This is 4-year-old Cuban Dario De La Cruz. He was being smuggled to the U.S. with his grandmother in the hopes of being reunited with his parents who are already there.
But late last week, the pair was arrested in Belize along with a group of Cubans who were attempting an illegal entry into Belize.
Now, criminalizing immigration offences is nothing new in Belize, and as is the practice, Dario's grandmother is currently being held at the Kolbe foundation.
What is unusual about this case is that he is not with her.
They have been separated with Dario being held in the custody of human services.
Tonight his family has no idea where that is, and efforts to reunite the child with the only guardian he has in this country have led his parents to engage attorney OJ Elrington. We spoke to him shortly before news time:
OJ Elrington, Attorney-At Law
"In this instance a child along with his grandmother and several other Cubans were arrested by the police, charged and convicted of illegal entry. The normal course of things is that when this happens at least so. Far as my interaction with these instances before is that the child rightfully is not separated from the guardian because to do so would be a violation of the child's human rights, regrettably, I cannot say so in this instance. We have tried with no success since this weekend to try to have the authorities reunite the guardian with the child or at minimum the parent wanted to be able to ensure that the child is safe, that the child is alive yet that has not been something that the authorities have allowed us to do. Again this is a most regrettable situation it is an egregious violation of the human rights of these individuals."
"The child has specific health issues including but not limited to suffering, being a child that suffers from autism and there is. also, Aspberg's syndrome I believe is also one of the things that the person said as well as a number of other health issues and this was one of the tearful pleas of the grandmother. She. Felt the authorities did not allow her to explain even some of the serious medical conditions that the child faces and therefore they feel that every minute that the child is in the custody of the state that his very health, his very health and his life is in peril."
Elrington says that he has reached out to Human Services to try and ascertain the location of the child but that so far they have only been able to tell him that the child remains in their custody at the demand of the immigration department.
