Immigrant families torn by detentions

After six 10-hour workdays a week at a nail salon, Gloria Chocoj picks up her children from the baby sitter, walks them home and begins her evening routine: cooking dinner, helping with homework, giving baths before bedtime and packing school lunches.

It is a full schedule she has tackled alone since December — after her husband, Jose Estrada Lopez, who entered the country illegally from Guatemala 14 years ago, was picked up by immigration officials. His arrest and detention in Elizabeth forced Chocoj to get a full-time job and become the sole provider and caregiver of their three young children.

“One day I had my husband, and the next day I didn’t,” said Chocoj, holding back tears as her children — ages 7, 6 and 5 — watched television in a nearby room in their Fairview apartment. “You can imagine what we are thinking, that he will get deported. That’s the only thing we can think of. My husband says that he has hope that God will give us a miracle.”

They are among 11.7 million immigrants who are living in the United States illegally, a majority of whom go about their daily lives without being detected by authorities. But for about 34,000 who are being held in detention facilities nationwide, including 1,200 in custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Newark, their futures are now uncertain.

And like Estrada Lopez, many of their families are facing desperate situations while they await decisions from immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals. But proponents of speedier deportations argue that sending detainees back should be the only option for the U.S. government. After all, they say, these people have violated the law. Cracking down on illegal entry into the United States now would send a message that it will no longer be tolerated. They also oppose amnesty programs, which they say reward criminal behavior.

“What’s the point of having laws to deport people when we don’t enforce them?” said Gayle Kesselman, co-chairwoman of New Jersey Citizens for Immigration Control. “Now the federal government plans to spend millions of dollars providing lawyers to illegal immigrants and they will try to use legal technicalities to allow them to stay in the U.S. Our borders are broken and our immigration laws are a joke.”

Immigration advocates, however, say detentions and deportations are tearing families apart and putting financial strains on those who had been able to support themselves. “Families experience trauma, the trauma is very real and it’s very difficult to … tell them that the only thing that we can do is to build a movement and continue fighting because there is no solution for the individual,” said Christian Zamarron, field organizer for New Jersey Communities United, which has participated in demonstrations to stop deportations.

Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, countered that while the separation of families is an unfortunate consequence, it shouldn’t be used as grounds to not punish lawbreakers. “Essentially, what the advocates are saying is that we need to use children and family members as sort of a human shield to protect people from the consequences of their own actions,” he said. “We cannot allow the law to do that, whether it’s immigration law or any other kind of law.”

Immigration reform has been delayed in Washington since the Republican-led House of Representatives refused to take up the issue during the summer. President Obama put on hold efforts to remake his deportation policies — which have been widely criticized by immigration advocates — until after next month’s elections. At the same time, the recent surge of unaccompanied minors and women with children crossing the borders prompted U.S. authorities to declare that they were stepping up deportations back to Central America as a way to deter further illegal immigration.

Roughly 500,000 immigrants are living illegally in New Jersey alone. At a recent gala for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Obama said he would issue new orders on immigration before the end of the year that could grant status to many people living in the country illegally, according to news reports. But in the interim, the families of those detained and involved in deportation proceedings are dealing with life-changing consequences, both financially and emotionally. Several studies have shown that more than 80 percent of those deported are men, with many leaving women to raise children by themselves.

“People talk about how important family ties are, and how deadbeat dads are awful, and they don’t want to take care of their families, but this is creating that problem, this policy is taking away men from their families so that they can’t be those providers for oftentimes not having done anything other than drive without a license or some administrative thing,” said Joanna Dreby, associate professor of sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY. She has studied the impact of separation on immigrant families and wrote a book, “Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families,” to be released in March.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 368,644 immigrants, which include those convicted of a crime, border crossers and those living in the country illegally, in fiscal 2013 — a decline from 409,849 the previous year, according to figures on its website. Of those removed last year, 4,361 were from New Jersey, with 50 percent classified as criminals — immigrants who were convicted of crimes in the U.S., said Harold Ort, a spokesman for the ICE field office in Newark. So far this year, there have been 1,972 New Jersey removals, 54 percent of whom were criminals, Ort said.

Estrada Lopez, dressed in a blue jumpsuit at the Elizabeth Detention Facility, insisted he is not a criminal. He entered the country illegally in 2000, for the second time. He first sneaked into the country two years earlier, but he was stopped at the southern border and sent back to Guatemala. Like many others from Latin America, a part of the world that a recent United Nations report called the most violent, Estrada Lopez said he immigrated north to flee gangs that pressured him for money and threatened his family.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said. But Ort said that Estrada Lopez ignored his previous deportation order. “ICE prioritizes its limited resources on the identification and removal of criminal aliens, immigration fugitives who have failed to comply with final orders of removal issued by the nation’s immigration courts, aliens who have previously been removed from the United States and recent border crossers,” Ort wrote in an email.

Soon after arriving in the United States, Estrada Lopez said, he went to Michigan, where he lived for six months and applied for a driver’s license. When that license expired, though, he couldn’t renew it in New Jersey, which prohibits undocumented immigrants from driving. He got behind the wheel anyway, he said, because he needed to get to construction sites for work.

“I drove without a license because I had no other option,” he said. But driving without the proper documentation led to charges of carrying a false license and impersonation in 2003 in Cliffside Park, court officials said. When he didn’t show up in municipal court several months later, warrants were issued for his arrest, court officials said.

