 The couple created a website, www.reunitethisfamily.com; held candlelight vigils; won editorial coverage of their plight, posted videos online; placed an advertisement in Washington Post's Express newspaper, asking President Bush and Congress to “Make This Right!”

"We didn't go into it to be activists, we went into it to be together," Coco told the Associated Press in 2009.The campaign caught the attention of former presidential candidate and then-Senator John F. Kerry (D-Massachusetts) in 2008.After the election of President Barack Obama, Kerry worked with United States Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder to arrange humanitarian Parole (United States immigration) — “a rare exemption that allows otherwise ineligible people into the country,” according to the Boston Globe.