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'Forgive me for leaving you all alone' - Mother and daughter's teary reunion after Trump administration policy separates them for 55 days

July 7, 2018

A heartfelt reunion of a mother and daughter took place in America's Boston's Logan Airport on Thursday (local time), was caught on video, after they were seperated for 55 days.

Upon arriving in the US, Ms Gonzalez-Garcia, 31, and her now eight-year-old daughter were detained in a centre in Arizona, where they were seperated, for what they believed would be a forever. 

From the moment Gonzalez-Garcia sees her daughter, she bursts into tears, falls to her knees and begs her daughter's forgiveness, while embracing her tightly. 

"Forgive me for leaving you all alone," Ms Gonzalez-Garcia cried. "Forgive me, my daughter. Forgive me." 

The long-prayed-for reunion came on the same day that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said there may be just under 3,000 children in the agency's care who were possibly from seperated families, reports CNN. 

He said that number refers to children "who may have been separated from their purported parents who were taken into DHS custody for having crossed illegally or for other reasons like concerns for the safety of the child."

After embracing for minutes, the two knelt down and prayed, the way Ms Gonzalez-Garcia says they did every morning during their seperation. 

"You know that I missed you. You are the gift that God gave me. I'll never leave you alone again. Never. Forgive me my darling for leaving you alone. Forgive me. I didn't want to."

"I was very nervous," Ms Gonzalez-Garcia told CNN in an exclusive interview. "I was waiting for the moment she walked through that door. ... She is all I have. She is my whole life. It's been so long."

"There was a time I thought I would never see her again," she said.

Lawyers from two firms and the ACLU of Massachusetts. Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, helped speed up the reunification process.

Clark told CNN that there's no policy for bringing families back together. 

"It is a matter of chance, and we are so full of joy to see this reunion, but there are thousand of families out there. Some who don't know where their children are. And these are the actions of the US government."

According to a lawsuit the mother has filed against the federal government, Ms Gonzalez-Garcia and her daughter fled from their home in Guatemala in April to seek refuge in the US, because of severe abuse and domestic violence.

The mother and child's account of their journey from southern Mexico to the US border, is descibed as perilous.

Once they arrived in the US, the pair were held in a room with up to 40 other women and children, states the lawsuit. 

Immigration officers came days later and took her daughter away, telling her that she would "never see" the girl again.

Ms Gonzalez-Garcia was later transferred to a detention centre in Colorado, where she was eventually released on bond on June 19, after filing an asylum application. 

An online fundraising campaign was launched by supporters, to help the pair along until the mother can obtain a working permit. 

When Ms Gonzalez-Garcia finally made contact with her daughter by phone, she learned how her daughter feared for safety, as other children in the Texas shelter had injured and bruised her. Her daughter spent her eighth birthday in the shelter. 

The mother and daughter are now staying with friends in Massachusetts.

"The wait was like an eternity. I'm the happiest woman in the world right now," said Gonzalez-Garcia. "Lord, how can I repay you for this beautiful gift?"

Thousands of other children, seperated from their families at the southern border, under the Trump administration's widely condemned zero tolerance policy, await their fate.

The Trump administration is currently grappling a number of court-imposed deadlines after the US government were ordered to cease most family seperations at the border.

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