Immigration | Family Separation
One Couple’s Kafka-esque struggle to Find their Daughter Kidnapped by Uncle Sam
Taken by US Customs & Border Protection, she was held captive in Office of Refugee Resettlement kids’ jails for 7 long years
The Exodus
Father and daughter walked north, hand-in-hand, toward the office of Customs & Border Protection (CBP) at the Gateway International Bridge, a US port of entry linking Matamoros, Mexico with Brownsville, Texas. She hummed, throwing glances at him while smiling her wide, crooked-toothed smile. He labored, patiently, to match her halting gait. Eleven years old the previous August, Keyla was a lithe and wiry 4’10” and 75 pounds. At 6’3’’, Larry had to stoop to be heard by her over the din of rush-hour traffic.
He bent his grey head toward her shock of thick, dark hair, styled like page-boy’s. He positioned his bearded and mustachioed mouth as close to her ear as his middle-aged girth would allow. “Uno-once,” Larry prompted.
“Quince-cincuentra-y-tres,” Keyla responded without missing a beat. Then she reversed the game: “1–11,” shouted Keyla,
“15–53!” concluded Larry.
It was one of several memory games he’d taught her over the years, to make certain that if she ever got lost, she could recite the family’s phone number and find her way home again. Over time, she’d turned the mnemonic into a song, as she did most things. Keyla, always grinning, loved to sing and dance.
This was the final leg in Larry’s journey to get his family of five to safety in the United States. His wife, Nancy, had crossed into Texas with their two youngest children the week before. Today, it was his and Keyla’s turn.
Life had all but stopped in Matamoros. The year before, two rival drug gangs, the Cartel de Gulfo and Los Zetas, began fighting a bloody turf war for control of smuggling routes from northeastern Mexico into the US. Their battle terrorized the citizens of the historic and formerly laid-back border town, turning it into one of the most dangerous places on Earth.
Folks still attended Mass and the occasional baby shower or quinceañera, but then they went straight back home, locking themselves behind closed doors. No one wanted to get caught in a cartel shoot-out. Everyone was at risk, even the poor of the Colonia Derechos Humanos, located in the vicinity of one of the city dumps, where Larry and his family built a refuge on “land no one else wanted.”
The Threats
First came the suspicious phone calls from strangers, who knew way too much about him and Nancy. Then one night, the noise of helicopters hovering over their home brought Larry outdoors at 3:00 am. Despite the darkness, he could see men through the open side door of the lowest-flying chopper. At least one wielded an assault rifle. From an upper-floor window, Nancy watched in horror as a red dot danced about Larry’s head and shoulders. When it landed on his chest, he saw it, too. He beat a hasty retreat back inside.
Then news reached them that some toughs had been wandering the Colonia, threatening to “skin and peel” them, and asking which was their bedroom window. That’s when Larry and Nancy decided it was time to go.
Nancy left with the youngest of their three children the very next day, May 29, 2011. Getting Keyla across would be more complicated, however, as she was not officially adopted. As long as she remained in Mexico, Larry worried she’d be vulnerable to kidnapping — a target through which the cartels might extort him. He had to get her across the border.
A Cry for Help
Waking at the crack of dawn on June 7th, Larry sent up prayers of gratitude for Texas Congresswoman Kay Granger, Katherine Brown of the US Department of Homeland Security, and Jason Monks of the US State Department in Matamoros. They’d arranged everything after he’d reached out for help on May 30th. The plan was for Larry to walk Keyla to the CBP office on the bridge and request Humanitarian Parole to enter the US on a temporary basis, then commence adoption proceedings from there.
In an email dated June 5th, Larry suggested informing his and Nancy’s friends at Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (DIF) — Mexico’s office of child-protective services — of their intentions to remove Keyla from the country. Nancy had worked with them for years, so they knew the family well. And Larry, who wanted everything to be above board, thought it a professional courtesy, at least. At most, they might also be able to help.
But his powerful advisors on the US side of the border said, “No. Not yet. Let it come from the top.” And because Larry had so much to do to pack up the family’s belongings and organize for the continued care of the refuge residents, whose needs he and Nancy had administered to for more than a decade, he trusted their advice.
