A girl who rarely sees her mom due to living either side of the Mexico-US border couldn’t believe her eyes when her mother surprised her for her birthday.
Daughter Jaidy lives with her aunt Jessica Armendariz in El Paso, Texas, as her mom, Bianca Montoya, works as a police officer in Juárez, Mexico, and her job makes it difficult to care for Jaidy.
Ahead of Jaidy’s birthday, on November 8, the youngster was hoping her mom would be able to make it, but Bianca had been waiting around 18 months for her visa approval and couldn’t make any promises.
After her documents arrived on November 9, 2022, Bianca traveled to El Paso to meet her sister, before hiding in the back of the car while she collected Jaidy from school.
Aunt Jessica told Jaidy her birthday present was in the mail, and they’d been keeping track of the delivery online – but she had no idea they were actually tracking her mom’s visa delivery.
Jessica let her know the present was delayed a day, and when picking her up from school, told her it was in the back of the car – before Bianca sat up and revealed she was there to reunite with her.
As Jessica’s husband is a driver, and sometimes makes trips across the border, Jaidy was able to see her mom on rare occasions, but she longed for her mom to be able to travel to attend school and social events with her in the US – and would go months without seeing each other.
Jessica said: “My niece’s birthday is on November 8, I told her I had a gift, but it still hadn’t arrived – the gift was for my sister’s visa to arrive.
“I showed her the tracking of the package hadn’t arrived yet but she didn’t know it really was the visa.
“The visa didn’t arrive on the 8th as we wanted but it did arrive a day later that is why in the video I told her the surprise had arrived.
“It was very difficult to cross so she could see her mother, as for people with visas [the crossing] was closed due to COVID.
“My sister asked me please if I could have Jaidy, because she always struggles with who takes care of La Niña because she is a police officer, and they have different schedules.
“Therefore, my niece went with me, and they lasted about a year and a half of not seeing each other so often, only on occasions where my husband could cross her.
“Before the video, my sister told me her visa had arrived and she went to pick it up at the post office, and she asked me if I could go through to pick her up.
“From there we went to the bus stop to wait for my niece to arrive from school.
“It was very cute and I was happy to see them together again as she longed for her mom to come to her school events.
“My niece is very happy, and seeing all the messages of support and nice things [on social media] made her very happy.”
Story via T&T Creative Media