When Trump’s deportation-on-steriods went into effect, one of the first people rounded up and deported was 35-year-old Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos. Her story went national when several hundred immigrant rights protesters in Phoenix tried to block the deportation van she was in by wrapping themselves around the vehicle’s wheels. I live-blogged the event here.
The protesters did manage to stall her deportation, but soon she was sent to Nogales, Mexico, while her children, both US-born citizens, tried to figure out how to go on with their mother in a country they did not know. Garcia de Rayos came to the U.S. when she was 14, so at least she speaks Spanish, and her family is able to visit her in Mexico.
Others sent back are not so fortunate: some may not know the language, while their relatives cannot take days off work to travel to Mexico to be with them. Many have no family, friends, contacts or jobs waiting. At least one man committed suicide rather than return to Mexico. Doesn’t matter: Trump’s executive order says Mexico will take all of our undocumented immigrants, whether they’re Mexican or not! First he orders Mexico to pay for the wall, now he says they’ll take all of the people we ship south, regardless of their nationality.
Locally, Garcia de Rayos has become something of a Rosa Parks—the face of a cruel, needless policy that can deport undocumented immigrants to Mexico for the smallest crime, including a traffic ticket. Although she had a job and wanted her kids to get a good education, something most mothers want, Garcia de Rayos did have a criminal record. A decade ago she was nabbed in one of Sheriff Arpaio’s unconstitutional immigration “sweeps” while working at a golf facility. She was trapped in the immigration Catch-22: You can’t work without ID, but if you forge ID in order to work and get caught, it’s a felony.
So when Garcia de Rayos showed up at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office two weeks ago to report in, something she’d done for eight years, she wasn’t released as usual, but instead was hauled off to a deportation van as her children watched. True, President Obama increased deportations considerably, but his administration focused on real criminals—convicted gang members and violent offenders, for example. Immigrants like Garcia de Rayos, who had a paperwork conviction, were not a priority and were allowed to remain in-country, in order to keep families together, as long as they reported once a year.
So the party of “family values” wants to deport 11 million immigrants because “illegal.” They’re willing to scuttle the economy, destroy families, waste billions on a needless border wall, and normalize the ugly racial assaults we’ve seen since Trump’s inauguration. Sure, we need immigration reform but this ain’t it!
It’s doubtful Trump will recognize the two young Hispanics sitting in the balcony Tuesday night during his first address to Congress, but Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos’s two children will be there, listening to the man whose policies stole their mother.
The children of Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, the deported mother from Phoenix, have been invited to Trump's first the State of the Union address (assuming he actually does one) as the guests of Democratic Reps. Ruben Gallego and Raul Grijalva.
Good for Reps. Gallego and Grijalva! So when Trump begins to blabber about “dangerous illegal immigrants” who are taking our jobs, raping our grandmothers and murdering fellow Americans, the children and friends of Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos will likely think of an earlier congressional address: “You lie!”