SAN DIEGO _ A 19-year-old mother from Honduras who just gave birth Friday at a Chula Vista hospital while being detained by Border Patrol agents has been paroled following pressure from human rights advocates, her attorney said Monday.
She may get to remain in the San Diego area with her baby after pressure from lawyers and advocates, according to one of her immigration attorneys.
Family members frantically called attorneys with Al Otro Lado, a pro-migrant legal services nonprofit, over the weekend claiming Border Patrol agents told the young mother they planned to place her newborn child in the custody of Child Protection Services and then return her to Mexico without her baby.
Other sources from within the hospital were also communicating with the San Diego Union-Tribune that Border Patrol agents said they planned to separate the mother and the newborn baby.
A CBP spokesperson said "the mother and newborn were never separated by CBP." This afternoon, the mother was provided a Notice to Appear in immigration court and released from CBP custody, the spokesperson said.
Attorneys with Al Otro Lado said they have been fighting to get access to the mother all weekend to provide her with legal counsel. Until Monday afternoon, they were not allowed to speak with her.
The woman and her attorneys asked she not be named to protect her and her baby's medical privacy.
The 19-year-old Honduran migrant crossed the border Friday and turned herself over to Border Patrol agents, stating she was in labor and in need of medical assistance, which she could not get in Tijuana, her attorney said Monday.
Agents took the pregnant woman to Scripps Mercy hospital in Chula Vista where she gave birth to an infant who had complications and needed to be placed in the Intensive Care Unit, her attorney said.
While she was visiting her baby in the ICU, she asked a Border Patrol agent when she could be released with her child, and that's when an agent told her she would be either going back to detention or returned to Mexico under the Remain in Mexico program, her attorney said.
Under Remain in Mexico, asylum-seekers are returned to Mexico to wait while their U.S. immigration cases are decided.
Over the weekend, Border Patrol agents waited outside the woman's hospital room and removed the phone from her bedside so she could not call family or a lawyer, her attorney said Monday.
A spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol did not answer questions from the Union-Tribune on Sunday or Monday morning about whether was told she would be separated from her child.
Erika Pinheiro, the litigation and policy director of Al Otro Lado, a direct legal services non-profit, said details about the woman's circumstances remained somewhat unclear until late Monday because her attorneys were not granted access or allowed to speak with her.
Communication with her family had also been limited, since she was detained Friday and throughout her labor and delivery, Pinheiro said.
"On Saturday evening, Al Otro Lado received a call asking for help in the potential separation of a 19-year-old asylum-seeker from her newborn U.S. citizen child," Pinheiro said. "Although our attorneys arrived at the hospital on Sunday morning, CBP did not allow us to communicate with her until Monday afternoon, at which point she confirmed an agent had threatened her with separation."
"I am grateful to the journalists who showed up to cover this story, and believe that the resulting public outcry helped secure her release. No person should be detained without access to counsel or be separated from their child without due process," she added.
Pinheiro and her team have previously represented clients who were deported without their children.
In the summer of 2018, a federal judge issued an injunction ending the Trump administration's policy of family separation.
That policy was presented as a "zero tolerance" approach to immigration, aimed at deterring people from seeking asylum in the United States by separating children from their parents when they crossed the border.
Since it ended, approximately 1,000 children have been taken from their parents anyway, according to government data presented in filings by the American Civil Liberties Union.
According to the government policy, Border Patrol agents can still separate parents from their children when a parent has a criminal history or if agents determine the parent is unfit to care for the child.
The ACLU argues the current policy still violates the rights of children and families.
On Monday, both a Telemundo 20 and the Union-Tribune reporter observed another child being forcibly removed from the hospital care area. The toddler was wailing with hands outstretched toward the hospital rooms. A Border Patrol officer followed behind a woman carrying the struggling child.
Asked if that child was a sibling of the newborn baby, both hospital staff and the attorney said it was a separate family who was going through a Border Patrol family separation at the same hospital on Monday, raising questions about how often the policy continues to be carried out despite the federal injunction.
Early Monday morning, two Border Patrol agents were seen carrying an empty baby car seat out of the hospital. They declined to comment.
