A family in Long Beach said it has left the home and community behind as it feared the Trump administration\u2019s immigration policies would eventually catch up with its family member.<\/p>\n
The Burgueno family, made up of a U.S. citizen matriarch, her undocumented husband and their teenage son, said Monday that it has taken the final steps to self-deport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe crossed the border in Otay,\u201d Sonia Burgueno told NBC Los Angeles at the U.S.-Mexico border Monday. \u201cWe packed as much as we could.\u201d<\/p>\n
Calling it the hardest decision her family has ever made, Sonia Burgueno had deep roots in Long Beach: she and her husband built Franks Landscaping together from the ground up, serving the same community in which they raised their family.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had our business for over 20 years. Our clients were like family,\u201d the matriarch said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Burgueno said fear took over their lives for the last few months as her husband, an undocumented immigration with no criminal record, began to feel watched and followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came home crying and said, \u2018I\u2019m not a criminal. I don\u2019t want to live like this anymore.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Rather than waiting for a knock at the door, the family chose to leave on its own terms after selling its business, pulling the teenage son out of high school and eventually moving to Sinaloa, the hometown of Francisco Burgueno, Sonia\u2019s husband.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiving in fear isn\u2019t living at all,\u201d Francisco Burgueno told NBCLA in Spanish.<\/p>\n
Although leaving Long Beach meant Sonia Burgueno had to say goodbye to her elderly mother and extended family (all U.S. citizens), she said dignity mattered more than geography.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did not want his dignity to be taken away. He\u2019s not a criminal,\u201d the wife said about her husband in Spanish.<\/p>\n
The family has started over with limited savings and a lot of uncertainty. Friends and relatives have launched a fundraising effort to cover moving costs and repairs to a home in Mexico.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat matters most is that we are staying together,\u201d Francisco Burgueno said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The family said the move is an ending and a new beginning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can build a good life anywhere as long as you do it with love,\u201d Sonia Burgueno said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A family in Long Beach said it has left the home and community behind as it feared the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[14,131,133,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-140842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-immigration","9":"tag-long-beach","10":"tag-long-beach-headlines","11":"tag-long-beach-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}