Salvadoran Mother Reunited with 3-Year-Old Son Says He Shows Signs of Trauma & Aggressive Behavior

On Wednesday, Democracy Now!'s Laura Gottesdiener sat down with a Salvadoran mother named Belqui Yessenia Castillo Cortez, who reunited with her 3-year-old son Michael last week after they were separated by immigration officials at the border in Texas. Federal documents show the mother and son arrived at the legal port of entry in Rio Grande City on May 28, 2018, to apply for asylum in the United States. Immigration authorities detained them and then separated them, sending Belqui to the Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas, while her 3-year-old son was flown all the way to New York and held in a facility run by a human services agency called Abbott House. "His behavior is really aggressive," she says. "He wasn't like this before. " He's violent, more than anything else."