My daughter’s father was arrested for a DUI in Memphis in July and today ICE took him to Mason, TN to a deportation hold. He’s told in three days they’ll be shipping him to another facility in Louisiana to await deportation. He doesn’t have any more information and can’t get anyone to talk to him about what will happen from there.
I’m hoping someone can give me an idea of how long it usually takes to be deported to Mexico and where they drop them off. I don’t have a clue how to help him but his brother will send money to wherever he can to at least get him a bus ticket to get to their family in Mexico City. We have never known anyone who was deported so we’re not up on the details, what it will be like for him, the dangers (of which I’m sure there are many). He’ll be left with no money and only a torn shirt and shorts, no wallet, and I think he was wearing flip-flops at the time. I don’t know if clothes can be sent to him in the facility. I don’t know if he should be sent money there or wait until he’s dropped off in Mexico and send it through a Western Union type place. If anyone knows anything at all about this fill me in because I’m completely lost here.
The reason he’s afraid to have money sent to the facility is he doesn’t have any ID and he’s afraid they’ll just give him a check when he gets out. Without ID he surely wouldn’t be able to cash it so he’d be trapped penniless.
You’ll probably get better info later, but for starters, the U.S. government will take care of getting him back to Mexico. Hopefully you’ll get more information as they get closer to actually deporting him. ICE has a website and one of the menu options is a Detainee Locator (on the bottom right) and also another one for Detention Facilities. I think when they get closer to deporting him they’ll let him know where he’ll be dropped off in Mexico. I’d probably wait until finding out when and where and wire money there. Hopefully you’ll get better details from people who have experience dealing with this situation.
Good luck.
Bri2k
P.S. From what little I’ve read on deportations, they’ll give him a small amount of money (one story said $3 for a case back in 2008) which is probably in cash. Goodness knows if it’s in dollars or pesos.
Thank you. I have his location and his number already so I guess I’ll just sit and wait. Just feeling helpless. I want to make sure he’s safe even if we’re not “together” anymore. I’ve heard such awful things about how they’re just dumped in a high crime area with no money or their belongings. I hope that’s just stories. He has family but they’re so far away from the border.
He had 60 dollars in the jail while he he was being held there so I’m hoping they’ll give that back to him at least. I have no idea how much a bus ticket costs in Mexico either.
I don’t know all the details but my cousin’s husband was arrested and deported a few months ago and it was seriously fast. He was in Mexico within 2 weeks.
I just hope they give it to him in a way he can use it and not a check. Then again if he’s wired money I don’t know if he can get that either without an ID. He really screwed himself, no doubt about that.
Thanks! That’s an interesting message board, to say the least. I didn’t really see anything so wrong with what happened other than the guy was deported. His charges were dropped. His problem was ICE put a hold on him so it doesn’t matter what his crime was or if he was found not guilty. Or maybe I missed something? It’s hard for me to be too judgmental considering the years of crap I put up with before I finally had to cut my daughter’s father loose.
Well, if he was illegally here, he doesn’t have a right to be here, regardless of the status of some other case.
I don’t feel a shred of pity for the guy. You pays your money, you takes your chances, you know. Sometimes we catch the illegals and send them back, like we should. If he didn’t want to run the risk of being dumped in Tijuana with no money and no shoes, he shouldn’t have tried to live here illegally.
All pending deportations are to be held for review and only undocumented immigrants involved in crimes will be deported. Simply being in the country without papers isn’t a crime and they have much more important fish to fry.
Yeah except many of these people, much like my daughter’s father, came here as a child. He has no education, instead he worked in bricklaying from age six. He was brought here twenty years ago at age 12 to work tobacco. Brought here by an American man who told him and six other boys that he could sponsor them and they’d make lots of money and meet lots of pretty girls.
I don’t know how that woman’s husband got here. Maybe his story is somewhere else on that board, but the fact is you have no idea what brought him to this country, and this is not an immigration debate thread. I simply want to help my daughter’s father not get killed when he’s dumped. I certainly am not asking for anyone’s pity.
Rushgeekgirl, if this means what I think it does, it could be HUGE. Your S.O. should get legal assistance - he has potential remedies from deportation because he has been here so long, and because he has a U.S. citizen child (and one with issues, at that). He shouldn’t just agree to leave without knowing his options.
901 Convention Center Blvd. Suite 119, New Orleans, LA. 70130
Tel.: 504-272-2198 ext. 100
Fax: 504-528-3724
They are there to help Mexican citizens, and they often do a great job. They can help him get UID, etc. In fact, Homeland Security will need to contact them in order to prove that your S.O. is a Mexican citizen and can be returned there, so they should know about him soon if they don’t already. Don’t throw away your opportunity to keep him here! PM me if you need more help.
He may also be eligible for cancellation of removal, which would meana he would be granted a green card in deportation proceedings before a judge. Please talk to an experienced immigration attorney about this!
Also, I should clarify that the Mexican Consulate, if nothing else, should be able to help him get Mexican ID documents. He’s going to need those regardless of what happens to him, and probably should have looked into it a long time ago.
We did this a long time ago when he went for his matricula, but they wanted a copy of the police report from when it was stolen. He took it back in when they had a visiting consulate here but they said then he had to go to where he got it the first time in Florida. Unable to afford that trip I guess we just gave up.
Honestly we’ve agreed it’s best for him to go back to Mexico. His mother is ill and they have land he inherited he needs to either sell or sign over to her. We would like for him to eventually come back one day legally IF he can clean up his act. He was going down a bad path with alcohol though and I’m not interested in living with him now. He was involved in a crime, a DUI and driving without a license or insurance. He also had a previous simple possession charge (a roach in his pocket but still, possession) but his punishment was probation. That’s what confuses me. He was given probation and an alcohol education class but how could he fulfill his probation if he’s deported? Makes no sense to me how they do things.
I will definitely check out the links you’ve provided and I really appreciate your help. I am especially interested in that T visa. Two of his younger brothers came with him, all children, and one was deported last year because he wasn’t aware of the help he could get.
If he agrees that going back to Mexico is the best idea then all he needs to do is go. They won’t stop him on the way in.
As far as being deported there by ICE, they may not send him. The law was just changed yesterday, apparently the same day he was sent to their facility. The DWI and possession charges won’t help him, they may disqualify him. But they aren’t considered threats to national security when citizens commit those crimes. It sounds like he has a long work history and children in the country, entry circumstances that were beyond his control as a minor, etc. An immigration judge reviews the details of each case and decides.
If your goal is for him to legally one day be able to come back then allowing a deportation order to proceed would not be beneficial to that goal. It would be better to get it all squared away now while he has a guaranteed audience with an immigration court and his feet on US soil.
Oh that is a good point. I’d much rather him go home on his own. I’ve been seeing this as a push that he wouldn’t make on his own to get away from the triggers but I didn’t think about how deportation might make it harder for him later to come back legally.
I’ll get in touch with these immigration attorneys on the link from Eva Luna and see what they can do for him.
It’s going to make it a LOT harder for him to come back legally. If he has been in the U.S. illegally for more than a year, once he leaves, even on his own, he will be barred from returning legally for 10 years unless he can get a special waiver from deportation. And there’s another waiver that he will need for having been previously deported. Waivers are a huge pain in the ass to prepare and are by no means a slamdunk to get approved. He should have a shot at cancellation of removal (he’d have a better shot if you were married, but he still has a shot).
Even if you don’t want to live with him right now, don’t you want him around for your daughter? And to help support her? He’ll have a much easier time doing that here than he will in Mexico.
