Immigrant families are being told to pay up to $US700 for DNA tests to prove their relationships with the children they were separated from as part of the Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ border policy.
At least four women have been told they can’t be reunited with their children, one of whom is just three years old, until they’ve paid for and undertaken the DNA test, Elle US reports. Three of the women are the mothers of their separated children; one is an aunt.
Immigrant parents are also expected to pay for flights for their children, who have been scattered to various shelters across the US, Business Insider reports.
“None of them have the money [for the tests], so it’s going to fall back on us to push back on that,” Ruben Garcia, director of El Paso TX immigrant shelter, told the Daily Beast, which reports that a number of families have been forced to pay upwards of $US700 to prove their relationships with their children.
The US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which coordinates migrant children’s housing, has denied claims that parents are being asked to pay for the DNA testing, according to Business Insider.
Adding to the devastation for immigrant families is that their young children often no longer recognise them.
The New York Times reports that is the case for some migrant mothers who had been separated from their toddlers for as long as three months.
“He didn’t recognize me,” Mirce Alba Lopez, 31, told the Times of her 3-year-old son. “My joy turned temporarily to sadness.”
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