Maribel Trujillo, deported to Mexico last year in one of the earliest high-profile immigration cases of the Trump administration, was allowed to return back to Ohio this month for a second chance to stay here permanently. The mom had been torn from her family and home for 17 months. "She's in shock," said attorney Kathleen Kersh.
Trujillo’s case made headlines in April 2017, as an example of the administration’s cruel crackdown on immigrant families across the nation. The mom of four U.S. citizens, including a young child with special needs, Trujillo was swept off the street in front of her home by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), even though she had no criminal record and had lived here for 15 years. Despite this national attention, she was deported that month. Her advocates, though, didn’t stop fighting for her.
“After her deportation a federal appeals court in Cincinnati ordered immigration officials in January to re-examine her case,” WCPO reports. “The three judge panel said that the Board of Immigration Appeals had ‘abused its discretion’ and failed to consider the testimony of Trujillo Diaz's father, who said their family and Maribel specifically had been targeted by cartels. The Board of Immigration Appeals vacated her deportation order and Trujillo Diaz came back to the U.S. in mid-September.”
Trujillo had lived in fear following her deportation. “On the other end of the phone, [Trujillo] kept her details sparse, her voice soft,” The Washington Post reported that month. “She worried about saying too much, or revealing her exact location, in case drug cartels had tapped the line. In the days since she was deported to her native Mexico, the 42-year-old Ohio mother said she has already received threats. She hardly eats, and has trouble sleeping.”
Now back in the U.S., she has a court date scheduled for the summer of 2019, and while there’s no guarantee that she will win her asylum claim, the fact that she was allowed to return to the U.S. speaks strongly in her favor. Additionally, Advocates for Basic Legal Equality said, "the Cleveland Immigration Court has a very large backlog of cases and therefore, it is very possible it could be years before she gets a decision on her asylum case.”
In the meantime, she can embrace her children yet again, and her case serves as an important reminder for all of us to keep fighting for dignity and justice for America’s immigrant families. "There are so many men and women, fathers and mothers, good people who have been deported,” said Mike Pucke, the family’s retired priest. “When bad things happen we ask, 'Why her or him, God?' I am doing the same thing with this good thing.”