Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Yale student working to keep mother in U.S.
Honduran immigrant detained since August
NEW YORK — A Yale University graduate student is constantly watching his phone as he waits for news on his mother, who is detained and could be deported to Honduras, a country where he says she won’t get the medical treatment she needs as a survivor of stage 4 cancer.
Cristian Padilla Romero, a 24-yearold doctoral student, created an online petition asking for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release his mother, and he has raised more than $39,000 through a crowdfunding campaign for her legal and medical needs.
His mother, Tania Romero, has been in a Georgia detention center since mid-August.
“She is not doing well. We are asking for her release so she can see a doctor,” said Padilla Romero.
An ICE representative said that, due to privacy restrictions, the agency is unable to comment on Romero’s case.
The student said his mother was taken to an unknown airport last Sunday night but was then returned to the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla.
Padilla Romero, a Ph.D student in Latin American history, faces an uncertain future himself: He is part of a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which shields young immigrants from deportation. The Trump administration wants to end the program. The Supreme
Court heard oral arguments on it Tuesday.
Lynn Cooley, the dean of Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, wrote a guest column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that said sending Romero back to Honduras “is inhumane.”
“The Romero family reminds us that this is a country built on the hard work and intellectual abilities of immigrants,” wrote Cooley. “We should not block access to the resources that make them, and all of us, better.”
Padilla Romero said he traveled to Washington on Wednesday and spoke with staff members of Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumental, both Connecticut Democrats, about his mother’s case. His online petition has more than 37,000 signatures.
He said he has also been in touch with the office of Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga. Her office did not answer a message seeking comment.
Romero, 48, arrived in the United States in the 1990s and lived in Orlando, Florida, and Atlanta. Over the years she worked as a housekeeper, a dishwasher and in construction to help support three daughters and Padilla Romero, the student said. In August, she was stopped for a speeding violation near Atlanta. She had no driver’s license, and police alerted ICE.
Padilla Romero said ICE issued a removal order for Romero in 2008 based on her failure to show up for scheduled hearings in immigration court. The student said he obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act request that show Romero never received the notices advising her to appear in court.