When more than 2,000 children were taken from their families at the border, Julie Schwietert Collazo found it increasingly difficult to sleep.
And as the spouse of a refugee, immigration issues were already intensely personal for her family.
One night, Schwietert Collazo was listening to the radio and heard an interview with the lawyer of a detained Guatemalan mother. Yeni Gonzalez had been separated from her three children at the border while seeking asylum.
Yeni Gonzalez speaks at a press conference. Photo by Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images.
"Something he said connected the dots for me about how some parents can be reunified with kids," says Schwietert Collazo. "He explained that Yeni was in a detention facility in Arizona and her kids were known to be in a center in NYC, and that, technically speaking, they could be reunified. She just needed to get to NYC."
Schwietert Collazo wondered what might happen if she tried to make reunification possible for this one family.
She, her husband, and some friends brainstormed and decided they wanted to try to raise bond for Gonzalez, get her to New York City, and support her until her case was heard.
Coordinating with Gonzalez's lawyer, the group immediately launched a GoFundMe, setting an arbitrary goal since they didn't yet know what Gonzalez's bond amount would be. The next morning, they learned it would be $7,500. They had already raised well beyond that overnight.
But money wasn't the only obstacle to helping bring Gonzalez and her children back together. Somehow, the group had to get her from Arizona to New York.
It wasn't as simple as planning a cross-country move. Gonzalez doesn't have a photo ID, so that eliminated the simplest and most obvious option of buying her a plane ticket. The next option — ground travel by Greyhound or Amtrak — could have put her in danger as a lone traveler. So the community got creative.
Schwietert Collazo and the group set up a rideshare relay, moving Gonzalez across the country in vehicles driven by volunteers and stopping in volunteer host homes along the way.
On July 2, Gonzalez arrived in NYC to see streets lined with supporters cheering for her. Accompanied by two elected officials and her lawyer the next day, Gonzalez visited with her children for the first time since their separation.
Gonzalez embraces Janey Pearl, one of the volunteers who helped drive her cross-country to NYC. Photo by Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images.
A nationwide injunction in June 2018 ordered all separated families to be reunited within a month. The logistics of that order, however, are proving to be nothing but pure chaos.
The injunction ordered all children under 5 to be reunified with their parents within 14 days and all older children to be reunited within 30 days. Even with the private funds and community help she received, Gonzalez's case will likely take longer than that.
For other families, the challenges of reunification are even more overwhelming.
For starters, kids — some of them preverbal — have been moved all over the country with little to no documentation that would be able to link them back to their parents. Additionally, immigration advocates and lawyers report that many parents are simply giving up their asylum claims out of desperation for reuniting with their children.
Some organizations, like the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC) are stepping in to help clean up the mess surrounding separated families.
Previously, MIRC handled cases of "unaccompanied minors," defined as adolescents and teenagers who crossed the border alone. Now that very young children separated from their parents are included in that category, MIRC's work has grown more complicated.
Additionally, MIRC managing attorney Susan Reed says that most of the cases she sees unfortunately don't pertain to parents who are eligible for bond, like Gonzalez.
"It's relatively uncommon that people are getting bonds and being allowed to move forward with asylum claims," says Reed. That's because when Attorney General Jeff Sessions eliminated domestic violence and gang violence as grounds for asylum last month, he made it increasingly difficult for anyone to be granted asylum.
In addition, Reed says, prosecutors at the border are aggressive about trying to get people's paths to asylum cut off as quickly as possible.
"So far our clients who've been reunited have been reunited with parents who either have already been deported or are being deported," says Reed. "And even that hasn't been going that well."
As cases like Gonzalez's become less common, it's more important that individuals like Schwietert Collazo to step in and help with reunification where possible.
Getting Gonzalez closer to her children started with one person moving from compassion to action.
[rebelmouse-image 19478286 dam="1" original_size="1200x1083" caption="Gonzalez walks with members of the team that is helping her reunite with her kids, including Julie Schwietert Collazo, in back. Photo via Sen. Mike Gianaris/Twitter." expand=1]Gonzalez walks with members of the team that is helping her reunite with her kids, including Julie Schwietert Collazo, in back. Photo via Sen. Mike Gianaris/Twitter.
