Haverford rallies for man facing deportation
HAVERFORD » Having had to sleep in his home country with a machete by his side as a teen, Jonatan Palacios was in the process of becoming a legal citizen when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials surrounded him on May 11 and took him into custody.
According to his wife, the restaurant worker and honors community college student had failed to show up for a court hearing when he first arrived in the United States, more than a decade ago.
“I don’t know why they would put so much effort into someone who never had any criminal or civil infractions,” Palacios’ wife, Lillie Estelle Williams, said.
On Thursday, at 5:15 p.m. the Havertown-Area Community Action Network is hosting a vigil in support of Palacios at the SEPTA parking lot at 43 Haverford Station Road in Haverford.
“(Palacios) is a valued member of the community, a loving husband and a straight-A student at Delaware County Community College who was ripped from his family and life months after he had begun the process of becoming a legal citizen in the United States ... This type of senseless targeting of innocent people is happening in communities like ours across the country,” the group stated,
ICE spokesman Khaalid Walls issued a statement regarding Palacios’ case.
“Jonatan (Palacios) was ordered removed from the U.S. by an immigration judge in 2008,” it read. “Prior to his May 11 arrest, he was considered an ICE fugitive. He will remain in ICE custody pending the outcome of his immigration case.”
Questions about the order were directed to the U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review, where Kathryn Mattingly, assistant press secretary, said the office does not comment on immigration judge’s decisions.
She added, however, that she would confirm the order if his alien registration number and a privacy waiver signed by Palacios or a representative of record was obtained.
Williams, who is 27 years old, like her husband of two years, said the couple submitted an I-130 spousal petition for him in October to correct his legal status.
She said her husband came to the United States as an unaccompanied minor when he was 16 years old from Honduras.
“His father has been extremely abusive,” Williams said. “His mom had psychological issues ... He couldn’t go to school because he was helping his mom to try and have some food. Sometimes, they only had onions to eat for dinner.”
In addition, Williams said, students have to pay to go to school in Honduras.
In a family of four children, his older brother had left and he remained to care for the two younger siblings and was often alone.
Even with as little as they had, Williams said, “People were trying to break into his home.”
She said Palacios told her, “I was sleeping with a machete by (my) side because (I) was scared.”
Having heard that the environment was better in the United States, he decided to make the trip on his own.
“He came by foot and on the back of trains,” Williams said. “He was stalled for a while in Mexico. Finally, he crossed the border from Mexico into the United States ... He was immediately apprehended by Border Control because he was a minor.”
Williams said he was housed in a children’s home in Texas for a few months before immigration officials released him to a home in Philadelphia.
Here, he worked to get his high school diploma online and worked all kinds of jobs – landscaping, dishwasher and cook, his wife said.
When detained, he was one of the head cooks at a Main Line restaurant and was studying engineering part-time at Delaware County Community College, Williams said.
In fact, the night before ICE arrived, the couple were celebrating his completion of his final exam the previous night. Then, on May 11, he awoke and prepared to go to his work between 5 and 6 a.m.
“I was in bed ... and I kinda heard the door closed,” Williams said. All of a sudden, he called.
“Come down, come down, it’s immigration,” she said he told her.
She said she ran to the window of their Haverford apartment and looked down to see several cars surrounding her husband’s car.
“He was about to drive out before the ICE officers trapped him in,” Williams said. “I was very calm despite the fact inside I was freaking out. It was surreal. I was in shock.”
Just in case, she had previously created a packet of documents including their wedding certificate and the pending documents they filed in October.
“They handed it back to me,” Williams said. “They said it doesn’t matter.”
She said her heart sunk. “Oh great,” she said she thought, “my family doesn’t matter ... This is our lives, this isn’t just a case for us.”
She was directed to call a lawyer but couldn’t reach one due to the early hour.
Williams said they were told if her husband didn’t get out of the car, “Lower Merion police were going to break him out ... That was really scary.”
They looked at each other through the window and she told him, “I don’t think you have a choice.”
When he got out, she told him she loved him. “I kissed him and gave him a hug before they handcuffed him and grabbed him,” she said.
Palacios was first taken to the immigration office in Philadelphia before he was sent to the ICE detention center in York, Pa., where he remains. Williams said she did get a lawyer to file a motion to
reopen his case for a stay of removal. Their court date is Aug. 1.
“ICE has still not released him and said they won’t until his upcoming court date,” his wife said. “In the meantime, Jonatan is locked up in jail, not having done anything criminal.”
She’s trying to juggle her job as an administrator for an educational technology company and dealing with the legal processes
and getting to see him in York, a two and a half hour drive from their Haverford home.
“When I see him, I get 30 minutes,” Williams said. “I can’t touch him. It’s through a window pane over a phone.”
In the meantime, she has to endure without the man she calls her soulmate, who has been by her side since they met while she was a student at Bryn Mawr College in 2010 and her roommate was dating his older brother.
“I’m probably going through the hardest time of my life and I don’t have my best friend to go through it with me,” she said.
She was astounded to the enforcement attention given to her husband.
“When he was 16, he missed one court date,” Williams said. “I think the big thing is that I keep wondering why would they put so much resources to separate someone who’s come forward, who’s trying to become a U.S. citizen and had never committed anything criminal, who’s a churchgoing, kind person who’s only a benefit to the local community? Why would they put so much effort into this?”