ICE – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

This Woman Had The Perfect Response When ICE Boarded Her Greyhound Bus

David Posnett — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 22:21:14 +0000

By Yvette Montoya June 13, 2018, as published in Hiplatina.com

When Tiana Smalls (pictured above) boarded a Greyhound Bus in Bakersfield California headed to Las Vegas, she found herself in a situation that is reminiscent of Nazi, Germany. She recounts her experience in a Facebook post that has now gone viral:

Tiana decided to act when she could have just minded her business and continued her trip. But no, what happened was bold and brave:

Realizing that the people most likely to be targeted by ICE are Latinos, Smalls got on Google Translate so she could read her message in Spanish to make sure everyone knew what their rights were. She even went as far as reassuring the terrified woman next to her, that she wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

When ICE boarded the bus, Smalls was loud, stood her ground and made sure the agents, the driver, and everyone on the bus knew, that what ICE was doing, was illegal.

Small’s “filthy mouth” saved lives. She stuck up for what was right and for those who were most vulnerable. And she reminds everyone that injustice exists because of fear and silence and that using your voice to defend those in danger is the only way to combat the racism and blatant xenophobia sweeping the United States.

But what I really want to know is why Greyhound is allowing paying customers to be arrested simply for existing?

Yvette Montoya

There are many comments all over Facebook on this story. Here is one that needs to be answered (spelling errors corrected):

What Uri Xeno misses, is the intent and motivation behind Trump’s minions. Uri is correct in stating that other countries might well enforce their laws against people that overstay their visas or break immigration laws. However,

1) other countries do not have a stated policy to hunt down their own citizens who might stand accused of having obtained citizenship by illegal means, i.e. operation Janus, and ending birthright citizenship.

2) other countries don’t declare that people from “shithole” countries are not welcome.

3) other countries don’t leave entire segments of their own citizenry (Puerto Ricans) in limbo regarding their rights.

4) other countries don’t appoint racists to positions in government which empower ICE and other agencies and enact racist policies (Carl Higbie, Ayo Kimathi, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, John Kelley, Thomas Homan, Sheriff Arpaio,etc). This was clear from the onset of the Trump presidency.

5) other countries don’t appoint ambassadors to raise hell with our staunchest allies.

6) other countries do not systematically turn down those that seek asylum because where they came from, they were in danger of their lives.

7) other countries don’t separate mothers from their children when they are apprehended at the border, which has rightfully spawned massive protests,

8) and most other countries don’t have an avowed racist as their president

Those are fascist tactics as Dr. Ruth explained to Dr. Kissinger! And our country will suffer the consequences. The historical record will not be kind.

In regard to our own US history, we just saw a new play “FELLOW TRAVELERS.” It is set during Hollywood’s notorious Blacklist. FELLOW TRAVELERS examines the relationship between legendary theater artists Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan and their close connection to Marilyn Monroe.

As per the patch.com it is a story of one of Hollywood’s darkest hours…, when American entertainment professionals and intellectuals were interrogated and denied employment opportunities because they were suspected of having Communist ties, or simply because they refused to cooperate with the McCarthyism witch-hunt. During this poisonous political time “Fellow Travelers” was the derogatory term used for people who were suspected of having any kind of Communist affiliation.

I also highly recommend “Red Hollywood”, a movie that

mainly features clips of films made by “Communist” writers, directors, and actors in Hollywood, many of whom were targets of secret government investigations and were blacklisted—barred from working in the studios in the wake of the hearings held, in 1947 and 1951, by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAAC). Read more here.

What stands out is the creeping nature of persecution:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller

Uri Xeno beware! They may come after you!

Brooklyn Army Base Orders Pizza, Calls ICE On Delivery Man

David Posnett — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 03:02:01 +0000

Andres O’Hara in News on Jun 6, 2018 1:42 pm

Pablo Villavicencio

An immigrant delivery worker from Ecuador faces deportation after bringing pizza to the Fort Hamilton military base in Bay Ridge on Friday. After being let onto the base around noon using his NYC municipal ID, a soldier reportedly asked Pablo Villavicencio, 35, for proof of citizenship, and detained him when he didn’t provide it. El Diario reports (translation here) that the soldier then called ICE, which transported Villavicencio to an immigration center in Manhattan. He was transferred to a base in New Jersey over the weekend, where he is in ICE custody pending removal.