The most important thing, says Schwietert Collazo, is to trust the grassroots process.
"Each person who has shown up has been totally empowered to 'own' their part of the process and to be responsible for it," she says. "We haven't needed to lean on or involve any government representatives, and my experience is that when you trust your team, you can get things done more quickly." Her team's plan went from idea to full fruition in less than a week.
Schwietert Collazo hopes that her team's action plan can act as a model that others can use to support more detained parents reunite with their children.
In fact, on July 4, the group launched two more GoFundMe campaigns for two more moms, each one already approaching their $25,000 goal. Her efforts make it possible for others to contribute to the reunification effort by supporting her team or by starting a reunification project of their own in hopes that, eventually, all families separated at the border can be brought together again.
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There's a reason why some people can perfectly copy accents, and others can't
Turns out, there's a neurodivergent link.
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Have you ever had that friend who goes on vacation for four days to London and comes back with a full-on Queen's English posh accent? "Oooh I left my brolly in the loo," they say, and you respond, "But you're from Colorado!" Well, there are reasons they (and many of us) do that, and usually it's on a pretty subconscious level.
It's called "accent mirroring," and it's actually quite common with people who are neurodivergent, particularly those with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). According Neurolaunch, the self-described "Free Mental Health Library," "Accent mirroring, also known as accent adaptation or phonetic convergence, is the tendency to unconsciously adopt the accent or speech patterns of those around us. This linguistic chameleon effect is not unique to individuals with ADHD, but it appears to be more pronounced and frequent in this population."
Essentially, when people have conversations, we're constantly "scanning" for information—not just the words we're absorbing, but the inflection and tone. "When we hear an accent, our brains automatically analyze and categorize the phonetic features, prosody, and intonation patterns," writes Neurolaunch. For most, this does result in copying the accent of the person with whom we're speaking. But those with ADHD might be more sensitive to auditory cues. This, "coupled with a reduced ability to filter out or inhibit the impulse to mimic…could potentially explain the increased tendency for accent mirroring."
While the article explains further research is needed, they distinctly state that, "Accent mirroring in individuals with ADHD often manifests as an unconscious mimicry of accents in social situations. This can range from subtle shifts in pronunciation to more noticeable changes in intonation and speech rhythm. For example, a person with ADHD might find themselves unconsciously adopting a Southern drawl when conversing with someone from Texas, even if they’ve never lived in the South themselves."
People are having their say online. On the subreddit r/ADHDWomen, a thread began: "Taking on accents is an ADHD thing?" The OP shares, "My whole life, I've picked up accents. I, myself, never noticed, but everyone around me would be like, 'Why are you talking like that??' It could be after I watched a show or movie with an accent or after I've traveled somewhere with a different accent than my 'normal.'
They continue, "Apparently, I pick it up fast, but it fades out slowly. Today... I'm scrolling Instagram, I watch a reel from a comedian couple (Darcy and Jeremy. IYKYK) about how Darcy (ADHD) picks up accents everywhere they go. It's called ADHD Mirroring??? And it's another way of masking."
(The OP is referring to Darcy Michaels and his husband Jeremy Baer, who are both touring comedians based in Canada.)
Hundreds of people on the Reddit thread alone seem to relate. One comments, "Omfg I've done this my whole life; I'll even pick up on the pauses/spaces when I'm talking to someone who is ESL—but English is my first language lol."
Sometimes, it can be a real issue for those around the chameleon. "I accidentally mimicked a waitress's weird laugh one time. As soon as she was out of earshot, my family started to reprimand me, but I was already like 'oh my god I don’t know why I did that, I feel so bad.'"
Many commenters on TikTok were shocked to find out this can be a sign of ADHD. One jokes, "Omg, yes, at a store the cashier was talking to me and she was French. She's like 'Oh are you French too? No, I'm not lol. I'm very east coast Canada."
And some people just embrace it and make it work for them. "I mirror their words or phrase! I’m 30. I realized I start calling everyone sweetie cause my manager does & I work at coffee shop."