tags: , , , , , Blog, Press Releases

ICYMI: “ICE Seized a Mother of Special Needs Kids With No Criminal Record Before She Could Say Goodbye”

Share This:

So Much for Deporting “Bad Hombres” and Improving Public Safety

In another heartbreaking case that reveals the cruelty and hypocrisy of Trump’s inhumane deportation policies, the Guardian reports that Maribel Trujillo – an Ohio mother of four U.S. citizen children – has been told by ICE agents that she will be deported back to Mexico on Tuesday.

Trujillo has lived in the United States for 15 years with no criminal record. All four of her children are under the age of fifteen, with one who experiences recurrent seizures and another who is pre-diabetic. Before allowing her to say goodbye to her children, ICE agents jailed Trujillo in an Ohio detention center ahead of her deportation.

Trujillo understandably is struggling to find some kind of clarity in the chaos, “Why does President Trump want to divide my family and make me leave my kids behind – what are they going to do without their mama?” The only explanation offered: an ICE agent told her, “I don’t know if you are aware, but we have a new president, things are different now,”

Meanwhile, a piece run by Fusion highlights the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s intervention on Trujillo’s behalf.  The Archdiocese is asking supporters to contact Ohio governor John Kasich’s office and ask him to intervene in order to keep the family together.

A statement from the Archdiocese follows below:

We urge that prosecutorial discretion for Maribel be extended. We fully respect the Department of Homeland Security’s duty to enforce our immigration laws, and we recognize that this is not an easy task. At the same time, it is clear that the common good cannot be served at this stage by separating this wife and mother from her family. Our community gains nothing by being left with a single-parent household when such a responsible and well respected family can be kept together.

According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice Education Fund:

For an Administration that talks about going after bad actors, cases like Maribel’s expose what’s really happening: talk of ‘bad dudes’ is nothing more than cover for a mass deportation strategy that considers all undocumented immigrants, regardless of family ties, deep roots, and community support, as priorities for detention and deportation. America has always been strongest when we welcome immigrants and refugees who build up our country. Trump’s radicalism on immigration betrays our core values as a nation.

An excerpt from the Guardian piece is below:

People who were until recently regarded as of such low priority that it would inflict more harm than good on communities to wrench them from their families are now finding themselves in the deportation pipeline.

Trujillo falls firmly into that category. Ice has indicated that she is a priority for removal even though she has no criminal record and last year was granted government permission to work in a local candy factory.

Deportation would present Trujillo with a “Sophie’s choice”: either she abandons her four US-born, American-citizen children – aged three, 10, 12 and 14 – leaving them to grow up without a mother, or she takes them back to Mexico to an uncertain and potentially perilous future. The children have never set foot outside the US.

In an interview with the Guardian conducted before she was detained, she said she was finding the decision extremely painful.

“I don’t understand the reason to separate my family. I have no criminal record, I’m here working to support my family, so that my kids can study and have a better life for themselves. Why does President Trump want to divide my family and make me leave my kids behind – what are they going to do without their mama?”