This Father’s Day, many fathers across the country will be having backyard BBQs with their children, receiving tools and tech gadgets and hugs.
For untold numbers of immigrant fathers however, the day will be different.
Immigrant fathers along the border may be in the next room over from their children and unable to see them. Others will be in immigration detention centers away from their homes. Some will be in a different country — or a different continent — from their loved ones because the U.S. has deported them.
This is how Genin Rodas, father of a young son from Sabá, Honduras, will be spending his Father’s Day. Earlier this month, Genin was separated from his son as he petitioned for asylum at the U.S. border.
“They [Border Patrol] said, ‘did they explain to you that we’re taking your son?’ I said, ‘No, why are you taking him?’ They said ‘you’re going to be deported and your son is going to stay here in the United States.’ They separated us. They said they were taking him. The boy was crying….Then they separated us,” said Genin. They have still not been reunited.
For Felix Garcia, this will be the first Father’s Day in over twenty years that he will be away from his children. Felix, a father of three daughters including a medical school student in Chicago, was deported earlier this year to Guatemala after living in the United States for more than twenty years and having no criminal record.
“My father considers the United States his home and he is a living example of the American Dream,” said his daughter Belsy Garcia, who hopes to be a doctor in underserved communities.
Genin and Felix are just some examples of how far Trump’s cruel and inhumane immigration policy has gone.
The consequences of these policies have been unbearable to fathers like Marco Antonio Muñoz.
Marco Antonio, 39, an Honduran father who was separated from his child and family at the border, killed himself in a cell last month because the pain of not being with his family was unbearable.
Fathers and children deserve to be together on Father’s Day — and immigration policy should not be the reason why families are forced apart.
Call your Members of Congress at (202) 224-3121 today and tell them to stop the separation of families.