Villavicencio had delivered pizza to this base previously, said Bay Ridge Councilman Justin Brannan at a press conference outside the base this morning. According to Sandra Chica, Villavicencio’s wife, he applied for a Green Card in February, and it is currently pending. Chica and their two children are U.S. citizens, and Villavicencio has been in the country for 10 years.

“A lawyer told me that there is nothing he can do, that he is going to be deported,” Chica said at the press conference.

Cora Lewis‏Verified account @cora

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams says “the arrest of Pablo with a municipal ID is sending shockwaves throughout the immigrant community” because immigrants were told they would not be harassed in New York, a sanctuary city, he says. “Delivery to detention is unimaginable.”

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams was also on hand to call for Villavicencio’s release. “It was all right for them to take his pizza, but it was also alright for them to put him in prison,” said Adams. “Not in America. Not in New York, and not in Brooklyn.”

Villavicencio was the primary earner in the house and took care of his kids when his wife went to work, writes CUNY professor and advocate Angus Johnson. El Diaro reports that Chica doesn’t have any family members to help take care of her family.

“How is it possible that they want to separate the father of two babies… just because he didn’t have a document?” Chica asked at today’s rally. “The girls will not stop asking for their dad. We talked with him over the weekend. He was crying, and the girls noticed it, and we didn’t know what to tell them. They are the most affected. They are suffering so much.”

“It’s unfortunate that the army base here in Bay Ridge, which is in a community that’s vibrant with immigrants… is not reflecting its community values,” said Murad Awawdeh, Vice President of Advocacy at the New York Immigration Coalition, at the press conference. “It’s sad that the army has now deputized MPs to become part of the deportation machine.”

Alex Pellitteri, with Bay Ridge for Social Justice, announced there will be a march for Pablo Villavicencio tonight at 6 p.m., starting at the base and proceeding along Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge.

In a statement provided to BuzzFeed News, a Fort Hamilton spokesperson said Villavicencio tried to “make a delivery without valid Department of Defense identification.” When instructed to get a daily pass, the spokesperson said Villavicencio signed “a waiver permitting a background check, Department of the Army Access Control standard for all visitors, an active Immigration and Customs Enforcement warrant was discovered on file” and he was detained. “Commanders are authorized to take reasonably necessary and lawful measures to maintain law and order and protect installation personnel and property.”

Liability for local law enforcement choosing to work with ICE

David Posnett — Sat, 31 Mar 2018 21:56:56 +0000

Police Chief Suspended for Exposing Illegal Aliens Employed at Local Plants

A brand new report points to the legal liabilities for local government that choose to enforce Federal Immigration Laws.

What is remarkable is that the 13-page report is authored by representatives of 5 organizations: 1) American Immigration Council; 2) American Immigration Lawyers Association; 3) National Immigrant Justice Center; 4) National Immigration Law Center; and 5) Southern Poverty Law Center.

The 13 page report makes 4 major points:

ICE detainer requests (Form I-247A) constitute a “new arrest” under the 4th Amendment of the Constitution: an additional custody of 48 h after the subject would normally be released. An ICE detainer does not provide local law enforcement with the authority they need to undertake an arrest. This is supported by a ruling in Feb. 2018 by the US District Court in California (Roy vs. County of Los Angeles), and a ruling of Massachusetts’ highest court (Lunn vs. Commonwealth).
Immigration and Nationality Act. ICE routinely cajoles local law enforcement to undertake detainer arrests, under the guise that such detainers were envisioned by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act. This claim, however, contradicts the historic detainer practice, which Congress codified in 1986—namely that “de-tainers” were solely intended as a tool to notify of anticipated release, not an authorization or request to continue detention.
Each of ICE’s historical detainer options is illegal.
– “Secure Communities” initiated under Bush in 2008: information sharing between databases where every fingerprint submission to the FBI is automatically shared with ICE; ICE then conducts a cursory investigation of every individual with a reported foreign place of birth and determines whether to issue a detainer! The program led to racial profiling and resulted in countless cases of unlawful detention of American citizens. Lawsuits were filed across the country. Program discontinued November 2014.

– Priority Enforcement Program (PEP): While fewer detainers were issued, the forms continued to request that local law enforcement engage in unlawful civil arrests.

– Reinstatement of “Secure Communities”; March 2017 detainer policy,

requiring that ICE accompany the issuance of a detainer with an “administrative warrant” signed by an ICE officer (either Form I-200 or Form I-205) and affirming probable cause of removability. Does nothing to cure local law enforcement’s lack of legal authority to make an immigration arrest. These warrants are not reviewed by a neutral magistrate to determine if they are based on probable cause as required by the Fourth Amendment, nor do they provide any evidence of suspicion of commission of a new criminal offense.

