On June 12, I walked across the Peace Bridge from Buffalo to Fort Erie, Ontario with my client Mariama, a 32-year-old asylum-seeking Guinean mother, her 2-year-old daughter and her 8-month-old son, an American citizen.

Moments later, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers escorted a slim, well-dressed man holding a little boy’s hand. My client turned, saw him, and fell into his arms: it was her husband Mamadou — the children’s father — and her 5-year-old stepson. She hadn’t seen either in eight months, Mamadou was meeting his baby for the first time.

All seemed as it should be. But it wasn’t.

Mamadou’s 11- and eight-year-old sons were detained hours away in a Bronx congregate care facility by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which refused to release them to join their family at the border interview we had scheduled. ORR’s intransigence showcased this administration’s senseless hostility to family unity, in stark contrast to Canada’s continuing commitment to it.

This surreal reverse flight from the United States to Canada (a bizarro version of my Holocaust-survivor grandparents’ journey from a German displaced persons camp to Ellis Island) began when Mariama arrived at JFK in October 2025, very pregnant, with her young daughter and her stepsons. Fleeing persecution in Guinea, she traveled ahead of Mamadou, who planned to follow a week later.

Mariama, whose first language is Fulani, explained in grade-school French that she was seeking asylum. CBP officers cancelled her visitor’s visa and placed her in expedited removal. Despite a 2021 Department of Homeland........

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