Dad’s deportation rips Bay Area family apart
With husband sent to Mexico, Fairfield mom forced to make heartbreaking decisions over children, move
Sandra Salazar had spent weeks preparing to move, and now she took stock of the memories scattered through her Fairfield home: the boxes full of family pictures, the garbage bags stuffed with shredded documents, an empty wall once covered by a flat-screen TV displaying a series of Netflix movies. She wasn’t ready for this, and neither was her daughter, Nubia. “Mom, I’m going to stay here,” said the 10-year-old, taking a toothbrush out of her mouth. “I won’t go. I’ll stay in the attic.”
Salazar sat on a bed that remained in the home and listened as her daughter ran through other options — perhaps she could stay at a friend’s house?
“It’s going to be OK,” Salazar said, hugging her daughter while trying to keep herself from breaking down.
This was no simple change of address. After spending months puzzling over her family’s immigration dilemma, Salazar decided to move with Nubia from Solano County to Guadalajara, Mexico — even though they were both nativeborn U.S. citizens who preferred to stay. Even though she would be leaving behind a grown daughter struggling with medical issues. Even though they had grown close with their community and their church.
“It breaks my heart,” Salazar said. “This is something I would never have voluntarily done.”
The other option was to stay put and accept living apart from the family patriarch, who was forced to leave the country in August. Though Cuauhtemoc “Temo” Salazar, 46, had been brought to the U.S. at age 6 with a visa by his mother, and though he married an American at age 23, he never obtained citizenship — and a couple of drug-possession convictions he picked up as a young man may have cost him the chance to vie for legal status.
“I want to be with my husband, and a family needs to be together,” Salazar said. “We’ve been apart too long. I just want him to be in (Nubia’s) life like a regular parent.”
Salazar entertained hopes that a reunion would take place in Fairfield, not Mexico, but her optimism about Temo’s immigration case waned, replaced by a sadness that shadowed the family. Nubia dreamed one night that her father was back home, only to wake up to the reality that he was thousands of miles away.
“Sometimes I feel like I’ll never see him again,” Nubia said.
The mother’s decision offers a window into how deportation in America — both before and after the election of President Trump — impacts not only the person who must leave, but the families and communities around them, often yielding anguish and difficult choices. A man brought to the U.S. for a better life had to watch his child move in the opposite direction.
Over the past few months, Salazar, 43, tried to push aside thoughts about the upcoming move, thinking of it as a summer vacation. But as the departure approached — with a flight to Mexico booked for June 15 — so came a series of finales: the last Sunday at church, the last day of elementary school, the last meal in the family home.
Salazar’s mind often raced, consumed not only with helplessness but with worry about Nubia, who doesn’t speak Spanish, has never lived in Mexico and attended the same school since kindergarten. Nubia adored her school — it’s bully-free with a great field and two play structures, she would say.
Salazar’s older daughters, and their places in the big move, were another concern. Both Maya, 19, and Citlalli, 22, had lived at the family home. Her middle daughter planned to travel to Guadalajara for the summer, then return to the U.S. to study at a community college.
Citlalli, who struggles with chronic health problems caused by a series of concussions she endured while playing sports in school, was preparing to move to a homeless shelter in Solano County. The family hopes to soon find her specialized care, and doesn’t trust that she’ll receive adequate care in Mexico. Both Maya and Citlalli are American citizens.
The family had developed deep ties in Fairfield after moving there in 2012, and joined the small, close-knit congregation at Saint Matthew Baptist Church in nearby Vacaville. Temo Salazar became a minister and took care of the facilities, and Sandra Salazar taught Sunday school.
The two focused on running their maintenance and janitorial business, with Temo managing the work and Sandra handling the accounting. On the weekends, they took day trips. Napa’s Oxbow Market, full of desserts and food stands, was a favorite of the girls.
The event that changed their lives came in July, when federal immigration officials denied Temo’s application for a green card, citing his two drug possession convictions from 1989 and 1990, when he was in a string of trouble that began in his late teens. The government told him he was unauthorized to live in the U.S. and that he must leave as soon as possible.
Sandra fought to keep her husband in the country. She contacted attorneys and even sent a letter to former President Barack Obama describing the family’s predicament and Temo’s community ties.
“A heartbroken wife and mother,” the letter was signed.
But in mid-August, Temo walked his youngest daughter to her first day of school before climbing into his truck and making the long journey south.
The family no longer ran its janitorial business. And after Temo left, money became tight, so Sandra took on a part-time job with the local school district helping special-needs students. Her landlord agreed to cut her rent in half, but she still could barely make the payments. It was yet another signal to Sandra that life in America was no longer sustainable.