– In June 2017, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of Pinellas County, Florida, wrote to the presidents of the National Sheriffs’ Association and the Major County Sheriffs of America. He proposed that local law enforcement (1) enter into a cooperative agreement with ICE known as a 287(g) agreement; or (2) contract with ICE for the detention of non-citizens by entering into an Inter-Governmental Service Agreement (IGSA). However, local officers who wrongfully issue and enforce detainers under the 287(g) program remain liable for the constitutional and legal violations those practices entail. IGSAs are contracts between local entities and the federal government for local entities to receive payments to provide bed space, but do not give authority to local law enforcement to take people into custody.

– Basic Ordering Agreements & the Form I-203. (January 25, 2018) 17 county sheriffs in Florida announced a new mechanism put forward by ICE: each jurisdiction agrees to hold individuals pursuant to ICE detainers for up to 48 hours and receive a $50 reimbursement from ICE. ICE will accompany a detainer with Form I-203, an administrative form used by ICE to track those in its custody. A BOA is not a contract, and neither the BOA nor the Form I-203 obligates the jail to honor any particular detainer. ICE claims these new agreements give localities “liability protection from potential litigation”. Nothing about the BOA mitigates the constitutional problems and lack of arrest authority that accompany detainer compliance. Despite ICE claims that use of a BOA will protect localities from liability, there is no actual statute protecting the local jails from litigation and ICE has not offered to indemnify local officials.
Entanglement with ICE carries risks outside the legal realm. This is arguably the most important and threatens everyone’s security. When states and localities are, or are perceived to be, participating with ICE, immigrants and the rest of us grow increasingly afraid of local police. We all know this is happening.

Feel powerless? Here is something that will save a life, save a family.

David Posnett — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 02:22:48 +0000

DECEMBER 20, 2017

If you’re an attorney, law student, or fluent in English and another language, please consider volunteering with the Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative. Just one week of your time could help save a life. If you’re unable to volunteer, please share this email with someone who you think would be interested.

The Trump administration is shredding civil rights protections in our country – and there’s one group that’s suffering the most: immigrants caught up in the president’s cruel deportation dragnet.

Not only are Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests tearing families apart, but some immigrants could face death if they are deported.

Many of these people have meritorious claims, but few have access to quality legal counsel. Needless to say, their due process rights are being trampled. We’ve hired numerous attorneys, but the need is so great that we need volunteers.

That’s why we created the Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI), an SPLC project that provides pro bono representation to immigrants detained in the Southeast. It’s the largest deportation-defense program in the country that is funded and operated by a non-profit organization.

Here are a few facts:

ICE arrests have increased by 40 percent this year, and tens of thousands of men and women are being held behind bars as they await deportation proceedings.

Immigrants with legal representation are 10 times as likely to succeed in their cases as those who represent themselves.

For those seeking asylum because of persecution in their home countries, having an attorney can mean the difference between life and death.

By volunteering just one week of your time, you’ll help protect the right to due process that’s under assault by the Trump administration, ensure fair and humane treatment of people in the legal system, and make your mark on history.

Thank you for considering this opportunity to help those in need.

Your friends at the SPLC

P.S. Have questions? Please see our FAQ.

ICE Wrongly Imprisoned an American Citizen for 1,273 Days. Judges Say He’s Owed $0.

David Posnett — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 19:23:28 +0000

Daily Beast — NIGHTMARE

By Harry Siegel Sept. 5, 2017

An ICE agent sent through—and his supervisors approved—mistaken paperwork ‘proving’ Davino Watson wasn’t a citizen. And no one’s been held to account for the catastrophic screw-up.

The thing that happened to Davino Watson, American citizen, when he was locked up in prison for 1,273 days awaiting deportation amounts to an “entirely common state of affairs,” according to two United States Court of Appeals judges riding the Second Circuit.

Watson’s nightmarish odyssey through the overloaded parallel legal system more concerned with pushing paper than with just outcomes began on May 8, 2008, the day the then-23-year-old high school dropout completed a bootcamp-style Shock program for non-violent offenders after pleading guilty to selling a small amount of cocaine in Times Square the previous year.

