ICE gives restaurant manager 3 months
Javier Gonzalez granted temporary reprieve from deportation.
MIRAMAR — Francisco Javier Gonzalez, a Palm Beach restaurant manager facing deportation, received a three-month extension from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Friday as he and his lawyers continue to await updates from several petitions, including two filed in federal court.
Gonzalez must report back to ICE’s office in Miramar on Nov. 5, according to his Miami-based lawyer Rebeca Sanchez-Roig. Gonzalez and Sanchez-Roig sat in a packed waiting room for an hour Friday with about 45 other immigrants as they waited to hear ICE’s decision.
An ICE officer told them that the agency would give Gonzalez time to hear back on the status of his petitions, two of which are currently being reviewed by a federal court. In those petitions, Sanchez-Roig and Gonzalez’s other lawyer, Boynton Beach-based attorney Richard Hujber, are asking that a court prevent ICE from taking Gonzalez into custody.
Gonzalez pushed open the glass doors of the ICE building and walked straight to Vanina Schreiber, a longtime friend and server at Pizza Al Fresco — the Italian restaurant Gonzalez manages — who said she came with Gonzalez for “moral support.”
“Three more months,” Gonzalez told Schreiber.
“Three more months?” Schreiber asked, smiling.
Gonzalez let out a sigh. “I don’t have to think about immigration for a little,” he said.
Gonzalez’s battle with immigration officials has lasted for years and stems from an incident about 16 years ago, when he entered the United States with what he thought was a valid visa. Gonzalez, now 37, was deported and issued a five-year ban, but he and his lawyers have said that Gonzalez was never informed of the ban. Gonzalez re-entered the U.S. before the five years were up.
Since then, Gonzalez has lived and worked in Palm Beach County, applied for and received a driver’s license, a social security card, married his U.S.-born wife and fathered three children, ages 11, 8 and 6. Gonzalez has no criminal history.
An online petition to keep him from being deported has more than 130,000 signatures.
Gonzalez must report back to ICE’s office in Miramar on Nov. 5, according to his Miami-based lawyer Rebeca Sanchez-Roig.