Family separated at southern border reacts to possibility of government payouts

Thousands of children were separated under Trump's "zero-tolerance" policy.

Leticia works at a bakery helping to prepare the pastries that hungry New Yorkers order with their coffee in the morning. At first glance, she's like any other person in the city. But in 2017, she fled Guatemala with her son Yovany and made her way toward the border in Texas.

"At the moment we crossed, we were happy. We thought our lives were saved, that all the danger was behind us," she said in Spanish in an interview with ABC News' Zachary Kiesch. "We couldn't imagine that a greater pain, a stronger pain, was ahead of us."

Once they crossed, she and her son were detained by Border Patrol agents and quickly separated as they tried to submit an asylum claim. Leticia, whose last name is being withheld for privacy, was deported and Yovany was placed in foster care. They did not see each other for over two years.

They were among the first migrant families subjected to a pilot program for what later became the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy.