ICE Policy Change Shatters Life for Houston Family

Olivia P. Tallet, Houston Chronicle, June 5, 2017 - "He asked Juan to turn over his passport. ICE had to prepare for his deportation.

Celia and the girls realized that he had only been given a brief reprieve. He would be allowed to remain in the country until after Karen's graduation.

"Ma'am, I am sorry that we have to do this," the officer said to Celia. "You are an American citizen. You have to hurry up and work with a lawyer before he is deported." He told her it would be nearly impossible to bring Juan back legally after he's gone.

They drove straight to their lawyer's office.

An ICE spokesman did not explain why the agency changed its practice with this case.

After each of the other check-ins, the ride home had always been when they thanked God for keeping them together.

This time, they did not pray. They did not offer thanks. They were just quiet.

The officer's voice stayed frozen in Celia's mind, "Ma'am, you have to do something."

And there was the echo of what he whispered in her ear: "Here at ICE, we don't like the media. We don't like cameras."

Celia turned her head to her husband from the shotgun seat: "Juan, we have to tell our story. This is not fair. We have to fight for our family."

Sitting at home last week, the girls listened quietly while their parents talked.

Like her mother, Karen patted her face. She fought to keep the tears from blurring her dark eyeliner. Rebecca wasn't moving at all, her face turned toward the wall.

Kimberly played with her long, brunette hair and struggled to sit still. She extended her arms in all directions, leaned her body on Karen, twisted around with her feet up from the loveseat.

Celia said she is hopeful that their lawyer is going to find a way to keep the family together. They have support, too, from FIEL Houston, an immigrants organization.

"They are not alone in this struggle," said FIEL's Alain Cisneros. And too many others are going through the same thing, he said.

"They are now deporting …… hard-working people without criminal records that go voluntarily to present themselves to the authorities, only to be betrayed for doing the right thing."

That's how Juan feels. Betrayed.

In the past, he occasionally toyed with the idea of not appearing for check-in. He knows that many people just disappear, move to other places, buy false IDs and Social Security cards. He could not bring himself to do that, because "I want to do the right thing."

And now Karen's graduation has arrived. She will graduate this afternoon, at the Revention Music Center in downtown, one of about 130 seniors of the Cristo Rey Jesuit preparatory school who were accepted to college.

She got into five universities, but she's not sure what she'll do. She is worried about her mother's ability to take care of the household if her father is deported.

Watching her graduate, Juan said, will be like "observing the fruit of my work. It makes me feel like I've been doing a good job as a father."

Still, since February, Celia said, "every day closer to the graduation has been one less day of him being with us."

ICE expects him back June 29."