Perez family’s tragedy tells both sides of immigration debate
Immigration policy can clash with complicated family situations.
WEST PALM BEACH — When Sandra Perez hears President Donald Trump’s tough talk about deporting illegal immigrants, she thinks of the morning six years ago when immigration officers raided her West Palm Beach home and seized her father.
Perez was a junior in high school at the time, and she was taking a predawn shower as her younger siblings got ready for school.
“All I heard was a lot of commotion,” Perez said. “When I got dressed and came out of the bathroom, cops were everywhere.”
Perez saw her younger brother bleeding from a cut near his eye. An officer had bashed him with a rifle butt so forcefully that the boy, a freshman in high school, briefly lost consciousness.
Officers were there to seize Pe re z ’s f a t he r, Hec t o r Pe re z Mazariegos. An amiable Guatemalan with no history of violence or property crimes, Perez had lived in the United States ille- gally for two decades. He later died while attempting to illegally re-enter the country to visit his five children, who are U.S. citizens, and his wife, who is a legal permanent resident.
The Perez family’s plight illustrates the complexity of the immigration debate. It highlights the haphazard and dangerous nature of border crossings, which have grown only more treacherous as violent traffickers have seized control of the southern frontier. And it questions what is gained in separating families when undocumented but nonviolent migrants are sent home.
At the time he was detained, Hector Perez was working and