ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – The hard work of Albany County officials paid off with an emotional reunion that followed a deportation. A mother described the harrowing months of separation from her four-year-old daughter, before finally being reunited in Colombia.

Maria Duque-Muriel was not sure if she’d ever see her four-year-old daughter, Maria, again. She was arrested earlier this year for shoplifting at a grocery store in Rotterdam.

She bounced around detention centers in New York before she was sent to a facility in Louisiana. She was deported from that facility in September.

Duque-Muriel said the pair made their way to the U.S. two years ago. They fled violence in Medellín, Colombia. It took seven months of travel. Duque-Muriel said she spent days in the jungle with a sick child.

They

See Full Page