A decade later, the incident caught up with him. Those warrants were outstanding on Dec. 17, 2013, when Estrada Lopez headed to work in his truck a few blocks from his apartment with his father-in-law, Ines Chocoj. The pair were stopped and detained by immigration officials. His father-in-law, who also lived in the country illegally, opted for a voluntary deportation, and was gone in about a month. Estrada Lopez was taken to the Elizabeth detention center and hasn’t been home since.

When her husband was home, Gloria Chocoj, who entered illegally several years after Estrada Lopez but whose youngest three children are citizens, used to work only on weekends so she could be home during the week. Now she spends six days a week doing manicures and pedicures at a salon in Cliffside Park. She gets paid $60 a day plus tips.

She and the children — Christopher, Joseph and Katherine — share a first-floor apartment with Chocoj’s two brothers, who also entered the country illegally. Still, it’s a struggle to pay the $1,300 rent; she’s several months behind. It all adds up: food, rent, utilities, the baby sitter, the driver she has to pay to take the kids to and from school.

The situation has even affected the couple’s 17-year-old son, Jonatan, who lives in Guatemala. Since Estrada Lopez was detained, Jonatan had to leave his private school because there’s no money to pay the more than $250 registration and $100 in monthly tuition and related school expenses.

She often has to comfort her younger children, who repeatedly ask when their father will come home. “The first few days they would cry every night asking for their father’s hugs and kisses,” she said, adding that monthly visits to Elizabeth are difficult since she |doesn’t drive.

“There are women struggling, figuring out what to do. … Women are really stuck in these very difficult situations, where they have a lot of stress both economic and trying to find out what to do,” said Dreby, the SUNY Albany professor who has interviewed families in Central Jersey for her research. “They are left to figure out the pieces and figure out how to make the family work when their husband is being deported.”

Irene Reyes knows firsthand the hardships a deportation can wreak on a family. In 2006, her husband, Alfonso, was returned to Mexico after living in the country illegally for nearly 20 years. The Passaic County couple were expecting their fourth child at the time, so Reyes, who was born in Mexico but became a U.S. citizen in 1998, packed up the family and headed to Mexico City.

Reyes, 42, who only wanted her middle name used to protect her children’s privacy, delivered her youngest daughter there, and tried to make a life. But it was too difficult. Alfonso first drove a truck and then parked cars, but he couldn’t support them. On a good day, he earned $15, Reyes said.

“Even for food it was really, really hard,” she said. The couple’s oldest children — born in the United States — struggled to adjust, and one son who needed speech therapy couldn’t get the necessary services. A year later, Reyes came back to New Jersey, and since then has been raising their children by herself, hoping that her husband will be able to enter the country legally one day. She can sponsor him to return to the U.S. in 2016.

Chocoj concedes that her husband’s court battle to stay will be a hard-fought one. Estrada Lopez was denied political asylum and was to have been sent back to Guatemala on July 16, but his attorney filed an appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals. A decision is expected any day, said one of his attorneys, Eric Mark of Newark. If the appeal is denied, Mark said, he plans to file a request for a stay of removal on humanitarian grounds, including the fact his client was the primary breadwinner for three young children.

“ICE will look at all the humanitarian factors and look at criminal and immigration history. There is no standard that governs it, it is 100 percent discretionary, so there is no way we can say what will happen,” Mark said. The couple said they don’t want to go back to Guatemala; there are better opportunities here.

“To arrive there, we don’t have anywhere to live, the earnings would not be enough to support the family,” Chocoj said. “It’s not like we have a life of riches here, but we are able to provide for them.” Estrada Lopez said he wants to stay in the United States to raise his children. “My previous lawyer said if you leave, you can return when your children are 21 and they can sponsor you,” Estrada Lopez said. “But I said, ‘At 21, why would they need me then? They need me now.’

Enough BS! The headline should read: “ILLEGAL ALIEN families torn by detentions” to which I say TOUGH!

Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time

I DON`T GIVE A DAMN. Her husband IS home...in Guatemala! She should sell everything she acquired in this country and take her kids to join him. The pity party is OVER!

My husband says that he has hope that God will give us a miracle.” <<

I ain't God...but ill pay your way back if you'll leave with your flock and take another illegal with ya.....

That would be a miracle to me if u took that offer and solved “your problem”

Not much sympathy here. Enter the country legally. Problem solved. Oh and one other thing. Plenty of women are living the same life as this woman. Many through no fault of their own. Divorce, death or abandonment by their spouse. The story is similar. Long hours at work then on to the home front. Its called life.

I’m very sympathetic to them.

Reduce the detention to three days so they can get back home sooner.

“Estrada Lopez, insisted he is not a criminal.” Let’s see,
entered the country illegally in 2000, for the second time, no crime there. “went to Michigan, and applied for a driver’s license. In 2000 was MI giving drivers licenses to ILLEGAL aliens? I doubt it, another crime. “I drove without a license because I had no other option,” Another crime, I can’t do this so why can he? “he didn’t show up in municipal court several months later” another crime. Decade later he is caught again, how many laws did he break in that time? He had time to create 3 more kids on our dime. Think we are paying any social welfare on them? Think he try’s to claim the child in Guatemala also? Fine parents, says he is scared but leaves a kid there, 17 now but only 3 when he left. So much missing from this story. How come her brothers are not helping with rent? Months behind now. $1300 is twice my house payment.

Immigrant families torn by detentions

Another sob story?
I always keep losing my micro-violin.

If these illiterate parasites all would stay home, there would be no "tearing," ever!

D'OH!!

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