parents; others left behind parents who are terrified of being detained.

“It’s heartbreaking that the children are getting exiled from the only country they love,” said Lindsay McElroy, an organizer with the center. “They’re saying goodbyes with all their family and friends they’ve ever known, the education they’ve been receiving, and they’re going to some place that’s completely unknown.”

The Miami Herald is only identifying the children and their parents by their first names. Several months ago, Cristina’s father and eldest brother were detained and deported. Now, she is leaving for Guatemala, alongside her mother, a brother, two sisters and a nephew, Angel.

Cristina’s eldest sister, Angel’s mother, 19, plans to stay in the U.S. to work and send money to her family in Guatemala. She was at work the morning her 1-year-old son was being prepared to board his first-ever flight.

Wearing a red and white sports jacket and Spider-Man-themed shoes, Angel entered MIA in the arms of his aunt Mercedes, 14. Following them was Ramón, 15, pulling along two suitcases, one was plain dark green and the other had a Betty Boop theme; and Magdalena, the children’s mother and Angel’s grandmother.

During the first Trump administration, the children’s father crossed first with Ramón in hopes of applying for asylum. Instead, they were detained and separated under the administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy, first implemented in 2018 and rescinded by the Biden administration in 2021, McElroy told the Herald.

But under a reunification program, the family received parole for being unlawfully separated. The program allowed the three other siblings, along with Magdalena, to arrive in the United States in 2022, and the family obtained three-year work permits with the help of the Guatemalan-Maya Center. The youngest child, 3-year-old Ingrid, was born here, but the Trump administration did not renew the permits after they expired.

Magdalena, wearing a bright red shirt with her grandson’s name written in gold cursive, booked her own flight back to Guatemala because the center does not organize flights for adults. After her husband’s deportation, it was hard to make ends meet.

“It’s difficult to live, to pay rent, everything,” Magdalena said.

Although Cristina would be traveling with most of her siblings and her mother, the other three children left with adults they met that day.

Audra Obando is a nurse at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital and her husband, Roger Obando, is a landscaper at Immaculata-La Salle High School in Miami. Wednesday was the couple’s first time volunteering for the center as chaperones; they have three children of their own.

“As a mother, I believe there is no such thing as other people’s children,” Audra texted the Miami Herald after the flight. “Our future lies in every child and these children deserve so much more than what our current policies are offering them.”

The group greeted the Obandos in front of the American Airlines check-in. Audra stooped down to hug Christina, 3, who donned a fuzzy white jacket with bear-like ears on the hood. Later, the hood fell off, revealing her pigtails tied with pink and purple hairbands.

The toddler’s mother was detained approximately a year ago, and her father was detained at an immigration check-in and deported a few months later. She has been staying with her aunt.

As the children moved into the check-in line, Audra held Christina’s hand, and Roger pushed Angel in a stroller. The bottoms of Angel’s Spider-Man shoes lit up as he occasionally kicked his feet.

The center brought backpacks for each of the children. While the group spent over 40 minutes verifying documents with an attendant, McElroy, the organizer with the center, and her former high-school teacher, Maria de la Guardia, looked over a list of the children’s names and sifted through Target bags packed with coloring books, crayons, toy race cars, stuffed animals and small soccer balls.

De la Guardia has volunteered with the center since it was founded in 1992 by an Irish Catholic priest, Father Frank O’Loughlin.

“I care about these parents who are having to say goodbye to their kids,” de la Guardia said. “I care about making sure the little ones have some things that when they’re on the plane, they can deal with their trauma.”

De la Guardia said that for the older children, the path to achieving their dreams in Guatemala would be more difficult. The educational opportunities in Guatemala become far fewer as children get older because the country does not require free public education past the sixth grade.

O’Loughlin, the center’s executive director, has worked with immigrants in Florida since the 1960s and expressed similar concerns for the children’s education.

“I hope … that this is not simply the end of their schooling, but the beginning,” he said, tearing up.

Once the children returned from check-in, the organizers greeted them with Danimals drinkable yogurts, their new backpacks and stuffed animals.

With the lengthy check-in process completed, two of the children, Eitan and Abel, moved closer to saying goodbye to their father for the immediate future.

The boys’ father will not be accompanying them to Guatemala, though he, too, fears detention and deportation, and spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity. Their mother was deported two months ago, but Eitan’s and Abel’s father, who works with horses, seeks to stay and send money to his family.

Eitan, 3, clutched a dinosaur while his older brother, Abel, 6, held a bright orange fox clad in a rainbow long-sleeve shirt. Abel eventually grew tired of holding the fox and handed it to his father.

As the group walked toward security, the boys each held one of their father’s hands. When they first entered the airport, he wore both his sons’ backpacks, one decorated with a space theme and the other a race car.

Asked by a Telemundo reporter if he was afraid, the father said “very.”

“But in that fear there is a desire to leave them something for the future,” he said.

He waved and blew kisses at the boys as their chaperones escorted them through the line.

When neither of his sons could see him, he broke down. O’Loughlin, sitting in a wheelchair, wrapped an arm around him, and cried, too.