We’re hearing new stories everyday about deportations and the consequences of Donald Trump’s immigration policy that targets all undocumented immigrants—criminal or not. Mothers and fathers ripped away from their children, students being detained, women with brain tumors in the hospital shackled and dragged back to immigrant detention. It’s unclear how long this will go on but Trump is most certainly making good on his promise to deport as many people as possible.
Except of course, these aren’t “bad hombres” or “bad dudes.” These are as people as close to the American Dream as they can be. People working hard and forging a life for themselves and their families despite the numerous obstacles they face.
In yet another heart-wrenching story of deportation, 31-year-old Jose Escobar of Houston was recently deported back to El Salvador, a country where he had not been since he was a teenager.
Jose Escobar lost his legal status in a paperwork gaffe more than a decade ago when he was still a teen in Houston.
That slip-up, the fault of his mother who thought her child would be automatically included in her own renewal application, has trailed him ever since. Thursday it led to his surprise deportation to El Salvador, a country he hasn't seen in 16 years.
Jose came to the US when he was 15 and qualified for temporary protected status (TPS) for people fleeing disasters in their country of origin. When he realized that his permit had expired, the government had already begun deportation proceedings. He was ordered removed in 2006.
By then, Jose was married to Rose, his childhood sweetheart whom he met in a Houston middle school. They tried to apply for his green card through his marriage to an American citizen, but lawyers said that he might risk waiting years in El Salvador because he had been here illegally.
Not knowing what to do, they carried on with their lives. They had a son, Walter. Then in 2011, immigration agents arrested Jose on the old deportation order.
Rose recruited the help of U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat, and in January 2012, Jose was released on an order of supervision, a provisional stay of deportation in a process known broadly as prosecutorial discretion.
