Restaurant manager set to meet with ICE officials
Francisco Javier Gonzalez, the Palm Beach restaurant manager facing deportation, will report back to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office Friday for an update on his immigration status, according to his lawyer.
Gonzalez was scheduled to be deported back to Mexico — his home country — on July 3 on the orders of ICE. Instead, Gonzalez was granted a 30-day extension and had his ankle monitor removed because of a “clerical issue” with Gonzalez’s paperwork, according to an ICE official.
Because of the issue, ICE was forced to reinstate Gonzalez’s removal order, giving Gonzalez and his lawyers — Miami-based Rebeca Sanchez-Roig and Boynton Beach-based Richard Hujber — time to contest the order.
That extension ends Friday.
“We don’t know what’s g o i n g t o h a p p e n , ” S a n - chez-Roig said.
Gonzalez is still waiting for updates from multiple petitions and requests filed by his lawyers, including one in federal court, where Sanchez-Roig and Hujber are asking that a court prevent ICE from taking Gonzalez into custody.
Gonzalez’s removal order stems from an incident 16 years ago when Gonzalez, now 37, entered the United States from Mexico for the second time using what he thought was a valid visa. Immigration officials told him his visa was not valid, deported him, issued him an expedited order of removal and a five-year ban from entering the country.
Gonzalez and his lawyers say he was never told he was being given a removal order. Gonzalez re-entered the United States before the five years were up and since has lived and worked in Palm Beach County, eventually becoming the manager of Pizza Al Fresco, marrying his U.S.-born wife and father- ing three daughters, ages 11, 8 and 6.
Gonzalez said Wednesday he isn’t sure what will happen, but said he feels confident that ICE will not take him into custody.
“They had a chance before and they canceled everything. I don’t see why they would try to detain me,” Gonzalez said via text. “(But) they never tell you.”