“The Great Mother” is the name of the documentary about Nora Sandigo’s life, an American activist of Nicaraguan roots who described as “devilish” the holding of “innocent children in jails” for entering this country alone and without papers.
She is the president of a foundation which has been serving and protecting children and their families, providing immediate relief of food and supplies when necessary.
“We are the guardians of the ‘immigration orphans’ and we offer support to help them grow as contributing members of American society. We believe in keeping families together. “
The activist, who has become the legal guardian of more than 2,500 children born in the United States of undocumented parents, spoke surrounded by a group of children in her charge at the cinema entrance where Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker documentary ” The Great Mother “shows the humanitarian work she does.
Walker declared for the Spanish news agency before the screening, that the documentary main purpose is to raise awareness about the American children´s problem whose undocumented parents are detained or deported and remain separated from their families in this country.
He said that Nora´s work is something remarkable and incredible.
Sandigo, who has been defending the children´s rights for more than 30 years, takes the legal guardianship of those children, with their parent’s authorization who want the minors to stay here for a better future in case they are deported.
The intention is to prevent them from passing into the State responsibility and being taken to orphanages or given to adoptive families.
According to Sandigo, she is the legal guardian of more than 2,500 children legal and there are 500 who are in the process of being under her care.
“Fortunately, just today, Nora Sandigo Children Foundation received a girl who had been detained for eight months”, she said surrounded by children wearing yellow shirts with the name of the entity.
Although the majority of these children that Sandigo takes care of, live with relatives or friends after the forced departure of one or both of their parents, sometimes she takes care of some of them as if they were her own children. They live at her home and stay with her all the time.
Sandigo and her foundation are specifically concerned with children who are US citizens because they were born in this country, but the activist feels the same concern for all children who are affected by immigration policies.
In Homestead (south of Miami), near the Sandigo foundation center, there is a so-called provisional shelter for unaccompanied minors where more than a thousand children are detained for entering the country without documents, a number that will soon double.
Sandigo said that the children under her responsability and those held in the provisional shelter are “children of God” with the same rights, and she condemned that there are minors locked up “like little animals.”
“They need to be free” and to be with their parents to be able to develop their capabilities, she said.
For Sandigo, American society has to put an end to “this terrible injustice”. It is “something cruel, devilish”.
Translated by: Jose Espinoza
Latinx Newswire
