More pointless cruelty in the SF immigration courts under Trump, as a mother and her two kids, one of them deaf, checked in for their SF immigration appointment and were heartlessly shipped to Colombia.
It’s another story of immigrants very much attempting to play by the rules to establish their citizenship status, but the Trump administration cruelly just shipping them off to secret detention centers. The Chronicle has the story of Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez, a mother of a five- and seven-year-old (who happens to be deaf) who reported Tuesday for her required check-in at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on Tehama Street. But the entire family of three was detained, arrested, and deported including the deaf seven-year-old, who is without his hearing aids. The family’s attorney says they’ve been given the runaround, with inaccurate information about where the family is now.
“This obfuscation, this false information, these different stories for different people — it’s just chaos at best and intentional,” Centro Legal de la Raza immigration attorney Nikolas De Bremaeker told the Chronicle. “The fact that she has a severely disabled child … is very strong humanitarian grounds to not deport a 7-year-old.”
Per the Chronicle’s Thursday reporting, the attorneys “can’t find them” and “ICE officials have given attorneys and Gutierrez’s family confusing and false information about which detention center Gutierrez was sent to.” KTVU has some later Thursday reporting saying that the family was deported to Colombia, though that information is not confirmed, as no one has been able to contact the Gutierrez family.
The Gutierrez family is from Colombia, though have been living in Hayward for about four years since Lesly fled Colombia to escape an abusive relationship with a man she says was involved with a violent gang.
“She was afraid her ex-partner would harm her and her two children,” one of her relatives told KTVU through an interpreter. “He was part of a gang in the city that committed murders and robberies. We had already received several threats from him.”
De Bremaeker says he will continue to file emergency appeals through the weekend.
Related: Undocumented Immigrant Detained by ICE in Front of Home in San Jose [SFist]
Image Courtesy Family Of Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez