Deported father trying to adjust to life in Tijuana after decades in U.S.
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Gaston Cazares with his family. (Courtesy Gaston Cazares)
October 2, 2017
A man who spent almost 30 years living in the San Diego area is trying to figure out how he’s going to support his family, including an autistic son who depended on him, after he was deported Thursday to Tijuana.
Gaston Cazares, 45, has no criminal record except an illegal entry misdemeanor he pleaded to almost six years ago after immigration officials determined he used false information to work at a restaurant and seafood market in Pacific Beach. Because of his son’s needs, Cazares was able to convince authorities to let him stay in the U.S. as long as he checked in once a year.
President Donald Trump issued a January executive order that put an end to such practices, and many unauthorized immigrants with stories like Cazares's have been deported this year when they checked in with immigration officials. Guadalupe García de Rayos was one of the first such cases to reach the spotlight after she was deported in February from Arizona.
Cazares checked in with immigration officials in April, and they told him that he would be deported. He spent nearly six months trying to get them to reconsider. When he reported to their offices on Thursday as requested, they took him to Tijuana.
“I want the opportunity to support my family,” Cazares said. “We never asked for nothing. All I did was work. Everything is my family. I work for them.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack said that Cazares’s request to stay in the U.S. was denied because of the agency’s current enforcement priorities.
“While ICE continues to prioritize its enforcement resources to focus on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security, the agency’s acting director has made it clear that ICE will not exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement,” Mack said. “All of those in violation of our nation’s immigration laws may be subject to arrest, detention and, if found removable, he or she will be removed from the United States.”
Cazares came to the U.S. in 1989 when he was about 17. He went to visit family in Mexico in 1998, shortly after Congress made penalties harsher for immigration violations, his attorney said.
When Cazares tried to cross back through a port of entry and showed a border official his California driver’s license, his attorney said, the official determined that Cazares had falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen and deported him. With the new laws, which created a process called expedited removal, the official did not have to send Cazares to an immigration judge before deporting him.
Cazares later came back into the U.S. illegally.
Because the official said Cazares made a false claim of citizenship, now that he has been deported, he is permanently barred from returning to the U.S.
His lawyer, Nicole Leon, said that the only way Cazares can come back is through an act of Congress.
Leon is looking into asking a member of Congress to sponsor a bill for Cazares. She knows getting that kind of legislation signed into law is extremely difficult. The most recent private bill that passed, granting someone a green card, was signed in 2012, and only six percent of such bills have become law since 1983, according to data from Congress.
“There’s no way to appeal this,” Leon said. “There’s no legal remedy in that regard. His options are extremely limited, slim to none really, in terms of immigrating.”
Arnie Garcia, 25, of Linda Vista, met Cazares when Garcia was a child, and they later worked together. He described Cazares as a hard-working family man.
Garcia stood with a crowd outside ICE offices on Thursday to find out what would happen to Cazares.
“It felt like losing a family member,” Garcia said. “Everyone was crying. What really hurt me was his family — I was thinking, ‘How are they going to get through this? How are they going to survive now?’”
Cazares is still hopeful that he can reunite permanently with his family in San Diego. His children are U.S. citizens.
“All I know is that I’m going to try to find a way to come back to San Diego because my family needs me,” Cazares said. “I want to come back legally.”
In the meantime, Cazares has to find work in Tijuana. He’s staying with his wife’s nephew.
“I’m just looking around, and the salaries are very low compared with San Diego,” Cazares said. “When I was in San Diego, I was the provider of everything. It’s going to be very tough.”
His 17-year-old daughter wants to get a job to help out, he said, but he wants her focusing on her studies. She’s a senior at Scripps Ranch High School.
Cazares is also worried about his son, who is 15. Cazares helped his son work through the challenges of autism and often took him along for daily errands like going to the car wash, which his son enjoyed.
“I’m sad because he’s made a lot of progress,” Cazares said. “He needs me. He needs me. I’m a little scared that he will get depression or another kind of emotional issue.”
His son doesn’t yet understand why he can’t come home, he said, though he’s explained it several times.
“All my work I do to make good kids just fell apart,” Cazares said. “Everything is falling apart.”
A fundraiser organized by UndocuMedia to support the Cazares family has raised close to $10,000.
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