Nearly a week ago, Yale senior Viviana Andazola Marquez accompanied her dad Melecio, who is undocumented, to an appointment with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Viviana had petitioned for him earlier this year and the family hoped that Melecio, who has been in the U.S. since 1998 and has four U.S. citizen kids, would finally be on a path to legal status. He was taken into custody by immigration agents at the appointment instead:
Andazola Marquez said one of the officials told her, “Your dad has been recommended for approval.”
The daughter was then asked to leave the room.
She said 20 minutes later, her dad’s attorney came out and said Melecio had been detained.
“Honestly, it was incredibly cruel,” Viviana said. “In retrospect, now I know they had planned that all along. My dad was trying to do right by the law. He filed all the necessary paperwork, paid all the fees, hired a lawyer, did everything in his power to obtain lawful status and he was tricked and brought into the office and detained.”
Melecio has no criminal record and poses no threat to public safety, but that hasn’t stopped Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from targeting undocumented immigrants like him, even using broken taillights as justification to take moms and dads into custody. In Melecio’s case, ICE is using a two-decade old order as reason to tear him from his family after decades in the U.S.:
Hans Meyer, [Melecio] Andazola Morales’ new immigration attorney, said he was detained due to an order of exclusion that was issued when Andazola Morales, a Mexican national, was stopped at the border in Texas in 1997. An order of exclusion is a legal term that’s no longer in use, but the effect is similar to an order of deportation. After he was deported in 1997, Andazola Morales returned to the U.S. undetected in 1998 and has lived here ever since.
“Meyer hopes authorities grant [Melecio] Andazola Morales, 41, a stay and reopen his immigration case,” notes the Denver Post. Rushing to his aid have been Viviana’s Yale classmates, who organized a phone banking event to direct calls at ICE. It drew 400 people:
On Saturday, students began directing phone calls toward Jeffrey Lynch, a field office director at ICE in Denver. [Classmates Fernando] Rojas and [Alejandra] Trujillo-Elizalde told the News that reaching out to Lynch could lead to a stay of removal and a reopening of the deportation case. It is not the first time Lynch has been embroiled in controversy. In March, U.S Rep. Jared Polis (D., Colorado) described him as a “rogue” employee after he did not grant a stay of deportation to a Mexican woman who had taken refuge in the basement of a Denver church.
“President Salovey has directed me to ensure that Viviana is receiving support, including legal counsel and other forms of assistance,” said Yale College Dean Marvin Chun. “University officers are in active communication about the situation, and our thoughts are with Viviana, her father Melecio Andazola Morales, her family, and her numerous friends.”
Viviana said that “this incident goes beyond my dad. This is an incident that exemplifies the way that undocumented immigrants get treated in this country when they seek to obtain status.” Remember, Donald Trump and his ilk like to claim they love legal immigration, but Stephen Miller’s white supremacist wish list wants to slash legal immigration by huge numbers, affecting mostly people of color.
For the vast majority of undocumented immigrants here, there is no line to get into for citizenship. For others, trying “to do right by the law” could get them torn from their families anyway.