‘Nightmare’ sees husband/dad deported
With two immigration agents hovering nearby, Jorge Garcia pulled his family close for one final hug by security gates at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. His wife and 15-year-old daughter sobbed in his arms. His 12-year-old son stood stoically. Garcia was silent.
Soon after, the 39-yearold landscaper from Lincoln Park, Mich., boarded a plane bound for Mexico, deported to his home country on Monday after three decades of living, working and raising a family in the United States.
Garcia was brought to the country with a relative when he was 10 years old, according to the Detroit Free Press. He had been facing a removal order from immigration courts since 2009, but his deportation was stayed during the Obama administration as his family looked for ways to get him legal status. Under President Donald Trump, that was no longer an option.
“It’s just a nightmare,” his wife, Cindy Garcia, told the Detroit News, after watching her husband walk through the airport scanners. “You can’t even put it into words how it feels.”
Jorge Garcia’s deportation turned him into the latest public face of what many of Trump’s critics have called a cruel and excessive crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally.
Garcia and his wife, an American citizen, met in Detroit and got married 15 years ago. When they tried to get him legal status in 2005, they wound up in deportation proceedings, she told ABC News. He appears to have no criminal record in the United States.
In November, immigration agents told Garcia he would have to leave the country, according to local media.
Garcia could be barred from returning to the U.S. for 10 years or more, but his wife said she would fight to bring him back before then.