At 6:16 on the morning of June 7th, Larry received the go-ahead from Danielle Gonzalez, Casework Coordinator for Congresswoman Granger: “Larry, Call Mr. Monks to arrange logistics on the MX side,” the message read. “Once logistics are in place, let me know an approximate time and location. We will let CBP know of the circumstance,” referring to the danger of “direct threats to her and her caregivers.” In closing, Ms. Gonzalez reminded Larry that the decision to grant Humanitarian Parole was solely up to CBP, so “be sure to have all Keyla’s documents with you.”
Larry phoned Mr. Monks, who agreed to retrieve Keyla from the safe house where Nancy had placed her the week before. He would deliver her to Larry on the Mexican side of the Gateway International Bridge. Larry wanted to get an early start, hopeful to be with the rest of the family, now living in a church parsonage near Los Fresnos, for dinner.
The Execution
The sun hovered just above the horizon when Jason Monks pulled into the Matamoros Town Plaza in an armored car. Behind semi-darkened window glass, Keyla appeared nervous and disoriented. Larry noted that she’d lost weight after just one week away from him, Nancy, and the little ones. But seeing her father and feeling the warmth of his loving, reassuring embrace was all it took to put her world magically right again.
They waved ¡Adios! to Mr. Monks, and commenced their journey toward safety on the US side of the bridge. As they joined the foot and vehicular traffic bound for work that Tuesday morning, Larry chatted about all the adventures they were going to have from their new home in the US, like going to the zoo in San Antonio. At some point, they played their telephone game. At another, Keyla looked up at the clouds in the sky and pointed.
“Mira Papi. Hay montañas en el Cielo,” she whispered. Look, Daddy. There are mountains in the sky.
On reaching the CBP offices, they took their place in line and Larry dutifully turned off his smartphone — in part, because that’s what the agency’s signage demanded; in part, out of habit. Larry had made many requests for Humanitarian Parole over the years, having brought dozens of disabled and physically vulnerable children into the US to receive specialized medical care, to be fit for wheelchairs or prostheses, or to meet with eye surgeons or occupational therapists, all willing to help him and Nancy at little, or no, cost. He knew the border drill well.
When their turn came, he approached the next available CBP agent. His hands resting on Keyla’s shoulders, he requested Humanitarian Parole for her, just as his Congressional and State Department advisors had instructed, just as he’d done for all those other children before.
What he didn’t know, and would not find out until he turned his phone back on later that evening, was that Congresswoman Granger’s office had sent him a second email that morning. Time-stamped 8:57, it hit his inbox while he and Keyla were waiting to pass through US customs.
The subject line read, “URGENT — You need to call DIF before you leave with Keyla.” In the body of the message, Ms. Gonzalez wrote, “Call me urgently, I think we have a solution.”
But it was too late. Not only was Larry informed that Humanitarian Parole for Keyla had been denied, but an official from Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) appeared without warning to take her away.
Separated
“What’s going on?” Larry demanded, confused.
Humanitarian Officer de los Santos, of the US Citizen & Immigration Services (USCIS), introduced himself as Keyla was pulled away from Larry and taken into a separate room. Larry tried to let the “Humanitarian” in the officer’s title reassure him. He could see Keyla through the glass. Her body had stiffened with fear. Her smile, usually bright enough to light up any room, had disappeared into a tight, taught scowl. He kept his eyes trained on hers, trying to exude calm, trusting that it was just a glitch. After all, they had the weight of the US State Department on their side. They would be reunited in no time, he told himself, and on their way to live happily ever after in Texas with their family.
Larry waited for seven hours. No one talked to him.
Finally, “Humanitarian” Officer de los Santos returned to inform him that he would have to leave the bridge. Keyla would be spending the night in CBP custody.
Traumatized and exhausted, Larry said he’d be back first thing in the morning. “Humanitarian” Officer de los Santos said that wouldn’t be necessary: Keyla was now in the custody of the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and would be passed to the US Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) the next morning and flown to Chicago.
Larry stood gape-mouthed. He’d never heard of this alphabet soup of US agencies, much less corresponded with them about his family’s situation. They had never come up in his communications with Congresswoman Granger, Mr. Monks, or Ms. Gonzalez. This was not part of their plan.
“What about her medications?” He asked, grasping at straws.
No one on the bridge that day, but Larry, knew that in addition to being severely developmentally delayed, Keyla suffered complex and partial epilepsy, cerebral palsy, static encephalopathy, pseudo-bulbar palsy, and microcephaly. They did not know that Nancy was a medical doctor, and that she had worked tirelessly with a pediatric specialist from the University of Cincinnati, Dr. David Franz, to bring Keyla’s seizures under control. They did not know that Larry had taught Keyla to walk and to talk, despite early medical prognoses that she would never achieve either.
