There’s no reasoning or justification for this latest act from Donald Trump’s deportation force. It’s just unabashed cruelty:
The mother of four American children, the youngest of whom is three years old, has been picked up by federal agents at her home in Fairfield, Ohio, and taken into detention ahead of imminent deportation back to her native Mexico.
Maribel Trujillo has been told that her deportation is set for next Tuesday from the US, where she has lived for the past 15 years. Her rushed removal is one of the starkest examples yet of Donald Trump’s push to catch and deport undocumented immigrants who previously were tolerated by the authorities as law-abiding and peaceful members of society.
Maribel was put into deportation proceedings in 2014, “but with no criminal history she was essentially left alone by ICE under the Obama administration and only expected to check in with officials once a month.” Maribel was even “granted government permission to work in a local candy factory” through this summer, which means she pays her taxes and supports her family.
But when Maribel followed the rules by checking into her ICE meeting the month after Trump was inaugurated as president, she was outfitted with an ankle bracelet by immigration officials and told she was now a target for deportation. Yesterday, she was arrested by ICE outside her home and stands to be deported as early as next week:
Trujillo’s lawyer Kathleen Kersh, a staff attorney with the Ohio-based Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, said that Ice’s actions came as a shock. “Maribel doesn’t present a threat to public safety, she has lived here peacefully since 2002 with no criminal record. All these efforts to detain and remove her draw a big question mark over Trump’s immigration strategy – this is not making America safer, it’s leaving four American kids without their mom.”
Jeanne Atkinson, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Clinic, which is also involved in Trujillo’s case, said she was appalled by her treatment. “This is not the kind of targeted removal of criminals that the administration says it is doing. Maribel is the opposite of a flight risk or a danger to society, she is a vital part of her community.”
Maribel’s children—two have special medical needs, including seizures and a form of pre-diabetes—will be devastated if she is deported. She doesn’t want to leave them without a mother, but she’s afraid of taking them to Mexico. Nearly two years ago, her father “was kidnapped for ransom by the notorious Knights Templar drug cartel. Other family members have faced death threats.” The children don’t speak fluent Spanish, and “scarcely” know anything about Mexico. Not that ICE officials care about the lives of four U.S. citizens, apparently:
Asked about the dilemma her detention posed with her children, the spokesman said: “For parents who are ordered removed, it is their decision whether or not to relocate their children with them.”
“Family is the nucleus of society,” Maribel said. “President Trump tells us he has a big heart, so I ask him: ‘If your heart is that big, then why are you doing this to us?’”
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