The Hill
By AVERY ANAPOL
July 25, 2018
A Missouri woman who voted for President Trump now says she is “ashamed” to be an American after her daughter-in-law, a Mexican immigrant who had been in the U.S. for nearly 20 years, was deported.
Shirley Stegall told the Associated Press that while she supported Trump’s campaign promises to deport more criminal immigrants, she did not think her son’s wife, Letty, fell into that category.
“I’ve always been proud to be an American,” Stegall said. “But now I’m ashamed.”
Letty Stegall came illegally to the U.S. in 1999 and was living with her husband, Shirley’s son, and a 17-year-old daughter from an earlier marriage.
Letty Stegall was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in February, six years after a misdemeanor drunken driving charge, for which she spent a month in jail, alerted authorities to her undocumented status.
She was deported and forced to rejoin her family in Mexico. The AP reports that she won a stay of deportation four days after her arrest in February, but ICE reportedly already had her on a flight to Brownsville, Texas, where she was told to cross back over to Mexico by foot.
Letty Stegall had to leave behind her husband and daughter, with whom she can only communicate online. Letty could be barred from entering the U.S. for up to 10 years due to her deportation, though she told the AP that she is hoping her marriage to a U.S. citizen could help her return within two years.
Arrests of immigrants without a criminal record or with minor convictions have skyrocketed under the Trump administration.
The recent pattern of immigration raids, paired with family separations at the border, have prompted progressive Democrats and activists to call for ICE to be abolished.
Trump has pushed back hard on the calls to dismantle the agency, maintaining that the enforcement is necessary to “liberate” areas from gang violence.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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