On a walk in Hell’s Kitchen, Macyuli’s phone rang. It was one of her daughters, catching her mom up. That day, she lost a tooth.

"It stings a lot," Macyuli’s daughter said on the FaceTime call.

The call lasted just a few minutes before Macyuli said she had to go. She said she loved her daughter and would call back soon. 

“Every time I see her, I want to get on the phone and be there with her,” Macyuli told NY1 after hanging up the phone.

They’re more than 2,000 miles apart because of a choice no parent wants to make.

“They are in Venezuela. I had to leave them there because I had no money,” Macyuli said.

In Venezuela, her husband was a welder and she took care of their four kids. But they said they couldn’t afford food or a home.

So Macyuli, her husband and youngest daughter left. Their three older daughters are staying with grandparents.

“We came here to work — to work and fight for our future and our family,” Macyuli’s husband said in Spanish.

Macyuli — NY1 is not using her last name in an effort to not compromise her immigration case — made the seven-country trek through a jungle in Colombia to the U.S. southern border.

“I imagined that I would arrive, start working and start helping my relatives there,” Macyuli said.

Finding work has been hard. Bringing their kids here has proven impossible.

This fall, President Joe Biden and his administration changed their policy on Venezuelans crossing the border. They are deported immediately if they don’t apply and get accepted in advance.

It’s an expansion of a Donald Trump-era policy called Title 42. It was put in place in 2020 for people from certain countries because of COVID-19.

The Biden administration initially shunned it, but in October, the president expanded it for Venezuelans when the migrant crisis exploded. 

For people seeking economic relief, the administration implemented a program for more than 20,000 to seek humanitarian parole. They have to meet a series of criteria and can only apply from Venezuela. And they would come to the United States if accepted. 

But many of the migrants making the journey have not applied. For several weeks, there’s been a growing backlog of Venezuelans in camps in Mexico, unable to cross the border. Others that NY1 has spoken with have decided to not make the trip.

That includes the rest of Macyuli’s family.

“So that is what I think every day, how I am going to see them again?” Macyuli said.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan struck down Title 42 this fall, ruling the government must end the program by Dec. 21.

This week, the Supreme Court blocked that from happening for now, after an emergency appeal by 19 state attorney generals.

“It is very difficult, but one has faith that it will go well here,” Macyuli said.

Like so many things right now — like when she’ll find work, how long she can stay here, and where, when or even if she’ll see three of her daughters again — the answers are not clear.