Oakland family’s final day together
Tears, prayers, hugs and farewells for deportees
Maria Mendoza-Sanchez spent her last day in the United States before deportation tending to matters both routine and strange.
She drove her 16-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, to the first day of her sophomore year in high school. She packed. She ate meals with loved ones. And she signed paperwork granting power of attorney over her family’s affairs to the other two daughters she planned to leave behind, 23-yearold Vianney and 21-year-old Melin.
At 8 p.m. Wednesday, the family — the mom, husband and son who were leaving, and the daughters who were staying — gathered for a last photo together in their Oakland home. Then they formed a circle in the living room, along with three of Mendoza-Sanchez’s nursing colleagues at Highland Hospital, to hold hands and pray.
“Lord God right now I lift this family up to you!” proclaimed one of the nurses. “Lord God put your hand of protection on these girls!”
When the circle broke, Maria gathered her daughters into her arms, and said, firmly, “You promise you be strong. You behave yourselves. You do the right thing. We will be together again! I promise you.”
Her husband stood a few feet away, wiping tears from his eyes, shaking his head at the scene as Vianney repeated, over and over, “It’ll be OK, it’ll be OK.”
Hours later, Mendoza-Sanchez and her husband, Eusebio Sanchez, caught a red-eye flight from San Francisco International Airport to their native Mexico, after federal immigration officials denied efforts by them and Sen. Dianne Feinstein to delay their deportation.
They brought along their 12year-old son, Jesus, while leaving behind their three older daughters, who will take care of one another.
The circumstances of the case, which offer a window into the Trump administration’s immigra-
“Promise me you will take care of them and be patient with them. We will see each other very soon.” Maria Mendoza-Sanchez
tion crackdown, fueled outrage from Feinstein, other local politicians and leaders at Highland Hospital. The couple lived in the U.S. for more than two decades, raised children who each have legal status, own their home in Oakland, do not have criminal records, and were granted earlier delays of deportation.
The family had pushed back the flight one day in hopes of winning a late reprieve from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. But the agency on Tuesday turned down their request for a stay of deportation.
An agency spokeswoman defended the deportation action last week, saying the family’s case had gone through a lengthy review in immigration courts and “neither of these individuals has a legal basis to remain in the U.S.”
And so, on Wednesday afternoon, Mendoza-Sanchez sat in her dim living room staring at suitcases and backpacks that lined the floor, exhausted after months of fighting. Her neighbor Yolanda Delahoussaye suddenly burst through the front door.
“I’m praying for you,” she said, embracing MendozaSanchez. Referring to the government’s expanded immigration enforcement, she said, “You guys are the best people! I thought they were getting rid of all of the evil people?”
Delahoussaye recalled that the family had been the only one in the neighborhood to make a point of telling her they’d be there if she ever needed anything.
Melin, who was born in the U.S. and is about to begin her senior year at UC Santa Cruz, stood in the corner, sobbing.
“They’re not evil!” Delahoussaye exclaimed.
It was Sen. Feinstein who told Mendoza-Sanchez that the late legal push had fallen short. On Wednesday, the California Democrat, who visited the family last week after reading a front-page Chronicle story about the case, said the Trump administration’s decision to deny a delay in the deportation was “utterly devoid of humanity.”
“This is a travesty, plain and simple, and evidence that Donald Trump’s immigration policy is nothing more than a hateful deportation program targeting law-abiding families,” Feinstein said.
She said she would introduce a private bill in September to help the family gain permanent residence. However, such bills are rarely signed into law.
Mendoza-Sanchez, her husband and Jesus, who is an American citizen by birth, planned to land Thursday morning in Mexico City, and then continue on to a rural town where Mendoza-Sanchez has three sisters and a brother. She hadn’t seen them in years, but had long been their financial bedrock, sending money when her father, who died five years ago, was sick, and when her mother also fell ill.
An attorney for the couple, Carl Shusterman, said their path back to the U.S. was essentially blocked. Because they had been present in the country unlawfully for more than a year, they cannot return for at least a decade, even if their daughters or Highland Hospital seeks to sponsor them.
“I think it’s very sad that people who are model immigrants are not given consideration,” Shusterman said Wednesday. “It is a one-size-fits-all deportation policy.”
The three daughters will remain in the Oakland home. Vianney, a UC Santa Cruz graduate who is protected by the government’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, will become the primary guardian of Elizabeth.
When the teenager returned from school Wednesday, her mother asked, “How was your day?” and then motioned for her to sit next to her and tell her everything that happened. They knew such future conversations would happen only in phone calls.
The daughters knew as well that they were losing a strongwilled parent who volunteered in their classes, hired tutors to help them and presided over the home, all the while working 12-hour hospital shifts. Mendoza-Sanchez often told her daughters, “If you have a will, I will find a way.”
They were also losing a father who, when he wasn’t driving trucks, took them to movies, amusement parks and dinners at their favorite Mexican restaurant.
Amid the grief of the week, there were still light moments, like Vianney staying up Tuesday night with Jesus watching Netflix — “Cheers” reruns and the movie “Iron Giant” — while she filled out paperwork.
On Wednesday afternoon, Mendoza-Sanchez held court, recounting for her children how she and their father started as friends in their tiny Mexican town and became an item years later. They all laughed as Mendoza-Sanchez described a period of long-distance love, kindled by phone calls and letters, before they moved in together.
“I still have the letters!” she said.
And before they left for the airport, Eusebio sat at his kitchen table and devoured an In-NOut cheeseburger — no onions — with fries.
“I don’t know the next time I’ll get one of these,” he said.
When it finally came, the ride to the airport was quiet.
In the terminal, the family, joined by three nursing colleagues — one in scrubs because she came straight from work — pushed carts packed with luggage amid a phalanx of television crews. At one point, they crossed through the arrivals area, where other families were reuniting with balloons and flowers.
Just before 10:30 p.m., at the security checkpoint, MendozaSanchez and her husband held each of their children one final time. Mendoza-Sanchez wiped away her daughters’ tears, lifting stray hairs from their damp faces. Before she walked away, she traced a cross on each of them and whispered in their ears.
“Promise me you will take care of them and be patient with them,” she told Vianney. “We will see each other very soon.”
The couple walked away, but then the father turned back and grabbed his daughters, saying, “Don’t cry. Be strong. Be strong. You guys are here for each other. You guys can do it.”
Amid the anguish, Vianney slipped two letters in her mother’s purse — one in English for her, the other in Spanish for her father.
“I’m grateful for all your sacrifices, Mom. That is why I’m going to look after my little sisters,” she wrote. “I will work hard so we can see each other soon. This is not a goodbye, this is a see you later.”