A Venezuelan mother who was initially deported from the US without her 2-year-old daughter says being reunited with her child this week felt like a “miracle.”
“Many times, I doubted that my daughter was going to come,” said a tearful Yorely Bernal in an interview with Venezuelan news outlet La Iguana TV on Thursday. “But that miracle they gave me yesterday was something that there are no words to explain.”
Bernal was deported from the United States in March without her daughter Maikelys, who remained in foster care in the US. When Venezuelan First Lady Cilia Flores personally handed Maikelys Espinoza to Bernal at the presidential palace in Caracas on Wednesday, it put an end to nearly a year of separation between the two.
According to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Maikelys spent most of her time in the US in foster care under the custody of the US Office of Refugee Resettlement before being returned to her mother under court order.
DHS claims that the separation was for the child’s safety, alleging that Bernal and her partner, whom the US deported to the high-security CECOT prison in El Salvador earlier this year, are members of the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua – something both parents deny.
“The child’s mother, Yorely Escarleth Bernal Inciarte, oversees recruitment of young women for drug smuggling and prostitution for Tren de Aragua,” DHS alleged in a statement on May 14. The US government has not provided specific evidence for this allegation, and both Bernal and Espinoza say they have no affiliation with Tren de Aragua.
Bernal told La Iguana that US authorities cited Bernal’s upcoming immigration hearings at the time when they took first her daughter into custody last year.
Nearly a year of separation
Bernal entered the United States with Maikelys and her partner Maiker Espinoza on May 14, 2024. All three were swiftly detained by US immigration authorities, Bernal told La Iguana, and Maikelys was removed from their care five days later.
Months would pass before Mikaelys – who was just over a year old when they crossed the border – was able to see her mother again through a video calling app under immigration authorities’ supervision, according to Bernal.
At that point, the toddler no longer recognized her, she says.
“They allowed me a video call once a week for thirty minutes,” Bernal told La Iguana. “That’s when I was able to see her. I knew it was her. But she didn’t recognize me anymore. It had been about five months until I was able to see her again.”
Eventually, Bernal and Espinoza were able to see their daughter in 30-minute in-person visits, she says. In a February affidavit filed in federal court, Espinoza said that this was around October 2024.
Now reunited with her child in Venezuela, Bernal told Venezuelan media that she’s still hopeful that her partner would eventually be set free from CECOT and join his family in Venezuela.
“I know that he is going to be here, because he promised me,” she said.