His story is, on the face of it, perfectly simple: He came from Jamaica as a 14-year-old in 1998 to live with his father and stepmother, and when his father became a citizen in 2002, he automatically became one too under the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. That’s what he told the first ICE agent who came to interview him while he was in the Shock program. Watson provided his parents’ contact information and the agent left without issuing a detainer.

He went through the story again with a second agent, Erik Andren, who also had a packet of information from the New York State Department of Corrections that listed his parents’ names and their phone number and explicitly stated that Davino was a citizen.

Yet “about three seconds” after his sentence was completed, Watson was arrested by ICE.

That seemed terrible but temporary, what with him being a citizen and his father (who had never married his mother, which plays a strange role in the mess that follows) and stepmother easily able to verify that with a phone call. Instead, it turned out to be the beginning of a years-long tragedy of needless errors, along with legal insults.

A not so fun fact about what Donald Rumsfeld once called “known unknowns”: ICE doesn’t know or won’t say how many American citizens have been arrested and imprisoned by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. It’s illegal for ICE to imprison Americans, but so long as its agents don’t believe you are one, the burden is on you to prove it—without being entitled to a lawyer, since most deportation hearings are civil proceedings.

An NPR analysis this year found 693 citizens have been held in local jails on federal detainer requests since 2007 and 818 more have been imprisoned directly by ICE.

Even that’s just a fraction of the 3,600 American citizens a 2011 Berkeley study found were detained by ICE under the “secure communities” program started by President Bush, dramatically expanded and later suspended by President Obama, and now revived by President Trump, who’s threatening to withhold federal funds from localities that don’t sign up. Basically, the program crosschecks local and state fingerprints against federal immigration and criminal records, so that the feds can pick up “illegal immigrants” straight from jails or prisons when their term is up.

Take the case of Watson, as laid out last year by U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein.

After meeting Davino Watson, paperwork indicates that Andren, the second ICE agent to interview him while he was in the Shock program, “never made a successful attempt to reach (his parents) at the phone number” he’d provided and “ignored the notation on the Pre-Sentence Face Sheet that plaintiff was claiming United States citizenship.”

Despite Davino Watson repeatedly providing the names of his biological father, Hopeton Watson, and his stepmother, Claire Watson, Andren somehow requested so-called alien files for Hopeton Livingston Watson and for Calrie Dale Watson—“obviously not plaintiffs parents properly described to the government by the plaintiff.”

Weinstein continues: “a reasonable person exercising even a modest amount of care would have recognized that these files did not—could not—belong to plaintiff’s father or step-mother.”

Hopeton Livingston Watson lived in Connecticut and was unmarried; Davino’s father lived in New York City and was married to his stepmother. Hopeton Livingston Watson became a permanent resident of the United States three years after Davino became a citizen. None of Hopeton Livingston Watson’s children, listed in the file, were named Davino. More, this Hopeton’s ex-wife was a citizen, which Weinstein notes should by itself have led Andren to look further into Davino’s citizenship status.

As for Calrie Dale Watson, not only was her name spelled differently than that of Davino’s stepmother, but her file showed that she was married not to Davino’s father but to a Glenn Miller, and took the name Waston from a previous husband, who died in 1983.

Andren, though, had sent on his paperwork deeming Davino a deportable alien even before the files he’d requested on Hopeton Livingston and Calrie Dale even reached him.

On April 7, a month before Davino Watson was to be released from the Shock program, Andren’s paperwork beginning his deportation process reached ICE Deportation Officer Juan Estrada, who, Weinstein writes, simply “rubber-stamped the incorrect conclusions of Officer Andren without the investigation or evaluation the file clearly indicated was needed” and instead “simply relied on the file he had been provided by another government worker, which (now) included the obviously incorrect Hopeton Watson and Calrie Watson alien files.”

Estrada testified that an attorney then reviewed his paperwork to ensure there was legal sufficiency to begin removal proceedings. Another rubber stamp and the paper was pushed on. “This level of review was effectively a mindless failure,” Weinstein writes.

Next, the file went to ICE Supervisory Deportation Officer Michael Ortiz, who “mindlessly signed” the so-called Warrant for Arrest of Alien and other paperwork, which was then forwarded to ICE’s Buffalo office.

“It does not appear that (Oritz) performed any independent investigation of the statements concerning plaintiff’s citizenship or analysis of the problem,” writes Weinstein. “He merely signed off on the obvious errors already committed. This was a shirking of duty.”

