Immigrant’s tale complex and revealing

Miriam Martinez-Lemus is tethered by a two-way radio. Her ankle bracelet has a GPS tracking device that allows U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to keep her on a leash. They can also listen in.

The trick is to get everyone to hear both sides of her story.

The ICE version is black-and-white. Martinez-Lemus is an illegal immigrant who has failed to follow orders to leave her family behind in Stamford to catch a plane back to Guatemala. After a federal immigration judge granted her the opportunity for voluntary departure in 2002, she did not leave. If you’re in the camp that believes she is trapped in a quagmire of her own invention, then logic dictates she must be cast across U.S. borders immediately.

Lemus’ saga is considerably more nuanced than that. She is a mother of two girls, one 12 and the other 10. Her older daughter has Type 1 juvenile diabetes, which requires around-the-clock attention. She contends that her American daughter is getting vital treatment at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital that is not available in Guatemala.

Scrapbook samples capture the family with Stamford Mayor David Martin at a youth tennis program, posing with Santa Claus at the mall, celebrating milestones.

Yes, her story plays to the heart, particularly on the eve of perhaps the most American of holidays. It also plays well in the media, both the chic and classic models.

By refusing to board the plane, she has challenged ICE to come and get her. She has drawn a line in U.S. soil that demands consideration far beyond Connecticut. The line represents a simple challenge: Is this a person who should be exiled from America?

The phalanx of supporters encircling Martinez-Lemus include some 9,000 names on a Move.On.org petition, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and the head of the pediatrics diabetes clinic at Yale. Expect that wall to continue to rise.

It also includes Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who tossed Donald Trump’s words back at him, pointing out that Martinez-Lemus does not fall into the president’s classification of “bad hombres” who must be deported.

Martinez-Lemus fled Guatemala a quarter century ago to escape violence that was a consequence of a dysfunctional government. But is there an act more heartless, more violent, more dysfunctional than ripping a mother from her children?

If there is a test to being a true American, Martinez-Lemus seems to have passed it. She has no criminal record. She has raised a family and they have become stitches in the fabric of their community.

That may not be enough in Donald Trump’s America. But America will never be a black and white concept. The mistakes Martinez-Lemus made are forgivable. Separating her from her family would not be.

Martinez-Lemus’s story won’t end with the outcome of this chapter. Her line in the soil will remain unblemished until Congress tunes into both sides and finally crafts a humane immigration policy.