Despite a plea to the Supreme Court, Yancarlos Mendez Perez, the stepdad of a 6-year-old boy who was paralyzed from the waist down following a car accident last year, has been deported. Mendez was initially detained last year for driving without a license, and despite being the family’s primary breadwinner and trained caregiver for “Ricky's complex medical needs,” ICE was hellbent on deporting him:
Mendez, 27, was moved from the Jena/LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana, and flown to Santo Domingo. He had been held for three weeks in Louisiana after his transfer from another federal holding center in Morrow County, north of Columbus.
"We are sad, but unfortunately we cannot do anything else," Sandra Mendoza said.
The story of Mendez and Mendoza and her son, Ricky Solis, a 6-year-old paraplegic, captivated readers nationwide. Through social media, various updates on the case's twists and turns – ICE's flat rejection of their humanitarian plea – went viral.
The two have been a couple since 2014 but married just a month ago while Mendez was detained, a desperate, last-ditch effort to help his case. It didn’t. It was the first time Mendoza had been able to hug Mendez in 66 days, but “sheriff's deputies did not allow Ricky to enter the secure area of the jail to see his stepfather. He sat in his wheelchair in the lobby with a few of the family's supporters”:
Mendoza said Wednesday she has not told Ricky that his stepfather is now out of the country.
"He goes to school, and I don't want him to be more sad and not focus," Mendoza said. "He keeps crying and asking, `Where is Daddy?' The last time he talked to Yancarlos on the video call, he just kept asking, `Daddy, when are you coming home? Where are you?'"
USA Today reports that the deportation came after “more than three months of legal calisthenics” and a disappointing result, to say the least, from a liberal justice of the Supreme Court:
On Feb. 13, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a temporary stay to allow Justice Elena Kagan, who has jurisdiction over the Sixth Circuit, time to review the case. Yet a little more than a week later, on Feb. 21, Kagan, without comment, denied Mendez's emergency appeal and refused to block his deportation.
The family did not want to uproot Ricky, saying that he’s receiving the care he needs here. While Mendoza has now recovered from her injuries, the family is nonetheless devastated:
Mendoza wept over the phone Wednesday evening and said she could not understand why her husband and Ricky's stepfather was deported.
"I just can't believe it," she said. "I am still in shock. But I knew this day was coming. "
According to WCPO, back when Ricky was in his accident, Mendoza wasn’t sure how her then-boyfriend was going to react to the accident that permanently disabled her son:
When Sandra Mendoza learned her 6-year-old son, Ricky, had become partially paralyzed in the wake of a car crash, she told then-boyfriend Yancarlos Mendez Perez he was free to go.
Caring for a child with a disability wasn't what he had signed up for when their relationship began, and she didn't want him to feel trapped.
"My world broke in a million pieces," she said Friday night. "I said, ‘You don't have no reason to stay with me.'"
He stayed, but was torn from them anyway.