BOSTON (WHDH) - After she was granted asylum from a dangerous situation in her home country of Brazil, Lidia Karin Souza made her way from the Texas detention center to Massachusetts almost two weeks ago.
However, her 8-year-old son Diogo remains in a Chicago facility, and there’s no knowing when the two will be reunited.
As tears streamed down her face, Souza recalled the last time she saw Diogo. It was at a detention facility in Texas. She said goodbye and was placed in handcuffs.
“The feeling of helplessness,” she said through a translator, “not being able to help or do something…it’s killing me.”
Immediately after she was released from custody, Souza inquired about her son. She was given a phone number to call but no one answered. She reportedly found her son, after two weeks of no communication, thanks to a friendship she formed in the federal facility with another Brazilian mother.
“The only way I get to speak to my child is because at the federal facility I met this other Brazilian mother who then contacted her child and said ‘my daughter has a friend named Diogo, maybe it’s your child.'”
Souza says she is only able to speak to her son twice a week. During these phone calls she says Diogo often cries and tells her he is hungry.
Souza says she spoke with the case manager Wednesday, after President Trump signed the executive order demanding that families trying to cross the border illegally be detained together, hoping to be reunited with Diogo. According to Souza, the case worker dismissed the plea, saying, “you can believe them if you want to.”
“That was like a cold bucket of water over me.”
Souza’s attorney, Jesse Bless, says she was in a dangerous situation in Brazil. She fled and claimed asylum at the border.
“We have a mother who’s been vetted by the government, there’s no dispute that she’s the mother, she has a safe place for the child, and yet they will not give us a time for when they’ll reunited this family,” Bless said.
The next step for Souza is to get finger-printed. From there, it could be another 20 days before the mother and son are reunited. Bless has not been able to secure an appointment for the finger-printing.
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