A Family Separated

A Family Separated

Photographs by Daniele Volpe

Text by Haley Cohen Gilliland

Audio reported and edited by Itxy Quintanilla

David Xol and his 7-year-old son, Byron, left their farming village in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala’s poorest department, last May for the United States, where David hoped to find work. He planned to send most of his earnings to his wife and two younger sons, who had stayed behind. He wanted his children to avoid his fate: living in fear of gangs and working 11 hours a day, six days a week, cutting African palm for subsistence wages. A smuggler led David and Byron to Mexico, where they hid in a wooden crate with two other migrants in the back of a tractor-trailer. When they tried to cross the Rio Grande on a raft, they were detained by Border Patrol.

Like many immigrant families who entered the country at the height of Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, the Xols were quickly separated: Within ten days, David was deported to Guatemala, and Byron was placed in a shelter in Baytown, Texas, where he remains. (The Texas Tribune brought attention to the case, which has been taken up by an immigration lawyer in Laredo, Texas.) Now back in Alta Verapaz, David has lost his job at a nearby plantation and owes $8,000 to the smuggler who brought him and Byron to the U.S. border. One of the few things he and his wife look forward to, he says, is the weekly phone call with Byron. When relatives visit, the first question they ask is “When will Byron return?” David has no answer for them.