Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Deportation stayed for two Guatemalans
Immigration agency grants year’s reprieve to Springdale pair in U.S. illegally
FAYETTEVILLE — A Guatemalan couple who have lived illegally in Arkansas since 2001 won’t be deported this year.
Amanda Aristondo, 40, the pastor for Hispanic congregants at Church of the Nazarene in Bentonville, and husband Jose Aristondo, 48, received a one-year “stay of removal” Tuesday, said Nathan Bogart, their Fayetteville attorney.
“We are very happy,” Amanda Aristondo said. “We were praying for this, and I was expecting this.”
Bogart said the Aristondos, who live in Springdale, were expecting deportation after receiving a letter in late February saying they had to meet with a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in an unmarked federal building in Fayetteville on March 14.
About 30 people greeted the Aristondos upon their arrival for that 9 a.m. check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many of those in the crowd began to pray.
“When I got to the … office, I saw everybody praying there,” Amanda Aristondo said. “When I got out of the car, my legs were shaking. But I saw all the people and there was something in my bones,
like God was there. And my legs felt stronger.”
Amanda Aristondo said the couple received so much support from the community that “I was expecting something good to come from that.”
The Aristondos, who are Guatemalan citizens, overstayed tourist visas in 2001, Bogart said. They were denied asylum as refugees in 2008 and since then had been getting one-year stays to remain in the United States.
Bogart said it’s difficult for people from Central American countries to get asylum.
“You have to prove you’re a refugee,” he said. “If you can’t prove that, if you get several elements correct but you miss one, you’re going to be denied.”
In February 2016, the Aristondos’ request for a stay was “abruptly denied,” but Immigration and Customs Enforcement took no action against them, Bogart said. He said the agency may not have known at that time about Amanda’s work as a pastor or the fact that their 21-year-old daughter Katherin has a rare form of cancer and goes regularly to Memphis for treatments at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
“It would certainly have taken away her support group if her parents were forced to leave,” Bogart said.
Then, another request to remain in the U.S. was denied in February of this year, and the Aristondos were required to check in with the immigration agency.
The move coincided with nationwide reports of people who were not previously considered enforcement priorities being detained or deported after similar meetings.
“We explained the situation,” Bogart said. “We explained that we weren’t trying to avoid contact with [the immigration agency], that we wanted another stay. I think they were going to encourage them to self-deport even in their current situation, but we filed for another stay and they didn’t encourage them to deport.”
Deportation would have separated the Aristondos from their two college-age daughters and would have left a void in the Bentonville community, where Amanda pastors dozens of Spanish-speaking congregants, said church members and friends.
Katherin Aristondo attends Hendrix College, and Amanda Michelle Aristondo goes to Central Baptist College. Both colleges are in Conway. Both daughters played soccer on their college teams.
Because the Aristondo daughters arrived as children, they applied for and received deferred-removal status through a federal program that former President Barack Obama’s administration implemented in 2012. The status grants them work permits and means they are not priorities for immigration enforcement.
The request for a stay for Amanda and Jose Aristondo went to the agency’s New Orleans field office because it originated in Fayetteville. The director of the New Orleans office has the discretion to grant stays or deny them, said Tom Byrd, a spokesman for the agency.
With the stay of removal, Bogart and the Aristondos have time to regroup and decide what to do next.
“The sense of urgency has died down a little bit since another stay has been approved,” Bogart said. “All of her family is here in the United States and most of her husband’s family is here, too. All of their relatives are either citizens or lawful residents.”
Amanda Aristondo said she has three brothers and their families who live in Arkansas. Other family members live in California.
Bogart took over the case about a month ago. The Aristondos previously had a lawyer who was based in Miami.
Amanda Aristondo said that when she told her Miami attorney about the letter she received in February, he told her the letter meant she would be deported.
“That didn’t happen,” she said. “Thank God.”
Amanda Aristondo said she became associate Hispanic pastor at Church of the Nazarene in Bentonville in 2007 and official pastor of the Hispanic ministry at the church in 2013. She pastors to a congregation of about 50 Spanish-speaking people. She is taking online classes through Nazarene Bible College toward a bachelor’s degree in pastoral ministry.
The Aristondos are from Chiquimula in southeast Guatemala, near the border with Honduras.
The threat of violent crime in Guatemala is rated by the U. S. State Department as “critical.”
“It is not a safe place to go during the night,” Amanda Aristondo said.
She much prefers her new home.
“I love Arkansas,” she said. Among the cases that diverged from enforcement norms was the January arrest of 18-year-old Tatiana Jaco-Alvarez of Searcy, who came to the U.S. as an unaccompanied migrant child and has a pending claim for asylum.
Jaco-Alvarez was detained during a Little Rock check-in and jailed in Louisiana for a week before being released on bond. Immigration authorities will not take further action against her until her claim is decided, a spokesman said.
Deportation would have separated the Aristondos from their two college-age daughters and would have left a void in the Bentonville community, where Amanda pastors dozens of Spanishspeaking congregants, said church members and friends.