Community members like Brigitte Aton, who met Temo while volunteering to help the homeless a few years ago, rallied around the family and launched a GoFundMe Web page to help support them, both in the U.S. and as they got
“It breaks my heart. This is something I would never have voluntarily done.” Sandra Salazar, on giving up her life in the U.S. to join her deported husband in Mexico
settled in Mexico.
“They’re just beautiful people, and they love and serve the Lord faithfully,” Aton said. Referring to Temo’s decision to honor the government’s request to leave the country, she said, “He could have just ignored it — I admire that.”
By early June, Sandra’s plan to follow her husband was in its last stages. She had plane tickets and had sold off furniture and appliances, and one Saturday morning she held a garage sale.
The mother and her three girls stood at the top of their driveway as neighbors and strangers picked through their possessions, like the Christmas decorations they’d collected over the years. Nubia stared intently when children ruffled through her dolls, puzzles and Barbie sets before turning away.
One neighbor walked over and asked where they were going. “Mexico,” Sandra replied.
“Oh, we were wondering because we hadn’t seen your husband,” the woman said. “I hope that you’re able to come back. Please come and visit me.”
Another neighbor asked Sandra if she was “going to Mexico because of Trump.” Her own boyfriend, she said, had mused about moving to Canada because of the new president.
The next week brought another milestone — Nubia’s last day of school. Toward the end of the year, the girl had tried to take mental snapshots of everything on the campus.
“I try to listen to every little thing,” she said. “I try to look at everything.”
On that final day, her four closest friends hugged her in the parking lot, telling her they didn’t want to let her go. Nubia was quiet, but tears welled in her eyes.
“We just wanted her to have her close friends since kindergarten, to grow up with these kids, have that connection,” Sandra said. “Right now we are being disconnected from all of that.”
On their final Sunday in church on June 11, Sandra and Nubia said their goodbyes, and the church played a slideshow featuring pictures of the family along with their favorite prayer song in Spanish, “Awesome.” Nubia got her wish and was baptized.
“We are going to miss them tremendously,” Vic A. Russell, the church pastor, said later. “The first day without them — it was a big void in our congregation, and it was hard for me to concentrate on my sermon and teaching . ... We haven’t gotten over it.”
As the departure neared, Sandra often found the three sisters huddled in their cramped hallway, holding one another and sobbing quietly. Nubia and her sister Citlalli made “appointments” to spend time together in their final days, not knowing when they would see each other again.
For a while, Sandra considered moving the whole family into a shelter, and not leaving for Mexico until Citlalli was situated in a long-term home. But they had their tickets, and Sandra felt they couldn’t wait any longer.
On June 13, the family’s final day in the Bay Area, Sandra knelt on the carpeted floor of her bedroom, trying to organize papers she’d need in Mexico. But her heart kept pounding and the questions kept gnawing at her.
Where would Citlalli live? Where would Nubia go to school in Mexico? What would she do for work when she got there? Would they be able to get comfortable? Would they be happy?
“These past couple of days,” she said, wiping away tears, “I just cry out to my Lord and just ask him to give me the strength to go through with this and to help me because I just can’t do it by myself. It is a lot to deal with.”
She thought back to a school assignment given to Nubia in February, to write about a fictional earthquake. Toward the end of the girl’s story, the words started to sound familiar.
“After the earthquake almost everything was destroyed even people,” she wrote. “Our house our neighborhood was gone. So me and my family held hands and started to pray. Then my dad said, ‘Let’s just move to Mexico.’
“We all said, ‘OK,’ So we moved to Mexico. And never saw or felt an earthquake again. We were all normal again.”
But the next day, June 14, nothing seemed normal as a friend drove the family to Sacramento International Airport. It was a quiet drive, save for the girls’ periodic tears.
They would fly that day to Arizona, where Temo’s mother and sister live, before continuing on to Mexico the next day. There, they would live with Sandra’s parents, at least for a while, and continue to seek a legal path to return together.
At the Sacramento airport, Sandra felt a pit in her stomach as she checked her bags, so she stepped away. She and her daughters gathered on the side of the security line, formed a small circle, and held each other tightly, their arms around each others’ waists and shoulders, for nearly half an hour.
“I love you so much,” they said repeatedly.
As Citlalli and the family friend returned to Solano County, Nubia wept as she walked toward the gate. She was carrying her favorite pillow, and a pink stuffed animal hung from her turquoise backpack, a parting gift from her best friend.
“I’m going to miss Lalli,” she said to herself over and over, referring to her older sister. “I’m going to miss Lalli. I’m going to miss Lalli.”