When U.S. Customs and Immigration Officers arrested Felipe Mendez, he was given the choice of losing his two sons to government custody if he tried fighting the deportation or leaving the United States willingly.
He lost his wife and 2-year-old son when tornadoes swept through his trailer park in Nashville in 2023, dropping a neighbor’s mobile home on top of the house he shared with his family of five. Mendez described to reporters at the time he remembered hearing the cries of his wife and children, knowing she and the toddler died when they went quiet.
He came with his family to the United States just five months before the tornadoes from a rural village in Guatemala, fleeing a country where nearly half the population lives in poverty.
Through a translator, Mendez spoke to the Lookout, describing the lack of job opportunities in Guatemala and a desire to stay in Tennessee if he could.