ICE arresting spouses seeking legal residency

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ICE arresting spouses seeking legal residency 






Husband and wife Fabiano and Sarah de Oliveira were "beginning the routine process of deterring whether their marriage was lawful... as an initial step towards obtaining a green card" at a US Citizenship and Immigration Service office in the East Coast last January 9 when husband Fabiano was arrested by ICE officers. 

Immigration attorney Jeffrey Rubin says his client, Oliveira, has not been convicted of any serious crimes, besides “driving without a license infraction that an FBI fingerprint check ‘didn’t even reveal.’”

"My husband is in prison. He does not belong in there. My son is without a father,” says Sarah de Oliveria, mother of Fabiano’s 5 year old son. 

According to article, similar incidents have happened to other illegal immigrants with American husbands who are trying to gain legal residency. 
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Hearing about these stories is depressing because as we discussed in class, people tend to forget about how hard, long, and nearly impossible it is to gain legal residence in the United States. We are also not always aware of the horrible push factors these immigrants continue to experience. 

Last year, the Sister Dorothy Stang Center and I visited the Contra Costa West County Detention Facility in Richmond to support the families of those who have been imprisoned due to their illegal immigration status.  One US citizen woman shared her story and how one morning, her husband, an illegal immigrant, went missing and she had to file a missing person report only to find out that ICE had arrested him while he was walking to work at 5 in the morning. 

It is crazy because this couple, like the couple in the article, were on the way to fixing their spouses’ immigration status, and also were not committing any criminal activity, yet were arrested during their roads to a better life. As immigration attorney Zoila Gomez says: 


“By ICE arresting anybody who applies for this type of benefit,” she added, “what they’re saying is, ‘Don’t do it. Because if you do apply, we're going to arrest you-- we're going to deport you.'"

Read more: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2018/01/ice_arresting_spouses_seeking_legal_residency

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