Immigrant after being reunited with son: ‘It was the hardest thing to ever happen’

In separate interviews, Arely and her 7-year-old son Andy, as well as Jose Angel and his 11-year-old daughter Kimberly, told CNN in a law office here about the tragic experience of being separated and then reunited earlier this week. CNN has withheld their full names because they feared future legal ramifications that could impact their asylum applications.

Both Arely and Jose Angel, who are not related and from El Salvador and Honduras respectively, were held at a detention center at Port Isabel, where they experienced first-hand the now-reversed Trump administration “zero-tolerance policy” that had them criminally prosecuted for illegally entering the country.