They did not know these things. And they did not appear to care.
Larry insisted on being allowed to see Keyla once more, to administer the second of her twice-daily doses of Epival, necessary to control her seizures. It was the only medication he had with him. Terrified, she wrapped her arms around his waist and, clutching him, she refused to let go. But the sun was setting. There was nothing more he could do until morning.
“It was the only time I ever lied to her,” Larry recounted, traumatized again by the memory. “Perhaps it was the fatigue on my part of too many sleepless nights from the personal threats I received leading up to our leaving. I was too tired to challenge him. I decided to do what I was told to do, sure I could fix it the next day. I told her, ‘You are going on vacation, you are going to be fine.’ I had to pry her body off mine. I had to push her away.”
The moment haunts Larry to this day, because it would be another seven years before he and Nancy would embrace their Keylita again. Seven years of missed birthdays and unopened Christmas presents; of living with ripped open hearts that bled out but would not mend. Seven years of searching for her, wondering if she was being cared for with love equal to their own. Seven years of crushing guilt that his final heartbreaking goodbye with the child he loved and had vowed to protect was a push and lie. Seven years robbed of watching their daughter grow into adulthood, during which strong, beautiful, brilliant, dedicated Nancy would fall ill, then fall apart.
As the sun set on the day of June 7, 2011, Keyla Eulalia Ruiz Guajardo was seized by agents of the US government. The next day, she was “kidnapped” — her lawyers’ term — by the US Office of Refugee Resettlement. And here’s this story’s shocking twist:
Keyla was not a refugee. And Larry is as American as apple pie.
Bad Things Happen…
On the evening Keyla was taken, a heartbroken Larry posted the following on Facebook: “Very bad news about little Keyla. After all the careful work we did to get her across the border, immigration is making her sleep at the bridge tonight — alone, already weak from being away from us for a week, from the threats we received, so vulnerable. Somehow we must stop this…Know that she is my daughter. Tomorrow they are sending her to Chicago? They know nothing of her seizures. What has happened to our country?”
What he did not yet understand was that an international crime had been inadvertently committed, one that the US State Department, Texas Congresswoman Granger, and the Department of Homeland Security should all have seen coming. One which the folks at DIF tried to flag at the last minute. One that could be considered child-smuggling under the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
Indeed, Larry had been right to want to loop in his DIF colleagues. They knew that proceedings for international adoptions must formally begin in the child’s country of origin, following the framework of the Hague Convention on Protection and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. Enrique Escorza of the Mexican Embassy had written to Rep. Kay Granger that very morning to suggest that Keyla be placed in DIF custody so that, “…a Judge [sic] may authorize her leaving the country.”
It was a bureaucratic snafu that may well have been worked out. But something else took place on the bridge that day that Larry did not publish on Facebook, and never would. It was personal and private, involving family history and sibling rivalry and, quite possibly, mental illness.
No one doubts that she could foresee the damage she would cause. But Nancy’s sister deliberately beat Larry and Keyla to the CBP offices that day. And she arrived angry and jealous.
She could never bear that her smarter younger sister had become a medical doctor, when she barely finished school. She hated that her more beautiful younger sister won the heart of a wealthy Texan, and a handsome one at that, when she was betrayed by the father of her only child. Now her lucky younger sister was fleeing the violence that plagued their birthplace, while she was stuck, living with their elderly parents.
She marched into CBP that morning and, in spite, leveled an accusation against Larry that the self-made-man-turned-missionary could never bring himself to utter. And despite a US government investigation that turned up no evidence to substantiate her claim, the mere whiff of such impropriety sent Keyla spiraling down a bureaucratic rabbit-hole that trapped the family in a Kafka-esque nightmare for seven long years.
The fact is, according to US immigration laws, Keyla should never have been detained in the US. Mexican migrants — even children — are sent right back where they came from. If Keyla had been returned to Matamoros, she would have found Larry and Nancy’s loving arms again, for everyone there knew Doctora Nancy and the big, white Texan that never left her side.
Dra Nancy was a Matamoros celebrity, beloved by rich and poor alike. Since 1997, she had dedicated her life and her practice to providing care for the medically fragile and physically challenged indigent of the Mexican border town.
