Rush for Reunion Flight, But Refused at the Gate

NEW YORK — The children first came to New York in the dark and some left that way, too. Others, after much confusion, did not leave at all.

As the federal government raced to meet a deadline on Thursday to reunite parents and children separated at the Southwest border, New York officials and lawyers for the children described the efforts as chaotic and contradictory, leaving many families still divided.

According to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who spoke on a conference call on Thursday, some 80 youngsters were on a list to be released from Cayuga Centers, the child welfare agency that was caring for a large number of them, on Wednesday. More than a dozen white vans had lined up outside the East Harlem center in the evening, according to Telemundo. But the list turned out to be incorrect, Cuomo said, with many children on it not even in Cayuga’s care.

Cayuga later received a new list with only 14 names on it. Those children were then driven to La Guardia Airport for a flight departing after midnight. But when the children arrived at the airport, the Cayuga personnel discovered that only seven of them had been booked on the flight, according to the governor.

The group was then directed to drive to Westchester County Airport for a different pre-dawn flight. At that airport, they learned that only two children could travel.

“The remaining five went back to Cayuga after being driven around in the middle of the night,” Cuomo said on the conference call on Thursday.

“Clearly, this is gross incompetence and purposeful chaos.”

But the experience of the five children — all siblings — became even more protracted. Cuomo’s counsel, Alphonso B. David, said in an interview that Cayuga personnel learned at the Westchester airport that the five children were told they could not fly because their parents had criminal convictions, and so were not eligible for reunification.

But by 9 a.m. on Thursday, David said, the government said it had made an error about their parents, and that those five children were cleared to fly. As of Thursday evening, he said the children had not been told they were going anywhere soon.

Requests for comment to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is overseeing the family reunion effort, were not immediately returned on Thursday.

Cayuga Centers, one of nine agencies in the New York metropolitan area that took in separated children, provides foster care services, rather than running a residential center, and was caring for perhaps more than 300 youngsters at one point, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in June.

Speaking at a news conference in Staten Island on Thursday afternoon, de Blasio said about 200 children had left the New York area welfare agencies. Their release, however, “does not guarantee they are back with their parents,” he added.

As if to underline the general uncertainty that has marked the federal government’s implementation and reversal of its “zero tolerance” policy at the border, de Blasio said he was still unsure about what happened to the children once they left New York.

Indeed, one 7-year-old boy in Cayuga’s care was supposed to arrive around noon on Thursday to meet his mother in McAllen, Texas, according to the mother’s lawyer. The mother had been released from detention days earlier.

Ruby Powers, the woman’s lawyer, said they were ready to greet him. “And then this morning I hear that there was a mistake, he wasn’t on the plane and, ‘Oops, we’re working on it,'” Powers said, adding she had been in touch with a caseworker.

The boy was then scheduled to arrive late Thursday night, she was told. “I’m grateful that they’ve moved ahead with reunifications, but honestly the emotional roller-coaster has been quite difficult the past few days,” Powers said.

About 100 children remain in New York, “with no end in sight,” de Blasio said. Some were unable to be reunited with their parents for a number of government-determined reasons — including a parent having a criminal conviction or the parent having already been deported. The exact number of separated children in the city has never been clear to city and state officials, because the federal government declined to release the total and the agencies caring for the children were not permitted to discuss any details. Despite letters to the Department of Health and Human Services asking for basic information about the children in New York and queries from other city mayors, “no one is getting any answers,” de Blasio said at the news conference.

But even when agencies got details, they were often inaccurate. “The providers have been getting ever-changing directives in terms of lists of kids and timing and how transfers would happen and how reunions would occur,” said Bitta Mostofi, the commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.

On Thursday, the streets outside Cayuga’s two Harlem centers were bustling. Children jumped into vans wearing backpacks with Spider-Man and Hello Kitty characters, similar to scenes over the last several weeks when children were going on field trips. By the afternoon, the foster parents were picking up children as per their usual routine.

Before 10 a.m. Carolina Ramos emerged from the Cayuga building on Park Avenue with her two children, who were separated from her for 120 days, she said. She had driven 12 hours from Charlotte, North Carolina, with relatives to pick up her daughter, 10, and a son, 17.

“I feel happy, at ease, I thank America that I am now with my children,” said Ramos, who was carrying four balloons and had given her daughter a teddy bear half the girl’s size.