“My family depends on my husband. He prepares the kids for school and takes care of all of us whenever anyone is sick,” explains Mariana. “He qualifies for prosecutorial discretion. We want to keep our family together. I don’t understand why ICE is trying to rip us apart.”
Jagmohan is a convenience store clerk who loves his family and his adopted hometown of Bakersfield, California, where he has made his home with his citizen wife and children after he came here from Indian over 15 years ago. He had been working extra hours in order to pay for for his own diabetic condition as well as his wife’s, who has had two surgeries due to complications from her diabetes.
Earlier this year, anxious and exhausted in the wake of his wife’s surgery, Jagmohan made an honest mistake. While he carded a young person ing alcohol, he misread the person’s ID and allowed them to the alcohol. An officer happened to be behind the young person and gave Jaghoman a citation. When he went to court, he was assigned training classes to take. However, as he left the courthouse, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) came and arrested him
He is the sole income provider for his family and his ill wife depends on him. Since he’s been in detention, his family has been unable to pay rent or bills. Thus they lost their apartment and had to move in with relatives.
Mariana was informed by ICE that they intend to deport her husband tomorrow, Wednesday, despite his qualifying for discretion and the hardship it would cause his family.
As immigration reform legislation moves forward in Washington, DC, community groups say the case shows disparity between the Obama administration’s immigration rhetoric and the reality of ICE’s cruel deportation policies. Despite promises to the contrary, the agency continues to target contributing community members who aspire to be citizens, but who have past deportation orders due to the nation’s lack of a common-sense immigration process.
Critics have also raised concerns about possible improper conduct by county officials in the case, who may have gone beyond their role to see to Jagmohan’s detention by ICE.
That kind of local entanglement with deportations, a federal responsibility, has proven both costly and unsafe. A recent statistical
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