The paperwork about Davino Watson, filed by one agent and then pushed on without review by two supervisors and an attorney, finally caught up with the man himself on the day of his release from the Shock program. Judge Weinstein’s ruling runs through the absurdity and horror that followed, as Watson kept telling his simple story: “No, I’m a citizen.”

As Judge Weinstein recounts in this painstaking chronology, it took years and years for Watson—who was promised when ICE first arrested him that an immigration judge would be able to resolve things within 24 hours—to prove he was a citizen.

That was a lie.

And so he fought, representing himself for years because he couldn’t afford a lawyer and had no right to one. He kept fighting for himself while locked up for 49 days before he appeared before an immigration judge for the first time. Kept fighting for 190 days, representing himself in four more appearances and two conferences with judges before one orally ruled that a change in the American interpretation of Jamaican law made 27 days after ICE arrested him meant the son of an unmarried father born there such as himself was by definition “not a U.S. citizen.”

Kept fighting for 811 days before he was finally appointed a lawyer, after the second petition he wrote himself to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit finally convinced real federal judges to take up his case.

And then he fought some more. Kept fighting for all of the 1,273 days he was shipped from one detention to center to another, then a third and then a fourth. Kept fighting for 755 more days after ICE finally dumped him out in a small town, with no explanation and no money, a thousand miles from his home. For 450 days after that before the removal proceedings against him were finally terminated.

It was 2,028 days—more than six years—after ICE arrested him that Davino Watson finally received a certificate of United States citizenship, proving what had been true since day one, when he was promised a judge would clear things up with 24 hours.

He fought on, with legal help now, for 1,364 days after that, seeking accountability and compensation for his years of illegal imprisonment until his fight finally came to an end last month, when two federal appeals judges ruled that there was nothing to be done about what had been done to him.

If Judge Weinstein’s account of Watson’s long fight to prove he was a citizen, annotated here‍, feels exhausting to simply read through, imagine what it felt like to live through.

In his decision, Judge Weinstein ruled Watson was “badly treated by government employees. He deserves a letter of apology from the United States in addition to damages. But the court is not empowered to order this courtesy.”

Weinstein ruled that Watson was owed $82,500 for what ICE had done to him, broken down into $2,000 a day for 27 days of loss of liberty, $500 for 27 days of emotional injury, and $15,000 for false arrest. The remaining 1,246 days of imprisonment—after the Board of Immigration Appeals decided children of unmarried Jamaicans couldn’t use their paternity to claim American citizenship—were legally justified, since the government had fair reason from then on to think that Watson was “a non-citizen.”

Instead of issuing the apology Weinstein called for, the government appealed his ruling. Earlier this summer, a split three-judge Court of Appeals panel issued an unprecedented reversal of his decision, with Judges Dennis Jacobs and Debra Livingston deciding that Watson was, in fact, owed nothing since “the government did not act with malice” even in those first 27 days, since there’s no tort in New York that lines up with what happened to him after an ICE agent simply assigned him new parents, and since “Watson did not suffer cognizable damages” because he hadn’t been legally employed when he was arrested.

Remarkably, they also determined that Watson’s two-year clock to sue began to run on the 27th day of his incarceration—1,246 days before he was unceremoniously released in Alabama and 2,001 days before he finally received the certificate from the government showing that he was, in fact, a citizen.

“Watson’s own actions foreclose the argument” that he needed to be out of prison before suing for wrongful imprisonment, wrote judges Jacobs and Livingston. Since he vigorously argued his own case for years before even getting a lawyer, they ruled that Watson couldn’t credibly call being incarcerated a “severe” obstacle to suing for that incarceration. His lack of education, lack of a lawyer, and lack of awareness that he could sue also didn’t qualify as exceptional circumstances to bring an untimely claim.

“In sum, there is no doubt that the government botched the investigation into Watson’s assertion of citizenship, and that as a result a U.S. citizen was held for years in immigration detention and nearly deported. Nonetheless, we must conclude that Watson is not entitled to damages from the government.”

Chief Judge Katzmann, dissenting in part, opened with a blistering reply, though surely one that felt like too little, too late for Watson: “It is well known that immigrants in this country ‘have no specific right to counsel’ in immigration proceedings, even for life-altering proceedings such as detention and removal. What is less well known, but no less consequential, is that U.S. citizens also have no such right if they are ensnared in our nation’s detention and removal system, and yet they bear the burden of establishing their citizenship to secure release.”

