{Sob}Immigration crackdown splits families
Immigration crackdown splits families
01:00 PM CST on Thursday, January 10, 2008
By MONIKA DIAZ / WFAA-TV
WFAA-TV
Maria Estrella says moving back to Mexico is not an option. Also Online
Monika Diaz reports
IRVING - Immigration officials are gearing up for another year of operations to fight illegal immigration.
Close to 234,000 undocumented immigrants were deported this past year.
Nearly 8,000 were from the North Texas/Oklahoma region.
In Irving, the mayor tells News 8, the city's participation in the federal criminal alien program is working.
He says crime has gone down at least 7 percent in the city.
That's one of the positive consequences but there are also negative consequences and families are being torn apart.
As soon as Maria Estrella picks up her boys from school, they pepper her with questions.
"Hey, mom what are you going to make for dinner anyway?" asks one of her sons.
But some questions are a bit more complicated, such as when one of her sons asks her whether she's found a job.
She says no. Maria knows it's not the answer her sons wanted, but she puts them at ease on the way home.
She heads into the kitchen to prepare dinner and her boys even help make dessert.
"They are my whole life," she says of them.
Every day is bitter-sweet because Maria doesn't know how long this joy will last.
"It's getting worse because I don't work. Each day, my rent is here. My light is here. My bills are here, without him there is nothing here," she said.
She is without the love of her life.
In her hands, a letter from her husband, the children's stepfather from jail.
Maria says he is behind bars waiting for a hearing with an immigration judge because he was detained this past December in Irving.
"I've been crying so much especially on Christmas Day - it was my two kids and me, alone in here," she said.
His absence has been hard on all of them.
"He is very special to me. He is like my dad," said Abdy Orozco.
Her struggle is a familiar one in Irving and across the nation.
"I bet you there are other families like me dealing with the same thing," Maria said.
Families torn apart by illegal immigration crackdowns - it's an issue the mayor of Irving can't ignore.
"We are concerned that young children, in fact, mostly American citizens in our city, spirits are being destroyed by this process and all this talk about their parents," said the Mayor of Irving Herbert Gears.
In the eyes of the federal government, the law comes before family.
"We understand that the arrest of an illegal alien may have a negative impact on members of the violator's family. Quite simply, however, parenthood does not make you immune from having to comply with the nation's laws, and the responsibility for any negative consequences lies squarely with the violator," said Tim Counts of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
For Maria, moving to Mexico with her husband isn't an option.
"My kids don't have future in Mexico. My kids, they belong here," she said.
Irving handed over more than 2,000 undocumented immigrants for deportation. Some of them are already back in town. They couldn't stay away from their families.
Maria knows some of them.
"Two of them, they are already back and in here. They are already working again in the same place," she said.
She smiles as the phone rings.
She hears from her husband once a week and he always makes the same promise - he will be back home - one way or another.
E-mail mdiaz@wfaa.com.
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