Gladys and Nelson Gonzalez have called the United States home since 1989. Their three daughters, now grown, were all born and raised in California.
“For nearly four decades, they have built a life here — raising three daughters, giving back to their community, and recently welcoming their first grandchild,” their daughter Stephanie Gonzalez wrote on a GoFundMe page for the family. “Now, they are being treated as criminals.”
Last month, the parents checked in at an immigration court in Santa Ana, just “like they have been doing since 2000,” Stephanie wrote in an email to CNN.
But this check-in ended with a much different outcome.
The couple was arrested and handcuffed during their February 21 appointment and put in federal custody, where they spent three weeks before being deported to Colombia.
“We didn’t expect that they would be apprehended and held in custody. And again, it’s not really unique to them anymore. It’s happening across the country,” Crooms told CNN, pointing to recent immigration policy changes in the US two months into the current administration.
The Gonzalezes spent many years searching for a viable path to citizenship, paid their taxes and never had any trouble with the law, according to Crooms and their daughters.
Ideally, the couple would have been given time to get their affairs in order and say goodbye to their daughters and grandchild, according to Crooms. But that didn’t happen.
“We had to go and pick up their car from the parking lot and didn’t get to say goodbye,” Stephanie said.
The United States, starting centuries before it was founded, and continuing for centuries afterward, has been founded on the undebatable strength of industry we have gained from immigration. This entire country is built from immigration – mostly because those who came before committed in massive genocide against the natives of this land.
So when you question the value of any incoming immigrant, just remember that nobody ever had to endure such shitty fascist in dignity until shitty fascists made it a thing.
And, as someone who is continuing the shitty, fascist viewpoint that nearly destroyed the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, you are advocating for that same amount of undemocratic, un-American, absolutely fucking shitty fascist bullshit that, nearly a century ago, we very well knew was shitty, fascist, bullshit that would terror our country apart.
And you are no better, because the only reason you would endorse this shitty, fascist, bullshit is because you are so stupid that you have yet to learn why it is ultimately self-destructive.
Man, this idiot didn’t deserve the amount of thought you put into this reply. 😂
It takes lots of fluff to properly ignore the topic at hand.
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Right, and the court told them nu uh. Dumbass.
Yeah so when you scroll up, you’re going to find words you wrote. They’re wrong. They came here legally.
Oh the part about how they themselves said they were looking to legalize their status?
I’ll spell it out for you. They were legal residents for decades. They did not come here illegally as you incorrectly stated. They came here as asylum seekers, again legally. If you going to correct people, be correct.
In 2000, the immigration court found no legal reason that would allow Gladys and Nelson to stay in the United States and they were issued a voluntary departure order, which gives people a certain amount of time to leave the country at their own expense to avoid a deportation order, according to ICE.
So, the article must be wrong then huh?
Nobody is ignoring your Nazi rhetoric. Hence the down votes.
Another criminal huh?
So you are here illegally too then? Or should legal immigration receive the same benefits as illegal?
So you’d be all for seizing businesses and jailing business owners who hire undocumented immigrants? Guess which political party these business owners usually belong to?
You have been fed propaganda to hate undocumented immigrants by the right wing, but those same people want an underclass of vulnerable workers to exploit.
Ask yourself why all of these illegal immigrant chaos never focuses on the businesses hiring them? If you truly wanted to “solve the problem”, then you’d want to cut off the demand.