Immigration Conundrum: Deport Moms of Minor US Citizens? Brian Bennett - Los Angeles Times
go to original September 8, 2012

Mirka Moctezuma rests in the bedroom she shares with her three sisters in Painesville, Ohio, in June. Mirka was home with her father when immigration agents came to arrest him and deport him to Mexico last year. The four girls, who are American citizens, wrote messages on the walls of their room when their father was in an ICE detention facility before being deported. They live with their mother, Esperanza Pacheco, an illegal immigrant who was granted a stay of deportation that expires this month. (Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times)

In the year since her husband was deported to Mexico for working in America without legal status, Leonor Ferreyra has struggled as a single mother.

At 3 a.m., she rises to feed her infant son, who suffers ear infections. At 6 a.m., she reports to work in a window factory. At night, she often fills out paperwork to try to stall her own expulsion to Mexico, which a judge ordered last year and then agreed to delay.

Ferreyra came to America illegally 18 years ago with an uncle after her mother disappeared and her father died. She pays her mortgage, has never been charged with a crime, and is desperate to remain with her three young children, all of whom were born in America and thus are entitled to stay.

"It is a lot of pressure," said Ferreyra, 36. "My whole life is here."

The Obama administration has deported a record number of illegal immigrants in the last three years, and a little-noticed effect has been the breakup of thousands of families. One in five people deported last year — more than 93,000 in all — were parents of U.S. citizens, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The overwhelming majority had criminal convictions, had reentered the country after being deported, had ignored a judge's order, or otherwise had been identified under federal guidelines as priorities for forced removal, ICE figures show.

But about 10% — including Ferreyra — did not fit those categories, and immigration activists argue they should be exempt from deportation. Some advocates further contend that parents who enter the country illegally to stay with their children should be granted greater leniency.

"Parents should not be separated from their children," said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who has proposed a law to protect parental rights during deportation proceedings. "Let's deport gang members and criminals instead of the parents of young U.S. citizen children."

Opponents argue just as forcefully that immigration laws should be enforced irrespective of the effect on families.

Granting waivers to such parents would amount to "de facto amnesty," said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), who chairs the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. "We're talking about people who have already exhausted all appeals and the judge dropped the hammer."

Read more at The Los Angeles Times

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