The two Ecuadorian sisters dumped by human smugglers at the border wall may soon be reunited with their parents in New York City, according to an official.
Magdalena Nunez, of the Consulate of Ecuador in Houston, didn’t have a timeline on the reunion between the girls, Yareli, 3, and Yasmina, 5, and their parents, Yolanda Macas Tene and Diego Vacacela Aguilar — but said the process could take a few weeks.
“[US Immigration officials] need to verify the identity of the parents and confirm they are the parents and make sure they are in good condition to receive the girls,” Nunez told The Post on Thursday. “It’s a process … We’re working to make sure it’s an expedited process and the girls spend as minimal time as possible separated from their parents.”
“Hopefully it can happen soon, in a week or two,” she said, “but it can take up to six weeks. We are working to make sure sure it happens as quickly as possible.”
She added that the girls are “doing very well.”
“We have been in contact with them and confirmed they are in good health,” she said.
“Physically, they are perfect — emotionally, obviously, they went through a hard time, but I guarantee you right now they are in good health and they are conversing,” Nunez added. “They are very alert, very intelligent.”
Two sisters dropped and abandoned over the New Mexico-Mexico border wall chat with El Paso Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez. U.S. Customs and Border ProtectiThe consulate said in a statement last week that the girls had been in touch with their parents, who live in the Big Apple.
“The Ecuadorian Consulate in Houston had a dialogue with the minors and found that they are in good health and that they contacted their parents, who currently live in New York City.”
The mom and dad had left the girls behind at their home in Jaboncillo, Ecuador, to travel to the US, family told Telemundo.
The girls’ grandparents have asked President Biden to reunite the children with their parents. Aguilar paid a human smuggler to take his kids to the border — though the grandparents didn’t know how much they paid, the network reported.
The parents of the two girls thrown over the border wall and abandoned have been identified as Yolanda Macas Tene and Diego Vacacela Aguilar. copy photo: courtesy Telemundo“[The parents] wanted to be with them, their mother suffered a lot, for that reason they decided to take them,” paternal grandfather Lauro Vacacela told the Spanish-language network.
This March 30, 2021, photo provided by US Customs and Border Protection shows a smuggler dropping children from the top of the border barrier in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. U.S. Customs and Border Protection via APIt’s unclear whether the parents are in the country legally.
Surveillance video showed the smugglers dropping the girls one by one over the 14-foot-high border wall in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, in the dead of night on March 30 before taking off on the other side — and abandoning the little girls.
The sisters were soon rescued by Border Patrol agents — and their story has since garnered national attention.
Photos emerged last week of the girls — who were not injured on their dramatic journey to the US — having snacks with Agent Gloria Chavez.
Sisters Yareli and Yasmina were rescued by Border Patrol agents — and their story has since garnered national attention. U.S. Customs and Border Protection via AP“When I visited with these little girls, they were so loving and so talkative, some of them were asking the names of all the agents that were there around them, and they even said they were a little hungry,” Chavez told Fox News.
“So I helped them peel a banana and open a juice box and just talked to them. You know, children are just so resilient and I’m so grateful that they’re not severely injured or [have] broken limbs or anything like that.”