…To Good People
It started with “drive-by consultations” administered out of the back of a rattle-trap van, which she kept stocked with antibiotics and bandages as well as alcohol, aspirin, and syringes. She drove the streets like a suburban Good Humor Man, but instead of peddling ice cream, she peddled physical and emotional healing. If she met someone in need of more long-term care, she found them shelter. For critical cases, she’d take them to the hospital, advocating on their behalf with her colleagues who preferred better-paying costumers; paying for their care if her colleagues refused to treat them for free.
Larry made Dra Nancy’s acquaintance in the year 2000. He was immediately caught up in her mission.
“It’s all thanks to a chance meeting, while volunteering in Nepal, with a friend from my Dallas days, Reverend Frank Mabee. He told me about a doctor — a Mexican Mother Teresa — in Matamoros. He looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘go clean the dirt floor at her clinic.’”
Larry found Dra Nancy and joined her effort as a “full-time volunteer.” The two fell in love while driving the streets of Matamoros, administering to the city’s forgotten, tossed aside, rejected, and vulnerable. They came to realize that in addition to medicine, these people needed nutritious food and clean water, sanitation and shelter from the elements. Most of all, they needed love. So Larry harnessed the goodwill of his Methodist brothers and sisters back home, and in no time scores of volunteer missionaries helped to raise a refuge out of the muddy and rutted dirt streets of la Colonia Derechos Humanos.
Casa Bugambilia opened in 2003 with a medical clinic, community kitchen, fellowship hall, and 20 beds for the Matamoros indigent needing specialized care. Nancy was their Doctor and surrogate Madre; Larry their Padre and provider. Refuge residents, proprietors, and volunteers became a unique and committed blended family. And it just kept growing. At its height, Casa Bugambilia housed 93 people from 14 countries, speaking at least eight languages, and included an apartment for Larry and Dra Nancy. Its humanitarian offshoot, Juntos Servimos (Together We Serve), built sturdy, if simple, homes and provided daycare and early childhood education for the kids of the maquiladora workers of la Colonia Derechos Humanos shantytown.
The Sacred Vow
Derechos Humanos is not a pretty place. The poverty is grinding. The stench of rotting garbage is compounded by the toxic fumes of human waste and factory runoff that course past El Dompe en route to the Gulf of Mexico. It was there, at the intersection of two muddy Colonia streets, that Larry and Dra Nancy met Keyla for the first time.
Her great-grandmother and primary caregiver, Antoñia, needed help with the child, who was prone to shaking fits. Dra Nancy diagnosed childhood epilepsy straight away. She provided Antoñia with anti-seizure medication, but the prescription needed refilling every three weeks. It became Larry’s job to track Antoñia down and give to her.
“Sometimes it took two or three tries, because Antoñia and baby Keyla were homeless,” said Larry. The two floated from home to home of their extended family, and Larry never knew where he’d find them next.
In July 2005, Dra Nancy perceived that Antoñia was not well. She invited the 62-year-old woman and her severely developmentally disabled ward to come to live with them at Casa Bugambilia. Keyla was then almost six years old. She did not talk. She walked, but with difficulty, unable to balance. At the refuge, however, Keyla began to sing, in her way, and to dance, responding to the music that filled the Casa’s dining room and communal kitchen at all hours.
Also about that time, Larry and Dra Nancy took in two kids. They’d been born in the US, but abandoned at the nearby fishing village — a place even more destitute than Colonia Derechos Humanos. On the occasion of their baptism, Antoñia asked Larry if he thought Keyla could be baptized, too. She had tried once, but the pastor refused, believing Keyla incapable of comprehending what it meant to be a follower of Jesus.
Larry reassured Antoñia that “God sees each child as unique and of sacred value.” He promised to have Keyla baptized, even if he had to do it himself.
That’s when Antoñia pulled Larry and Dra Nancy into an even deeper confidence: “If anything ever happens to me,” she said, “I want you to care for Keyla. I want you to be her parents.”
“That day, Keyla entered our family as our daughter,” says Larry, “but she resided in our hearts long before that, when Nancy and I saw her for the first time.”
Antoñia died less than a month later from complications due to a staff infection.
The Education
Larry recounts that he never faced a challenge as big as he did that day, in January 2006, when Antoñia passed away.
“How was I to explain to this 6-year-old child, who was just learning to speak and whose mind was trapped forever at the age of 4, that the person who had cared for her like a mom had passed away?”
He saw how frightened Keyla looked, and he recognized the fear, for he had lost his mother when he was just seven. He tapped into the memory of what, at that time, helped him to heal.