Katzmann continued, expanding his frame to the 34,000 non-citizens imprisoned by ICE on any given day: “Watson’s experience is far from unusual. Respondents are often forced into just such an unfortunate dilemma: either seek to postpone the removal hearing (and therefore extend their time in detention) in the hope of obtaining pro bono counsel, or else push forward without counsel and face a far greater likelihood of receiving an order of deportability. A recent study of immigration proceedings found that 60 percent of individuals in detention were unable to obtain access to counsel before their cases were completed, and that number rose for individuals who were transferred from New York to far-off detention centers like the Tensas Parish Detention Center in Louisiana that held Watson, where such individuals went without representation 79 percent of the time.

“The ‘legal process’ to which Watson was subjected, moreover, is one in which the odds are stacked against him and similarly situated respondents. The same study found that being detained and lacking representation ‘drops the success rate dramatically’ for the respondent: only 3 percent of individuals who are detained and who go without counsel have successful outcomes, as compared to 74 percent of individuals who are represented and are either released or never detained—a nearly 2400 percent increase in the odds of prevailing…

“I raise these points to emphasize how much the assistance of counsel is central not only to the ‘legal process’ of a criminal prosecution but also to immigration detention and removal proceedings.”

When the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit writes a decision with the words “legal process” in scare quotes, something has gone seriously, terribly wrong.

Katzmann concluded, brutally: “I would hope that nothing about Watson’s 1,273-day detention can be said to have been ‘an entirely common state of affairs.’ If it were, we should all be deeply troubled. An American citizen was detained on the basis of a ‘grossly negligent’ investigation that ‘led to [his] wrongful detention.’ …

“I am hopeful that one day soon no immigrant or citizen will be forced to go through a predicament like Watson’s without the assistance of counsel to help vindicate his cause.”

Because ICE Made A Typo…

David Posnett — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 09:39:44 +0000

Because ICE Made A Typo, These Kids Will Lose Their Dad In Just Days

Joel Colindrés, a beloved father of two with no criminal record, is facing imminent deportation to Guatemala.

By RJ Scofield (Patch Staff) – Updated August 2, 2017 2:40 pm ET

NEW FAIRFIELD, CT — Samantha Colindrés knows July 20, 2017, will go down in her family’s history as one of the worst days ever. That’s when she learned her husband, Joel, was given less than a month to end life as he knows it, abandon her and their two kids, leave his job and his home, and move back to Guatemala.

Joel Colindrés is not a criminal. He came to this country more than a decade ago. He is employed. He owns a house. He pays taxes. He does not drink alcohol and has never done drugs. He is, to his wife and two young children, the perfect husband, the world’s greatest dad.

That horrible day in July, though, he became one of scores of undocumented workers who had been granted permission to stay in the United States only to suddenly be ordered out as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping roundup of immigrants. That July 20, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told him to be out of the country by Aug. 17.

He had 28 days.

“That was when I collapsed,” Samantha Colindrés said in an interview with Patch. “I started screaming, I started crying, I couldn’t breathe and I was hyperventilating. … I kept screaming that he had two children, two small children.”

That day was only the third time she had seen her husband cry. The other two were when his two children were born. Son Preston is 6 now. Daughter Lila is 2.

Although Joel Colindrés spent years trying to follow the government’s rules to become a citizen, never so much as parking illegally, he now must leave his country of more than a decade because ICE misspelled his name in a court filing, according to his attorney.

Joel Colindrés is not alone. According to statistics reported by the Washington Post, the number of undocumented immigrant arrests rose by roughly one-third in the first months of the Trump administration. Most of those arrested had no criminal record — the type of people Trump, on the campaign trail, said he would not disturb.

“Joel is the epitome of the American dream,” the couple’s attorney, Erin O’Neil Baker, said in an interview with Patch. “He has built such a beautiful and successful life here for himself … but unfortunately he is also the epitome of what the Trump administration is currently doing, which is taking everyone who does not have legal status and grouping them all together.”

What Happened?

According to Joel Colindrés, a number of thoughts raced through his head while he was confined to the same immigration office where he had checked in twice already since May. This time, he was forbidden to leave until he received an ankle bracelet to monitor his whereabouts.

Twenty-eight days to get out, he was told. Twenty-eight days.

“I was totally in shock, and I didn’t know what to do,” he recalled. “It’s very hard knowing you have 28 days to leave the country. I have a lot of people that I love here, especially my kids.”

