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‘They Want to Steal My Daughter’: Deported Parents May Lose Kids to Adoption, AP Finds

Araceli Ramos Bonilla holds her 5-year-old daughter, Alexa, on her lap during an interview in a park in San Miguel, El Salvador, on Aug. 18, 2018. — Araceli Ramos Bonilla holds her 5-year-old daughter, Alexa, on her lap during an interview in a park in San Miguel, El Salvador, on Aug. 18, 2018.
Photographer: Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (GARANCE BURKE and MARTHA MENDOZA)

October 9, 2018, 4:01 AM UTCUpdated onOctober 9, 2018, 8:11 PM UTC

(AP) -- As the deportees were led off the plane onto the steamy San Salvador tarmac, an anguished Araceli Ramos Bonilla burst into tears, her face contorted with pain: "They want to steal my daughter!"

It had been 10 weeks since Ramos had last held her 2-year-old, Alexa. Ten weeks since she was arrested crossing the border into Texas and U.S. immigration authorities seized her daughter and told her she would never see the girl again.