A Dreamer with active DACA status is being held by ICE and faces deportation in a new case that has national implications.
Riccy Enriquez Perdomo, a 22-year-old mother of two young children was arrested last week and has been held at four different locations since. ICE agents in Louisville, Kentucky, detained her last Thursday when Enriquez, confident in her legal status, went to an immigration office there to post bond for someone else who was eligible for release. ICE asked Enriquez for her information, then wrongly told her that she didn’t have DACA and arrested her.
As brother-in-law, Robert Cote, told Cincinnati.com, “We called ICE in Chicago, and the person there told us, `When Trump came in, DACA doesn’t exist anymore.’ I couldn’t believe they told me that.”
Enriquez came to the US when she was nine, lives in Florence, Kentucky, is married, and has been approved for DACA twice — first in 2015, followed by a renewal in January 2017. Her children are ages 5 and 11 months, and she was employed at Amazon in Hebron, Kentucky until the birth of her infant son, Rony.
This is not the first time that ICE has resorted to shady tactics when it comes to Dreamers who have DACA. A DACA-mented Dreamer from San Diego has just been granted a trial after being deported to Mexico; Juan Manuel Montes says that ICE picked him up for no reason and drove him across the border in the middle of the night, while ICE claims that he left the country on his own. Earlier this year, Daniel Ramirez — who also had active DACA — was detained for six weeks after ICE said that he was a gang member when he wasn’t. Furthermore, ICE’s questionable maneuvers are happening at a time when DACA is fighting for its life; advocates expect that Donald Trump will terminate the program by September 5, the deadline given by a lawsuit threat from Texas. Between ICE’s tactics and the threat to DACA itself, Dreamers across the country may be in greater danger of deportation than they have been in years.
As Joshua Stehlik, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, said, Enriquez’s case “causes concerns among DACA recipients, and immigrant communities more generally, about whether the government is going to honor its promise when it grants someone deferred action.”
Enriquez’s family, meanwhile, continues to fight to see her, even though ICE has moved her again and is not telling her family where. The family is working with a local attorney as well as the National Immigration Law Center, who is also representing Juan Manuel Montes in his San Diego case. Advocates are planning to ask for help from Sens. Richard Durbin (D-IL), Rob Portman (R-OH), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
