Essential Memory: Helping Children Find A Home In The United States

San Francisco CA

23 May, 2021

2:47 PM

Description

By Clara-Sophia Daly, Mission Local May 21, 2021 Lily Macias, outside of the Women's Building where she helps connect families with children who crossed the border. She said the pandemic has been especially tough, as many people have lost their jobs and are unable to hire an attorney to assist them in reuniting with minors. Photo by Clara-Sophia Daly. Lily Macia opened the door of the Women's Building to say goodbye to a mother and father who had finished their fingerprinting appointment, a process required for sponsors to reunite with minors who have crossed the border. Many of the sponsors Macia works with have been successfully reunited with the minors, but one particularly challenging story was of a Guatemalan mother who was never able to reunite with her daughter. The mother was 52-years-old, and came from Guatemala with very little money a month before her children. She came to the Women's Building on 18th Street in the Mission to fill out the sponsorship paperwork to reunite with her 6-year-old daughter and 16-year old son. Working to escape gang violence in her home country, she had sacrificed almost all her money to pay for the dangerous passage across the border for her family, with hopes to create a better life in the United States. "Unfortunately, her daughter did end up passing along the way before she arrived in the United States. So that was very traumatic," said Macia. The program Macia works at is known as a Safe Release Support site, and her fingerprint team is one out of 20 nationwide programs funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. To release the minors to the sponsor, the program has to verify they will be going into a stable home. Although Macia was able to connect the Guatemalan mother with a church who offered some support, it was not enough. The woman ended up taking public transportation to Arizona, and then to Texas, where she had family to offer her support. "To actually experience that with someone face to face in this process was extremely triggering," said Macia whose team sees some 40 clients a week. "She was so determined," said Macia, who never found out if she managed to reconnect with her son. Macias with a client at the Women's Building. Photo courtesy of Lily Macias. Mission Local covers San Francisco from the vantage point of the Mission, a neighborhood with all of the promise and problems of a major city. You can support Mission Local here.