Orange County, California
CNN
—
Gladys and Nelson Gonzalez have called the United States home since 1989. Their three daughters, now grown, were all born and raised in California.
The couple led Bible studies at their Southern California church and volunteered at food pantries during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“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.
“They did expect that they would need to depart and were planning to do so, but not in the way that it happened,” said Monica Crooms, an Orange County-based immigration attorney who started working with the couple in 2018.
“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.
Gladys and Nelson came to the United States without authorization in 1989, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement statement dated March 14. They had no visas when they arrived, Crooms said, but were granted permission to apply for asylum. The couple was fleeing crime in their native Colombia, according to Crooms and their daughter Stephanie.
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.
“They were looking for a way to legalize their status in in the way that was available to them at the time in the ’90s,” Crooms said. “Unfortunately, they fell victim to predatory immigration practices that were pretty flagrant.”
The Gonzalezes did not plan to leave the United States after the order was issued, according to Crooms, who said the couple’s attorney at the time misled them that the order could be appealed and possibly lead to eventual legalization.
“After seeing other attorneys, they quickly learned that they were in a very precarious situation with respect to their immigration status,” Crooms added. The couple has spent thousands of dollars on legal counsel over the years, and some of those they hired turned out not to be immigration attorneys at all, Crooms said.
Gladys, 55, and Nelson, 59, “exhausted all legal options to remain in the U.S. between March 2000 and August 2021, including reviews by the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2001 and 2018, Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2010, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in 2021,” ICE said in a statement.
For two decades, the couple remained under an order of supervision, Crooms added. Through the Department of Homeland Security, the program allows those with removal orders to remain in the United States and check in at least once a year while they prepare to leave the country.
The couple’s deportation officer “had not pushed for them to depart until 2018,” leveling with them that it was time to leave the country if their status couldn’t be legalized, Crooms said.
When the Gonzalezes fled Colombia’s capital city, they feared for their lives.
“At the time my parents left Bogota, the city and country was known as the murder capital of the world,” Stephanie wrote. “They fled the rampant drug violence that they were forced to live in.”
After Nelson filed for asylum, the couple became “victims of egregious immigration fraud by their initial attorney,” their daughter told CNN.
“Their initial ‘attorney’ wasn’t even an attorney, and took their money and then their office shut down for a criminal investigation,” Stephanie said.
“Immigration law was rampant with fraud during the late 80s and early 90s, and my parents’ next couple attorneys were disbarred. Getting citizenship is difficult, and my parents only had one opportunity to refile paperwork that the initial ‘attorney’ filed incorrectly.”
For the past 25 years, “my parents were in the court system and appealing for another opportunity due to ‘ineffective counsel,” Stephanie said. “This Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal dismissed the Petition for Review in 2022.”
Under US immigration law, those living illegally in the country can take legal steps to avoid removal, according to ICE. “However, once they have exhausted all due process and appeals, the aliens remain subject to a final order of removal from an immigration judge and ICE must carry out that order,” the agency said.
But the couple’s daughter and attorney stress the Gonzalezes were treated unfairly during the removal process.
“My parents loved this country, sacrificed all of their money to try to gain citizenship, but were failed by the system,” Stephanie told CNN. “They should’ve, at worst, been given the dignity to settle their affairs and fly themselves back to a country they haven’t lived in since the 1980s, and not thrown into a detention center that is just another name for a jail, without any knowledge of when they’d be released.”
Gladys and Nelson were separated and put in ICE custody for about three weeks, at detention facilities in California, Arizona and Louisiana, according to Crooms. Their deportation was delayed partially because of a government error, she said.
“The Department of Homeland Security lost their passports,” Crooms said. The Colombian government had to provide DHS with travel documents that would allow the couple to be removed, she added.
The couple’s daughters are still holding out hope their parents will be able to return to the United States one day, Stephanie said. Right now, the family is focused on helping Gladys and Nelson acclimate to life in Colombia.
“We’ve been able to raise $65,000 to help my parents rebuild their new life in Colombia but also to pay for the best attorneys so that one day they can come back,” she added.
The couple can’t come back to the United States for at least 10 years because of a 1996 law that says anyone who has been in the country illegally for a year or more, and does not follow an order of voluntary departure, is subject to a bar, Crooms said.
“I think they will be able to come back. I just — I don’t foresee that being within the next 10 years,” Crooms said. “And if there is a serious change to the immigration law, then there’s no telling.”
Crooms had accompanied the couple to their immigration check-ins every year since 2018, but this year, they didn’t ask her to join them. Had they called her, Crooms said, she would have advised them to prepare for departure and get their affairs in order, given the current immigration climate.
“I don’t know why they didn’t call me. I think they just really felt like everything has been fine in the past,” Crooms said, adding, “anyone who is on an order of supervision, who has to check in, should anticipate that this is a real possibility for them — that they may be apprehended and removed.”
Both illegal immigrants and permanent residents should also exercise extreme caution when traveling, Crooms said.
The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration violations will continue to impact people such as Gladys and Nelson, Crooms and Stephanie told CNN, along with minority US citizens and immigrants living legally in the United States.
“The amount of people being detained and put into these places is absolutely heartbreaking and I hope this administration would realize the detrimental affect this will have on so many American families,” Stephanie said.
CNN’s Julia Vargas Jones reported from Orange County and Amanda Musa and Holly Yan reported and wrote from Atlanta. CNN’s Alberto Moya and Norma Galeana contributed to this report.
