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“An 11-year-old girl needs her mother”
After living in the United States for over 20 years, Sonia H. (pseudonym)
went to Mexico, not to move back to the country of her birth but to bury
her son, a Mexican police officer who had been killed in a roadside
shootout. Sonia, 50, shared her story while sitting in a jail in Marfa,
Texas, awaiting sentencing for an illegal reentry conviction.
When Sonia’s son was killed in 2011, she felt she had to go to Mexico to
bury him. But, Sonia said, “My whole life is in the US.” Her other son, a US
citizen, had petitioned for her to gain legal status, and she had been
saving money to pay for the second part of the application. She and her
long-term partner, a permanent resident, were raising an 11-year-old
daughter, also a US citizen. Sonia had a good job at a dry cleaner, where
the owners valued her so much they drove her to and from work, since she
could not get a driver’s license as an unauthorized immigrant.
In January 2012, Sonia tried to return to the US illegally using false
documents and was immediately caught and convicted of illegal entry.
According to her current attorney in Texas, the federal judge in the earlier
case recommended that she not be deported, but he had no power to
enforce that recommendation. Thus, after serving 45 days in jail for her
illegal entry conviction, she was deported immediately through
expedited removal. She said a Border Patrol agent told her to “sign
here.” If she had been put into regular removal proceedings, she might
have been eligible to apply for cancellation of removal, an application
for legal status in which her many years of residence in the US and the
impact of deportation on her US family would have been considered by
an immigration judge. Sonia had never been in trouble with the law
before. “I never even drove without a driver’s license,” she said.
Sonia moved her daughter to Mexico and they tried to live in Chihuahua,
her home state, but Chihuahua is one of the Mexican states most affected
by crime and violence related to drug trafficking. Sonia said there were
shootouts in front of her daughter’s school and rumors that kidnappers
TURNING MIGRANTS INTO CRIMINALS 60