Trump overshadows young migrants’ emotional trip to Mexico
MOLCAXAC, Mexico — Tamara Alcala Dominguez sobbed, barely able to speak, as she buried her face in the sweater of the woman who cared for her when she was a toddler.
“My little girl, I hugged you so much,” Petra Bello Suarez told her now 23-year-old granddaughter, tears dampening her own creased cheeks. “I have you in my arms, my girl. … You found me still alive.”
Alcala’s mother left her with Bello at age 2 when she went to seek a better life in the United States. A year later, the little girl joined her mother — and for two decades Alcala’s undocumented status prevented her from returning to Mexico to see her grandmother and other relatives.
Then she became one of the hundreds of thousands protected from deportation under an Obama administration program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which gave work permits to immigrants brought to the U.S as children and living in the country illegally.