Immigration officials are reconsidering the deportation of a Guatemalan woman, who was sent back to her home country with her 18-month-old American child, despite having a stay of removal from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The woman, who had been living in the U.S. for 12 years, was detained during a routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last week.
"She was a minor, came across the border all by herself, fleeing harm in Guatemala. She was allowed to seek asylum here in the U.S., but it was denied. She appealed, it was denied," said Hillary Walsh, the family's immigration attorney.
Walsh explained that the woman had become eligible for other forms of relief, particularly after she had her baby and after she had been in the country for a certain amount of time – in this case, more than 10 years.
"During that process, she was lawfully present," Walsh said.
The woman and her American citizen child were deported to Guatemala on Sunday, but by Tuesday, immigration officials acknowledged their mistake.
"This morning, ICE emailed me and acknowledged that they had wrongly deported this woman and implicitly her son, and they're in the process now of returning both of them," Walsh said.
For the woman's safety, her identity is being withheld. Her aunt told ABC15 that violence in Guatemala was the reason her niece originally fled to the United States.
"She wanted to come here because of all the violence... near the house of my sister, they had assassinated somebody," the aunt said.
According to Walsh, this isn't the first time ICE has wrongfully deported someone.
"My prior client was Mexican, the guy who was deported wrongly, and they simply drove him to the border and then drove him back whenever it was time for him to return to the United States," Walsh said.
The aunt hopes the administration will focus deportation efforts on criminals rather than those seeking better lives.
"I understand there are a lot of people that come to do bad things, we understand that, but because of those people, the ones who want to come to work are paying the price," she said.
This case comes as new data reveals Americans have mixed or negative views about the administration's recent immigration policies, including the suspension of asylum cases and the end of "temporary protected status" for migrants fleeing disaster.
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