Miami, .- Nicaraguan-born activist Nora Sandigo, who has become the legal guardian of more than 2,500 children born in the United States to undocumented parents, said on Monday that it is “diabolical” to have “innocent children in jails” have entered alone and without papers to this country.
Sandigo spoke thus surrounded by a score of children in charge of its foundation at the entrance of the cinema where today the documentary “The Great Mother” was presented, in which the Americans Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker show the humanitarian work that she does.
Walker told Efe before the screening that the main purpose of this documentary is to raise awareness of the problem of American children whose undocumented parents are detained or deported and are separated from their families in this country.
“What Nora does for these American children is something remarkable, incredible” and few know that this problem exists, he added.
Sandigo, who has dedicated more than 30 years to defending the rights of children, assumes the legal guardianship of those children, with the authorization of the parents who want that if they are deported, they will stay here so that they have a better future.
It is about preventing them from passing into the hands of the State and being admitted to orphanages or given to adoptive families.
According to Sandigo said today to the press, there are already more than 2,500 children of whom he is legal guardian and there are 500 others who are in the process of being.
Today “happily” the Nora Sandigo Children Foundation received a girl who had been detained for eight months, said surrounded by small dressed in yellow shirts with the name of the entity, a few with their mothers.
Although the majority of these children that Sandigo tutela live with relatives or friends after the forced departure of one or both of their parents, sometimes they take care of some of them as if they were their own children, welcoming them into their home and bringing them with them. all your commitments.
Sandigo and her foundation are specifically concerned with children who are US citizens because they were born in this country, but the activist feels the same concern for all children who are affected by immigration policies.
In Homestead (south of Miami), near the place where the foundation of Sandigo has a center for the children under its care, a so-called provisional shelter of unaccompanied minors is erected where more than a thousand children detained for entering EE are detained. .US. without documents, a figure that will soon double.
Sandigo said that the children in his charge and those held in the temporary shelter are “children of God” with the same rights and lamented that there are minors locked up “like little animals.”
“They need to be free” and with their parents to show their capabilities and achieve their development, he said.
For Sandigo, as a society, the Americans have to put an end to “this terrible injustice”, it is “something cruel, diabolical”.
The documentary “The Great Mother” was released in New York last November and now returns to the screen during the International Film Festival of Miami, where it competes in several categories.
One of the cases that appear in the documentary is Valerie and Matthew Travi, children of the Colombian couple formed by Julio and Olga, who was forced to ask the activist to welcome the teenagers after a judge ordered them to leave EE. UU after more than 11 years trying to legalize their situation.
Threatened by the Colombian drug trafficking mafia, against which he fought when he was a policeman in Colombia’s anti-drug unit, Julio refuses to let his children, born in the US, return to the Latin American country, where he believes their lives are in danger. .
The history of the Travi not only reveals the pain of parents and children, but the disorientation and helplessness of children, who from a very early age are left adrift, without their main reference to guide their steps.
Along with Nora was a 17-year-old teenager born in Seattle and, therefore, American, whose parents were deported to India, today at Coral Gables Art Cinema.
Since he was 14 years old, he lives in Sandigo’s house, who considers him as his “son” as his two daughters, aged 19 and 21. (EFEUSA)
