Immigrants living illegally in America are at risk of being deported at any time.
A Mexican woman who livid peacefully in Arizona for nearly 20 years was picked up by ICE agents and deported back to Mexico on Wednesday.
According to published reports, Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos arrived illegally in the United States from Guanajuato, Mexico, in the mid-1990s with her parents when she was 14.
She was convicted in 2009 of illegally impersonating a U.S. citizen and using someone else’s social security number.
She was ordered deported under Obama’s watch. She appealed the decision and lost. But since the order was given while Barack Obama was still president, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s hands were tied.
Garcia de Rayos was placed under something called an order of supervision, which required her to report to an ICE official regularly. In 2016, an ICE official told her they might drop her case since she wasn’t a priority.
That changed this week after Trump signed a new executive order untying ICE’s hands and increasing the pace of deportations.
Garcia de Rayos was among the first illegal immigrants to be deported under the new order.
The mother-of-2 knew she risked deportation if she showed up for her appointment with ICE. A local church in Phoenix offered her sanctuary, but she declined.
She was arrested Wednesday at the ICE office in Phoenix, and whisked away in a paddy wagon. A few protests broke out after she was taken away.
“I don’t regret it, because I know I did this so that more families could see what’s in store, what could happen, and so that they could know what they could risk,” she said in a news conference Thursday in Nogales, Mexico.
“I am not what he says,” she added, referring to Trump’s claims that undocumented immigrants are dangerous criminals. “I simply am a mother who fights for her children, who fights to give them the best.”
The Mexican government issued warnings to illegal aliens still living in the U.S. They were instructed to “fight back” if agents attempt to arrest them.
The free ride that illegal immigrants have enjoyed in America has come to an end.
