A federal judge has ordered that all children who were separated from their parents on the border should be reunited with parents by July 26.
Researchers say the separation can have long-lasting impacts on children, and an example comes after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Raid over a decade ago.
Adrian Ventura, the executive director for Centro Communitario de Trabajadores escaped civil war in Guatemala for work and safety in New Bedford. In March of 2007, he says he felt like he was right back in a war zone when ICE raided the Michael Bianco textile factory in a probe in regards to hiring undocumented workers.
600 ICE agents arrested 361 people, largely young, Mayan seamstresses from Guatemala.
"The kids are looking for mom. Where's the mom? The mom is going to jail," Ventura said. "I'm crying, too. Family looking for wife, wife looking for husband, separated directly."
Over 11 years later, Ventura says about 40 percent of the workers arrested in the raid have successfully filed for asylum. Five percent are in limbo, and the rest were deported back to Central America.
Researchers say large-scale raids like the one in New Bedford are experienced locally as disasters, even by those not directly affected.
Ventura says, 11 years later, the children left with no parents are still traumatized.
"Right now is 16, 17. They going to school, everybody's got a father," Ventura said. "She no got father, she no got mother. Single, with the cousin, live with another people. Big problem in the high school."
One woman, called "Maria" for her protection, recently escaped gang violence in Guatemala and was separated from her parents.
"They cry, they don't stop thinking about their children cause they're separated," Maria said. "They hurt, it hurts them."
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Federal immigration officials say more than 2,000 children are still separated from their families under President Trump's zero-tolerance policy at the border.
Now, Ventura is worried for their future.
"What happen for the next 10, 20 years?" Ventura said. "The kids say, 'Why my father don't do nothing for me? Why not the lawyer? Why not another organization?'"