BUDA (AP) — Fourteen months ago, Byron Xol was packed in a wooden crate by smugglers and shipped from Guatemala to the U.S., only to be grabbed immediately by border agents and ripped away from his father.
His dad was deported. Byron remained, locked away with the thousands of children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration. More than a year after the practice ended, a small number of children like Byron remain in limbo, far from their families.
Byron spent his ninth birthday in central Texas, with a host family devoted to giving him a loving home. His parents, meanwhile, passed the day a thousand miles away, in the gang-ridden forests Byron and his father, David, had tried to escape. They have not seen their child in more than a year.
