Fox News Latino
By Elizabeth Llorente
June 22, 2015
A
Guatemalan woman and her 12-year-old daughter who were deported last
Friday, outraging a federal judge who ordered them to be returned
immediately, have been found and
soon may be back in the United States, their attorney told Fox News
Latino.
The
woman, who has been identified only as Ana, and her daughter came from
Guatemala last year and had been held in a Pennsylvania family detention
center since last summer,
as their immigration case wended its way through the court system.
On
Friday, shortly after they were taken out of the detention center and
put on a plane out of the country, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Theodore
A. McKee ordered their
return saying that the court had been misled.
The judge said he would have granted the request to block the deportation if he had known it was imminent.
Ana’s
attorney, Bridget Cambria, told Fox News Latino that Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were aware of an emergency request to
suspend deportation while
an appeal regarding their political asylum case was pending.
Cambria
said ICE should have informed the court that it was moving to deport
Ana and her daughter. ICE typically does not inform lawyers, detainees
or their relatives
when it is about to pick someone up for deportation.
Cambria said she has spoken to Ana on the telephone since her deportation.
“Their
removal was really stressful for them,” Cambria told FNL. “It was so
sudden, and you’re dealing with a mother and a kid. They were sent to
Guatemala unescorted.
When they got to Guatemala City, the mother had to find a way to get to
her other children, who are a long distance away, in the mountains. She
had to borrow money to get there,” she added.
Their
asylum case contended that both the mother and daughter were victims of
domestic abuse in their home country. Cambria did not want to offer
details about the domestic
violence claim, saying she did not want to put her clients in danger of
reprisals from those in Guatemala whom they fled.
Cambria said that from her discussions with U.S. authorities she is optimistic that they will return Ana and her daughter.
Ana
has become depressed in detention, Cambria said, where her parenting
authority were significantly limited given the prison-like environment.
“She
tried to help her daughter by getting her out of Guatemala, and she
blames herself, she feels she’s powerless now to help her daughter,”
Cambria said.
Nonetheless, she said, detention is better than the persecution she and her daughter face in Guatemala.
Tens
of thousands of people have fled Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras
and arrived in the United States in the last few years – with a peak
last summer – citing violence
and growing poverty. The surge of last summer included many mothers and
young children.
Political
asylum in such a case generally would involve an argument that the
immigrant’s government is unable or unwilling to protect the person from
persecution.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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