Joel Colindrés came to the United States 13 years ago from Guatemala through Texas via a legal provisional waiver. His wife and children still in his future, he headed to New York, where some relatives lived, and spent years going through the necessary steps to become a citizen.

The process was moving along. Then ICE officials spelled his name wrong on a document, the family’s attorney told Patch.

Due to the error, the attorney said, Joel Colindrés never received an important letter — and missed a court date as a result. He was then issued a removal order in 2004.

He continued sending necessary documents to ICE over the years, the attorney said, both when he was single and after he married and had his two kids. For years, he checked in regularly with ICE agents, as his waiver required, and everything was deemed fine, every time, for him to continue to stay.

In a response sent to Patch about the case Tuesday, ICE misspelled “Colindrés” as “Calinders.”

Below is ICE’s statement in full.

“Joel Calinders-Guerra, an illegally present citizen of Guatemala, was issued a final order of removal by a federal immigration judge in 2004. Since then he has sought relief from removal via several court actions and has been denied each. On July 20, during a routine check-in, ICE chose not to take Calinders into custody and instead placed him in a GPS monitoring program. He was instructed to report back to ICE with an itinerary as proof he intends to comply with his removal order.”

“We have been doing this process the right way for years,” Samantha Colindrés said.

Baker, the family’s attorney, said these types of mistakes are not uncommon. When an individual enters the United States, they might not have permanent residency, meaning they do not have a long-term address to give when they are first are detained by ICE, she said.

In many of these cases, the attorney said, an immigrant will provide the address where they are currently living, but may eventually move. And even if they give their new address to the court, sometimes there is a cross in the mail, and the court won’t receive the new address before the hearing.

“There are a lot of reasons why a person might not get the right notice for the right time and might not appear,” Baker said in an interview with Patch. “And really, that is a death knell to someone’s immigration history, unfortunately. It is extremely difficult to reopen a removal order and prove to the court that it is the court’s fault they did not get notice. The burden really falls on the individual to prove they have done everything proper in notifying the court.”

Before she took on the family’s case, Baker said the issue of improper notice was already litigated in full, with no success. So she said she will instead be filing a motion to reopen Joel Colindrés’ removal order with the board of immigration appeals on a different basis.

“We are moving forward on a strong argument that Joel cannot return to his country because there has been a systematic targeting of his family members,” Baker said, “and, unbeknownst to Joel, three of his family members were murdered in the last year.”

These murders only recently came to light. Joel’s family had kept it from him, Baker said, because they didn’t want him to be upset. (To sign up for free, local breaking news alerts from more than 100 Connecticut communities click here.)

A number of news stories have popped up this year about immigrants who were facing deportation, but were allowed to stay thanks to last-minute support from government officials. Recently, Norwalk resident Nury Chavarria, a single mother of four, took sanctuary in a New Haven church in an attempt to avoid deportation.

In that case, Chavarria was granted an emergency stay on July 26.

Samantha Colindrés is hoping her husband will be able to join the list of those who made headlines and were eventually permitted to remain with their loved ones in America.

“Their case is very strong in the sense that if Joel didn’t have this removal order, then he would be very easily eligible for residency,” Baker said. “He has an approved marriage petition and a pending waiver. Once that waiver is granted, the removal order is basically expunged. He is following the rules, the laws are in place, the policies are in place, he’s doing the normal process, but it’s this old removal order that is the hindrance, and all he seeks is his time here in [America] for the next six months so these pending applications can be approved.”

In the meantime, the couple is in “fight mode” — protecting the children from their father’s plight while preparing for the worst and working as hard as they can to push back against the order.

Fight Mode

“This was a day that will go down in history for all of our lives,” Samantha Colindrés said of July 20, “and one that I don’t think we will ever forget.”

Right after the couple received the bad news, they shared their story in a lengthy Facebook post.

“I never put stuff on Facebook,” Samantha Colindrés said. “Once in a while I post a cute kid picture or something, but nothing like this.”

They were originally unsure if the post would reach a lot of people. By the end of the weekend, though, it had already been shared 10,000 times. Since gaining traction on social media, the two have not stopped moving.

“We’ve been just go-go for the past week and half,” Samantha Colindrés said. “We just kind of went straight to fight mode, and we’re not going to stop until we get this story out there.”

The two held a rally Thursday in Hartford to #SaveJoelColindres, garnering the support of nearly 100 people.

