THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

When mother and child, seeking a better life with her boyfriend already here, commit a misdemeanor by crossing the United States without proper documentation, they are scooped up by CBP thugs, seperated, with the child going into one of Trump's Concentration Camps and the mother put on a plane back to Guatamala.

They’d had a plan: Elsa Johana Ortiz Enriquez packed up what little she had in Guatemala and traveled across Mexico with her 8-year-old son, Anthony. In a group, they rafted across the Rio Grande into Texas. From there they intended to join her boyfriend, Edgar, who had found a construction job in the United States.

Except it all went wrong. The Border Patrol was waiting as they made their way from the border on May 26, and soon mother and son were in a teeming detention center in southern Texas. The next part unfolded so swiftly that, even now, Ms. Ortiz cannot grasp it: Anthony was sent to a shelter for migrant children. And she was put on a plane back to Guatemala.

“I am completely devastated,” Ms. Ortiz, 25, said in one of a series of video interviews last week from her family home in Guatemala. Her eyes swollen from weeping and her voice subdued, she said she had no idea when or how she would see her son again.

As the federal government continues to separate families as part of a stepped-up enforcement program against those who cross the border illegally, the authorities say that parents are not supposed to be deported without their children. But immigration lawyers say that has happened in several cases. And the separations can be traumatic for parents who now have no clear path to recovering their children.

“From our work on the border, we have seen a significant increase in the number of moms separated from their children, and many of them have reported they didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye before the separation, “ said Laura Tuell, the global pro bono counsel at Jones Day, an international law firm providing assistance to refugees in Texas, whose lawyers spoke with Ms. Ortiz.

“Some of the women we have encountered in detention at the border have reported facing pressure to deport voluntarily in order to be reunified with their children,” she said.

Critics say that Ms. Ortiz’s saga is the latest indication that the administration’s new enforcement strategy was rolled out without adequate planning. The processing and detention of migrant families can involve three Homeland Security agencies — Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Citizenship and Immigration Services — as well as the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services. Poor coordination among them has made it hard to track children and parents once their paths diverge in the labyrinthine system.

What a fiendishly cruel method, not just separating mother and child but putting them in different countries. Let that border jumper get her kid back now! And when ICE can't find the kid's mother they will have no choice but to sell him to a loyal Trumpoon who needs cheap labor. Win-win for Der Trumpenfuehrer.