Since his return to power, Donald Trump led a tough immigration policy, even signing a series of executive orders aimed at profoundly reforming the country’s immigration system.
Under that aggressive speech, Cases of separated families have increased throughout the country. One of those tragedies was experienced by the Rivera family, from North Carolina, who, after months of threats and fear, ended up succumbing.
So, a few days ago, Jenni Rivera, a mathematics teacher from Raleigh, watched Fidel, her 17-year-old husband and best friend, board a plane bound for Mexico after immigration laws left her family with no choice but to separate.
With tears and uncertainty about the near futureFidel left his two daughters, with no other option: “It’s not about me, it’s about my family… my wife and my daughters are American citizens. I only want the best for them. Every father should be able to be with his family.”
On a page that reflected the long compendium of similar cases, Fidel Rivera boarded a flight back to Mexico. After 30 years in the United States and 17 years of marriage, she made the painful decision to self-deport.leaving behind his wife and daughters Mackenzie (17) and Isabella (15), rather than continue living under the constant fear of being detained and deported.
According to testimony before the organization American Families United (AFU), Fidel did not want his daughters to join the list of a hundred US citizen children, from newborns to teenagers, who were left stranded without parents due to this year’s immigration measures.
“Fidel is an incredible human being,” Jenni said. “I didn’t want to see him arrested and held in a detention center, knowing what happens in those places. If his spirit was broken or if he came out different, I just couldn’t take it.”
Like 1.4 million mixed-status couples in the United States, the Rivera family has lived with the reality that marrying a citizen does not automatically guarantee legal status, leaving families trapped between living in fear and living apart.
“We lived locked in a box for so long. Every decision we made was conditioned by the fear that Fidel would be taken away,” Jenni explained. The recent increase in immigration measures put unbearable pressure on the family. “We couldn’t continue living with that anxiety. It was destroying my health and I wasn’t going to let it steal the years I had left to enjoy life.” For Fidel, the most difficult thing about leaving is missing everyday moments with his daughters, especially their soccer games.
“What I’m going to miss the most are the soccer games with my daughters. That’s where I found my peace,” Fidel said. “At games I don’t think about work problems, I don’t think about what I have to fix at home. I just watch my daughters play and it’s like I’m on another planet. That’s what I’m going to miss the most.”
Fidel worked for the past 17 years as a highly respected electrician for a company near Raleigh, one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Jenni is an experienced math teacher at a time when math teachers are in short supply nationwide.
Although Fidel’s wife and daughters will remain in the United States for now, Jenni is already planning to retire early so she can leave the country and be with her husband.
“I’m going to take all my retirement income and leave this country to spend it somewhere else. We’re going to sell this house and buy something else, and it won’t be here,” Jenni said. “America is losing money on families like ours. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Despite this, like the Riveras, family separation and the “kidnapping” of children are the fears that migrants who go to their workplaces, recreation centers or courts face daily, due to the raids in which masked agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) use excessive brutality to tear them from the arms of their loved ones and take them to detention centers. arrest.
Keep reading:
· They scam an immigrant: he paid $38,000 to process his Green Card and they sent him false documents
· Why immigrants put padlocks on the border bridge that connects Mexico with Texas
· Immigrant self-deports out of “despair” after being mistakenly detained by ICE