Cleveland, OH – In POLITICO Magazine, Julia Preston reports that the Biden administration is acknowledging the harm caused by prior administrations’ deportations, and creating a process for some to be able to return. She writes:
The Department of Homeland Security “is committed to reviewing the cases of individuals whose removals under the prior administration failed to live up to our highest values,” said Marsha Espinosa, a spokeswoman for the agency. She confirmed officials are developing “a rigorous, systematic approach” to conduct the reviews and “an orderly process” for deported people to present their claims.
“This is a lifeline,” said Lynn Tramonte, Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. “For too long, deported people have been rendered invisible. They and their families, friends, and communities have grieved their separation in isolation, and held out hope that one day they would be together again. The Biden administration should proudly and boldly bring deported people back to their homes and lives in the United States.”
The Ohio Immigrant Alliance has interviewed more than two hundred people who were deported by prior administrations, or left before they could be deported, and hope to one day come home to the United States. The vast majority of the people interviewed are from Africa. Their stories are both extraordinary, in terms of what they are going through and, tragically, extraordinarily similar.
After decades in the United States, raising families and developing strong social, religious, and economic bonds in their communities, often obtaining legal work permits through Orders of Supervision and attending regular check-in meetings with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), these men and women were arrested and held in immigration jails, treated inhumanely, and roughly discarded in countries they once fled–with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Maryam Sy, who is leading the interview campaign for Ohio Immigrant Alliance, said: “When I speak with them, it’s often the first time they’ve told the whole story and the pain just pours out. It’s hard to hear, but I feel honored that they trust me with their experiences. I always tell them we have to keep fighting, because they and their families deserve to be together. Deportation is a man-made disaster and as people, we can decide to do something better. That is #ReuniteUS and that is what we are working for.”
In the article, Preston reports on the real-life impact of deportation on two U.S. American families, including that of Maria Paz Perez and Brigido Acosta Luis. During the 2020 general elections, Perez wrote an op-ed about her husband’s deportation in DailyKos: “President Obama deported my husband. Would a ‘President Biden’ bring him home?”
Speaking from Mexico, Acosta told Preston this year: “With my heart in my hand, I can tell you that if I could make it back before my mom passes away, that would be the best. I would just like to do our family’s life together on a daily basis, the same way we had before. Because we had a team back then.”
Perez and Acosta may have their answer soon, and hopefully their team will reunite.
Said Tramonte: “Every day a person comes home will be a great day for them, their families, and our entire country. We hope this will be a first step toward a real reckoning with the consequences of deportation, which is an extreme and inhumane consequence for a civil paperwork violation. It needlessly destroys good people and families.”
RESOURCES
Listen to testimonies of individuals deported to Mauritania here and below.
Read a policy proposal from the National Immigrant Justice Project here, and another from Ohio Immigrant Alliance and National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild here.
Tune in to a live chat on “The Need to Return,” sponsored by The Rhizome Center for Migrants in their Road to Return series on June 30 at 2pm CST. The event will be streamed live at fb.com/rhizomecenter with simultaneous interpretation via Zoom (register for Zoom access here). The event will feature Tran Dang (The Rhizome Center for Migrants), Kham Moua (Southeast Asia Resource Action Center), Ana Laura López (Deportados Unidos en la Lucha), and Rep. María Libier González Anaya (Mexican Senate Commission on Migration Issues). Contact connect@rhizomecenter.org with questions.
Follow the Ohio Immigrant Alliance on Facebook and Twitter @tramontela
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