Two different families in two different communities are facing imminent deportation for being in the country without the proper documentation. One family has been in the US for over 25 years. The other long enough that the three children were all born in the US. Here are their stories.
Daily Kos — Rosa Gutiérrez Lopez, a mom of three U.S. citizens including a boy with Down Syndrome, has become the first undocumented immigrant to publicly go into sanctuary in the Washington, D.C. area, following immigration officials ordering her to leave the country for her native El Salvador by Dec. 10. “I don’t know how long I will be here,” she said about her new home inside Cedar Lane Unitarian, “but I feel protected here.”
Gutiérrez Lopez shouldn’t be a priority for deportation in the first place. Since 2014, she’s had a work permit issued to her by the U.S. that allowed her to work legally, so long as she continued checking in regularly with immigration officials. As someone with familial ties and no criminal record, she’d been considered low-priority for deportation. That changed following Donald Trump’s inauguration.
“Suddenly,” Think Progress reports, “she had to come in twice a month and wear an ankle monitor at all times. Earlier this fall, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began encouraging her to self-deport, and warning her that if she didn’t do it herself they’d come for her themselves soon enough.”
When she got a deportation date, her attorney appealed to a judge, but her case is still pending. With three young kids and one who requires specialized therapies, she went to DMV Sanctuary Congregation Network for help. “We don’t see why she is a priority for deportation,” said Faith In Action’s Richard Morales, who helped coordinate with Cedar Lane Unitarian. “There is no reason to separate this woman from her children.”
Orlando Sentinel — Torres-Bruno, a 60-year-old Argentinian citizen, and his wife, a 61-year-old native of Peru, have been living in Florida with their son, UCF graduate Juan Miguel Torres-Bruno, 26, since they arrived on a tourist visa in 1993, seeking asylum in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Lima.
It took seven years for their case to be heard and by then an immigration judge determined the terrorism threat in the South American country had diminished and denied their request. But the family has been allowed to remain in the U.S. under “stay of removal” orders approved annually as they fought to have their case reopened — until now.
“We did everything we were supposed to,” Miguel Torres-Bruno said. “Now, we have to reinvent our life and start all over again like we’re in our 20s.”
The couple’s last-ditch effort to stay in the U.S. was turned down Tuesday as part of President Donald Trump’s zero tolerance policy — no undocumented immigrants are exempt from removal.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that “both cases received full due process” and that “pursuing repeated [stay of removals] is not a viable means … to permanently postpone their required return to their country of origin.”
Their son is temporarily protected from deportation because of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. His latest renewal expires in September 2019, but Trump is trying to phase out the program started under former President Barack Obama.
These are but 2 of the undoubtedly thousands of stories from people in the US who are in the country without proper documentation. Most left their countries of origin because of war, political violence or maybe the drug wars. They are mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, sons, daughters, grandchildren willing to take the risks of a long and arduous journey rife with its own problems. They spend weeks, perhaps months moving north in search of better lives for themselves and their families. They are met by suspicion and rancor. And now, as reported in The Atlantic , the Trump régime is turning itself onto new targets that have been in the US for 40 years or more — undocumented Vietnamese, refugees from a war that directly involved the US military. There is such hostility in this land that is suppose to represent freedom and welcome, but has become instead hardened and capricious. When is enough enough? When do we start living our national values? When do we again become the shining light on the hill?
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHEROF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
