“In that moment, they said give your son your blessings.” José Oliverio Diaz spoke to audience members at a recent public forum held in Lynn.
With a social worker from the Lynn Community Health Center translating his words into English, he described the experience of emigrating from Guatemala in 2018 and being separated from his child at the border, where the 15-year-old was detained and removed from his family for what would be approximately 60 days. “I didn’t know why they were asking me to do that,” Diaz said, “so I just hugged him and I said, ‘I don’t know when this is going to end.’”