“I told her that Toñia — Keyla’s name for her — was now living in heaven right beside my mother, Tony, who had also gone to heaven when I was practically her same age…I told her that Toñia and Tony were together and doing very well.”
From that day forward — for the next six years and three months, until Keyla was kidnapped by Uncle Sam — the two had this exchange at least once each day:
“Papi, where is Toñia?”
“She is in heaven.”
“And your mama?”
“Right beside Toñia. And they are well.”
“What is her name?”
“Tony, almost like Toñia. They love us. And guess what, Keyla?”
“What?”
“We love you, too.”
That’s when Keyla taught Larry that she was, indeed, capable of learning. It would take patience and kindness and lots of repetition as well as dedicated eye-contact, at least at first. In those early days, her eyes did not focus. So Larry locked his gaze on hers from just inches away. At times she would touch his face and voice box to “listen” better. He taught her words in a sequence to aid her memory development, starting with ¡Excelente! ¡Fantastico! When she got those down, he’d add another. In time she could repeat ¡Excelente! ¡Fantastico! ¡Fabulosa! ¡Poderoso! ¡Tremendo! ¡Increible! ¡Estupendo! One day she shocked him by adding her own: ¡Maravillosamente Bien!
On another day in 2008. Larry and Keyla were in the car, singing along to the radio as he drove. Keyla looked up at the clouds in the sky and pointed, “Mira, Papi. Hay montañas en el cielo,” she whispered. Look, Daddy. There are mountains in the sky.
“She had jumped from my ongoing explanations of the surrounding environment — narrated too many times to count — to create a metaphor. That mind of hers is damaged, but it works constantly to find a way,” says Larry.
He decided to teach her the telephone number at Casa Bugambilia so she might find them again in the event she ever got lost. As with most of her lessons, Keyla turned it into a song:
“Uno-once,” Larry prompted.
“Quince-cincuentra-y-tres,” Keyla responded without missing a beat. Then she reversed the game: “1–11,” shouted Keyla,
“15–53!” concluded Larry.
The Expedition
After taking her at the bridge, the US government labeled Keyla an “alien” — government-speak for ‘non-citizen from an unwelcome country’ — and she was swallowed up by ORR’s so-called “system of care.” She was bounced from South Texas to Chicago to Philadelphia to California, and from “shelter” to foster care to the hospital (possibly twice) to a psychiatric facility and a group home, as Larry and Nancy begged and pleaded and made every effort to get their daughter back.
But the family was never interviewed; never allowed to prove Nancy’s sister wrong. The government simply refused to listen, kicking off seven years of searching and legal actions costing over $200,000; of letter-writing campaigns and prayer vigils by supporters and friends; of promises made by some bureaucrats and betrayals by others; of unanswered petitions to see Keyla and of nightmares.
During the day, as long as Larry and Nancy kept busy, they were able to keep the voices at bay. But they were powerless to them at night. They heard Keyla calling to them; they saw her in distress. But they could never reach her; so they could never save her. They promised to wake the other whenever one had been visited, to cry together and rock each other back to sleep. For seven years, it was rare to have an uninterrupted night.
On April 23, 2018, just a month-and-a-half shy of seven years without Keyla’s shining light and winning smile, Larry posted the following on Facebook:
When I consider Keyla, we remain in darkness. I suspect you have seen me almost at the stage of giving up…on the idea that ORR and many of its contractors (including the Lutherans and Catholics) would act in good faith, or that ORR would ever interview us (as their own rules require), or that any of them would actually act in the best interest of Keyla, or that the Department of Justice would actually seek what is just for Keyla as opposed to preserving the power of a flawed agency (ORR). And now I read that ICE is separating children from their parents at the border?
Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had just announced Trump & Co’s “zero tolerance” policy. CBP agents were ripping terrified children from the arms of their traumatized parents. Larry understood their pain.
“It is beyond comprehension,” Larry continued, “the harm being done by our government to those children and their families…From my family’s experience…it is beyond comprehension the damage done to Keyla and to us.”
Larry, too, had fled death threats and violence, only to have his child seized and disappeared. He knew all too well their inevitable descent into darkness.
The Reunion
On May 12th, Larry’s phone rang. It was Joyce Capelle, CEO of ORR contractor, Crittenton Family Services, in Fullerton, California. She was calling to say that Keyla would soon be “aging out” of the system. They would no longer have jurisdiction over her at that point, nor would they have funds to support her. She will never have the capacity to live alone, Joyce told Larry, as if this was news. She would therefore become a ward of the State.
