Caracas, April 26 (RHC)-- Yorelis Bernal, a Venezuelan migrant repatriated through the most recent flight coordinated by the Plan Vuelta a la Patria (Return to the Homeland Plan), reported that U.S. authorities took her 24-month-old daughter during her immigration detention, a case that highlights the systematic separation of families by that country.
Although Yorelis and her husband, Maikel Alejandro Espinoza, voluntarily surrendered to immigration authorities upon arriving in the United States and never set foot in the country, the baby was transferred to three different foster homes, according to information provided by Yorelis.
She also reports that one of the foster families was linked to an investigation into child sexual abuse, without the aforementioned authorities providing any justification for the procedure.
Meanwhile, Yorelis spent a year in detention centers, while simultaneously, her husband was forcibly deported to El Salvador, where he was kidnapped in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), along with 251 other Venezuelans whose human rights are denied.
This is the exact moment when Yorelis, who arrived under the last Plan Vuelta a la Patria (Return to the Homeland Plan), informed her mother that the US had stolen her baby.
Yorelis Bernal, after being deported to Venezuela without her daughter, demands immediate justice. In this regard, the coordinator of the Plan Vuelta a la Patria (Return to the Homeland Plan), Anais Arismendi, told the multi-platform news channel teleSUR that the girl is in a foster home, so "she is institutionalized, she is in what would be a foster home there, so the State has more responsibility, because knowing where she is, they should have handed her over."
Arismendi denounced, in this regard, that "we are facing a combination of crimes, because in the United States it is a practice that unfortunately separates families; but in the Venezuelan case, we are seeking to protect all the families we are facilitating for a safe return, so they should provide family reunification so that the girl can be returned, who, in fact, should never have been separated from her."
The Venezuelan official explained that this is a systematic violation of rights and noted that the United States has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, prosecutes them as adults, and until recently, the death penalty was imposed on minors.
She also revealed that there are approximately three cases of mothers who, for one reason or another, have been deported and separated from their minor children. But Yorelis's is more dramatic because her husband is kidnapped in El Salvador and "her daughter is institutionalized, without having been sent to her mother in the deportation process."
