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Immigrants struggle as they face deportation

By: Perla Trevizo
(Contact)

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When Hilma Díaz was handcuffed one April morning at Pilgrim’s Pride, she had one thought.

“When I realized we were being arrested, the first thing I could think of was my son,” Ms. Díaz said later, holding her son Raymond in her arms. “As a mother you worry about them. Who’s going to take care of them?”

Ms. Díaz and her husband, César Mazariegos, were released the afternoon after their arrests wearing monitoring ankle bracelets so they could care for their now-9-month-old son, who is an American citizen.

The couple will leave the United States voluntarily in October, about seven years after each arrived here separately.

The departure will be tough: Mr. Mazariegos will return to his home country of Guatemala while his wife will head to her native Mexico with Raymond.

“The law doesn’t let you return to a different country without a visa. We’ll have to find a way to get back together once we’re there,” Mr. Mazariegos said.

Financial struggles are pushing the family to leave as soon as possible.

“Every day you have to pay for what you eat and pay a certain amount for rent, all the bills,” he said. “We are basically just surviving with God’s help and with the help of organizations who have been able to give us food, rent money, and some friends who have reached out to us.”

Before the raid, Mr. Mazariegos was planning to return to his country with his wife and son to take care of his aging mother. He hoped to save enough money in the United States to help them start their new lives in Guatemala.

Now they are going back empty-handed and with debts, he said.

“We go back to our countries perhaps not in the way we would have liked to,” he said. “You don’t wish anyone to go back to their countries (deported).”

Mr. Mazariegos dropped out of school before finishing the equivalent of high school, and Ms. Díaz only completed elementary school. He worked as a clothing distributor in Guatemala and Ms. Díaz cleaned houses.

They would like to return to the United States, but “we wouldn’t risk coming back illegally because we don’t want to suffer the same terror we are living right now,” Mr. Mazariegos said.

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