Deported publisher plans return to St. Louis

By Doug Moore
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/13/2008



Cecilia Velazquez
(P-D)

ST. LOUIS -- The publisher of the region’s oldest Spanish-language newspaper is headed back to St. Louis after she was deported to Mexico two years ago as an illegal immigrant.
Cecilia Velazquez has been granted a waiver allowing her to re-enter the country legally with the understanding that she will apply to become a permanent U.S. resident.

Without the waiver, Velazquez was prohibited from re-entering the U.S. for 10 years. She was able to prove that her deportation was a hardship on her husband, Andrew Jones.

"I’m so happy to be coming back," Velazquez, 38, said from her cell phone this week in Cancun, Mexico, where she is living with Jones.

Velazquez said she plans to come to St. Louis next week for at least a few days and permanently return with her husband within a few months.

Velazquez was stopped in Houston after entering the U.S. with a visitor’s visa on Dec. 27, 2000. She was given two weeks to return to Mexico, but did not. She was arrested in 2003 in St. Louis. An immigration judge issued an order in 2004 for her to leave the country. She took the case to the Board of Immigration Appeals and then to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with the immigration judge.

AdvertisementOn April 7, 2006, authorities arrested her outside her home in north St. Louis County. Seven days later, she was in Mexico.

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