The rally “was amazing, but it was also sad in a way,” Samantha Colindrés said. “We were seeing all this wonderful support, but for something that should not even be happening. It wasn’t the kind of support you see when someone gets a new job or has a baby; it was like support for somebody having to leave this country that should not have been given this notice in the first place.”

Support has also poured in from local government officials, including Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut who said his office has been in close contact with the family and their attorney. He said his team is actively working with ICE to pursue every possible option for the Colindrés family.

“As a father of two young kids, I can only imagine the pain Joel is going through right now at the thought of having to leave his 6-year-old son Preston and 2-year-old daughter Lila,” Murphy said in an email. “The Trump administration once again is irresponsibly targeting families. I think we all agree that our limited law enforcement resources should instead go to deporting dangerous criminals.”

Samantha Colindrés said the first person she called after receiving the news of her husband’s deportation was Sen. Richard Blumenthal, another Connecticut Democrat with whom she had previously been in contact.

“The fact that ICE would give a father only 28-days’ notice to leave his wife and children,” Blumenthal said in an email, “leaving next to no time to pursue legal remedies, is cold, callous and reprehensible. ICE approved Samantha Colindrés’ application to sponsor her husband’s visa but is now deporting him before he can proceed through the process for obtaining legal status pursuant to that approved sponsorship.”

Blumenthal also said he thinks ICE should allow Joel Colindrés to follow through on that sponsorship rather than permanently upend his family’s life.

“This nightmare is the direct result of the Trump administration’s decision to remove all reason and rationality from its immigration policies,” Blumenthal said, “and I continue to implore the President to end this nightmare and commit to true, bipartisan discussions to reform this broken immigration system in a way that respects our fundamental American values and morals.”

Anger and grief aside, Samantha Colindrés said the huge amount of support her family has received is not going unnoticed.

“That’s really what has been lifting us up through all this,” Colindrés said. “The power of people and social media and strangers. I’m so thankful that in this day and age we have that kind of reach.”

She said she hopes her family’s still-developing story can inspire other people in similar situations to fight back.

“Never give up, and just keep fighting for what you believe is right. Don’t be afraid to share your story,” Samantha Colindrés said. “We’ve had our struggles…but [we] are not going to stop fighting for what we believe is right.”

Father, Friend, Husband

Although Samantha Colindrés and her husband have seen a huge outpouring of support since he received his deportation notice, they have also run into some people who think they might be hiding certain details.

“Some people will say there has to be more to the story,” she said. “That [Joel] must be a criminal or something. My husband has honestly never gotten so much as a parking ticket.”

She said her husband also does not smoke or drink, and has never done a single drug in his life. He is a man of strong faith, she said, who continues to pray every night while wearing his ankle bracelet.

“He’s everything anyone would want in a father, a friend and a husband,” Samantha Colindrés said.

The couple’s 6-year-old son is “very attached” to his father, she said — so much so that he sets his alarm for 6 a.m. every morning just so he can see his dad before he heads to work.

The couple has worked to make sure their kids are not exposed to what they are currently dealing with. Yet regardless of their success, they have had to consider what they’ll tell the kids, should their daddy be forced to leave for Guatemala this month.

“Luckily, with technology, we could FaceTime every day,” Samantha Colindrés said. “But even Joel said he can’t imagine being away from them. He had to meet someone the other day and ended up texting me, ‘I’m away from you guys for one hour and it’s hurting me. I can’t even imagine being away from you all for a day.’”

Although the thought of leaving his family weighs heavily on his mind every moment, Joel Colindrés said he still has much to be comforted by as he and his wife continue to fight.

On July 27, he obtained a delegation letter of support from Blumenthal, Murphy and Rep. Elizabeth Etsy. The letter asks that ICE give a stay of his deportation full and fair consideration.

“ICE has confirmed that Mr. Colindrés has committed no crimes, contributes to his community, is employed, pays taxes and is raising a family,” the letter reads. “He should be granted every consideration possible to remain in the United States and continue his pathway to citizenship.”

Joel Colindrés said he also takes comfort in the strong show of support he has received from neighbors and strangers in America — a nation he loves and will do anything to remain a part of.

“I just want to say thank you for all the support out there. This is an amazing country, and I love this country,” he said. “God bless America.”

Those looking to support the Colindrés family can sign their petition or donate money via a GoFundMe page set up by a friend to cover legal fees and other related financial burdens.

Follow the Save Joel Colindrés Facebook page for more information and updates on the family’s fight to #SaveJoelColindres.

Image courtesy of Samantha Colindrés