Before going to the trouble of finding an adult group home for Keyla, Ms. Capelle wanted to know: Did Larry still want her back?
On May 31st, Nancy and Larry laid eyes on Keyla for the first time in seven years, minus a week. She was changed. She’d lost her smile, and her shine. She was the same height, 4’10”, but was 100 pounds heavier. At 175, she weighed more than Larry did when he started army basic training at almost the same age. The skin on her neck and elbows was covered with welts indicative of a pre-diabetic condition. Her room was bare, joyless. There were no curtains on the windows, which overlooked a public play area, so no privacy. There were no decorations on the walls, even though Keyla had lived there for four years.
She recognized Larry and Nancy right away. She hugged them, “though not robustly.” She pointed to Larry and said, in English, “You’re my dad.”
The next day, the three went out for pizza. Nancy was having trouble walking. She’d been increasingly shaky and in pain for about a year. One doctor thought it might be a slipped disc. Another thought was stress. A third suggested it was due to menopause. A neurologist suggested Parkinson’s disease, but then ruled it out as she was only 54.
Over dinner, they began to reminisce about their life together in Matamoros. Larry and Nancy were startled to discover how much Keyla remembered. At one point she looked up proudly and said, in English, “Papi, we have an awesome family.”
“That stunned me,” wrote Larry. “To proclaim this so clearly and forcefully after seven years of separation…and to do so in English!”
Then, Keyla paused. And with an expression of incredulity that Larry will never, ever forget, she asked: “What happened?”
The Indelible Mark of Trauma
No sooner was the family reunited when the good doctor’s health took a turn for the worse. Disease rapidly took over her nervous system and within a year of Keyla’s return, Nancy became so physically weakened and cognitively impaired, she requires full-time nursing herself. She is now back in Matamoros, being cared for by her jealous older sister, for whom Larry is willing to pray, but with whom he will never, ever speak again.
Dr. Amy Cohen, a trauma specialist and founder of Every.Last.One, an organization dedicated to reunifying families ripped apart by the Trump administration, volunteered often at Casa Bugambilia. I asked her if she thought Nancy’s swift decline had anything to do with being separated from Keyla, and for so long. “My experience is that few, if any, parents appreciate their own trauma in these situations,” she said.
They tend to be so focused on their child or children that this is all that consumes them…but they are indelibly traumatized as well. Parents ‘hear’ their children crying in the night…Larry and Nancy were tormented by the notion that Keyla was needing them, was calling for them and they could not get to her, could do nothing to rescue her. Larry’s ordeal at the bridge was beyond horrible, and, yes…might this have accelerated Nancy’s decline? Absolutely.
Perhaps the greatest injustice of this whole sordid tale is that the US government not only robbed Keyla of her childhood, it robbed her of the only mother she ever really knew. And now, if Uncle Sam were ever to apologize for kidnapping Keyla and refusing to give her back, Nancy would not be able to comprehend it.
That said, an apology is not all that Larry longs to receive. He wants, and he deserves, that his name is cleared of his sister-in-law’s wrongful allegations. That is the hopeful goal of bringing his, Keyla’s, and Nancy’s story to light. That and the fact that having your child ripped away from you is never okay: It scars everyone involved for life. It should certainly never be used as government policy, ever again.
Epilogue
Shortly before Keyla’s 18th birthday, in August 2018, the family received a final home-visit from a staff social worker of Crittenton Family Services. Larry asked her about Keyla’s habit of making nonsensical pretend calls from a toy phone. She answered that Keyla was on the phone, “calling her family,” all the time she was in their care.
Larry learned that in September 2011, four months after Keyla had been forcibly separated from him, ORR had tracked down her closest biological relative in the US: her grandfather Sergio, who was living undocumented in North Carolina. The only real phone call that Keyla had been granted in seven years was to this person, who didn’t know her and wanted nothing to do with her.
Evidently, Keyla told him to “please call Casa Bugambilia and tell Larry and Nancy that I’m tired of vacation.” She wanted to go home. She preceded to repeat the only phone number she’d ever known, over and over again: uno-once-quince-cincuentra-y-tres; 111–1553.
“Can you imagine making seven years of pretend phone calls to reach your family?” Larry wonders. “Can it be that Keyla worked harder than any of us to get back?”
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