An undocumented Michigan dad has temporarily staved off deportation after his attorney filed a last-minute application to reopen his immigration case Tuesday.
Jose Ricardo Valle Rodriguez, father of a 2-year-old U.S. citizen, came to the U.S. from El Salvador without permission nearly 15 years ago when he was only 17. Even though he’d been in contact with immigration court, he missed a date due to a clerical error when his notice to appear was sent to the wrong address, a fact confirmed by his attorney through the Freedom of Information Act. As a result, Valle Rodriguez was ordered deported in 2005. Last week, as the family was out running errands, Valle Rodriguez’s wife pulled their car over for a black SUV that was trailing them. They believed it to be police. It wasn’t:
“I didn’t think nothing of it, because where it was [in our neighborhood] that’s where they drop kids off for the bus,” Karina Valle says. Then the truck put its lights on.
Valle, assuming it was the police, says she pulled off a busy road into the parking lot of the sheriff’s office. Suddenly, she says, several more unmarked cars pulled in, blocking the exit. “And I instantly knew, this is not the police. This has to be ICE.
“I said to my husband, ‘I think this is immigration.’ And he just quickly looked at his son. And got so worried.”
Valle Rodriguez has been in detention since, with his advocates fearing that he could have been deported as soon as the court opened Tuesday, “the most common day of the week for deportations.” But following his attorney’s move, Rodriguez remains in the country, though is still in detention. Brad Thomson “said he won a similar case involving an incorrectly entered ZIP code, and he’s optimistic he will prevail in Rodriguez’s case,” but ICE is as unpredictable as it is incompetent, and he could still be deported “depending on whether the case is reopened.”
It’s no exaggeration to state that deportation back to El Salvador could mean a death sentence for Valle Rodriguez. Last year, ABC News declared the country the “murder capital of the world,” with “a murder rate 22 times that of the US,” despite having a population barely the size of Maryland. In fact, it wasn’t until this past January that El Salvador experienced its first murder-free 24 hours in two years:
“His parents have sent a letter saying they can’t receive him, because they’re scared for his life,” [wife Karina Valle] says. “They can torture and kill him. They can torture his family. My father was already murdered by gangs [in El Salvador.] Cousins of my mother have been kidnapped and killed. We’re really close to the violence. That’s my biggest fear, of him going and being killed.”
“Their son, meanwhile, keeps asking about his dad,” reports Michigan Radio.
“I know he’s little, but I can’t keep lying to him, telling him that he’s working,” Valle says.