Pedro Godinez-Aguilar clenched his 7-year-old daughter’s delicate palms in his calloused hands.
Just moments before, the sobbing father braided his “princess’ “ long black hair, cleansed her sweaty skin with crinkled baby wipes, and prayed over her “journey” — a journey that would soon end with him in jail and his daughter more than a thousand miles away.
The Guatemalan asylum-seeker had arrived at the U.S. border in Arizona in May, days after the Trump administration announced that all adults crossing the U.S.-Mexico order illegally would be prosecuted — a “zero tolerance” imposed in April that has resulted in more than 2,000 children being forcibly removed from their parents by U.S. border agents.
Read more from our news partner, The Miami Herald.