At just 9 years old, Fernando Ochoa fights to stop his father’s deportation for fear of being divorced a third time, although President Joe Biden has ordered a 100-day deportation moratorium and a family reunification task force created.
On Wednesday morning, just outside an immigration court, Fernando gave his lawyer a letter he had written to Biden asking him in Spanish “from my heart that you should release my father.”
Fernando and his father, Ubaldo Ochoa Lopez, fled Guatemala more than two years ago to seek asylum in the United States. Fernando, who was then 6 years old, was separated from his father by immigration authorities. He was one of at least 2,800 migrant children separated from their parents in 2018 as part of President Donald Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy, which was implemented to deter migrants from seeking asylum.
Two months later, Fernando and his father were reunited.
“During the first 35 days of the two months, Ubaldo could not even contact Fernando. The 35 days of no contact, without knowing what was going on, were therefore very traumatic for both of them,” said Andani Alcantara, their lawyer. said. in a news conference Wednesday.
After being reunited, Ochoa Lopez and his son resumed their legal attempts to obtain asylum, but they were divorced for the second time in October, when immigration and customs enforcement, or ICE, Ochoa Lopez maintained a month after being convicted of driving while driving. intoxicated, Alcantara said.
“It was only a Class B offense, but ICE considered it a major crime, and they decided that was reason enough not to allow Ubaldo to be with his child, who is not a parent. in the US did not, “she said.
‘Punished twice’
Ochoa Lopez has been in the Pearsall Detention Center in Texas for four months.
The advocacy group for immigrant rights in Texas, RAICES, assisted Fernando with his asylum case, while ICE requested that he reunite with his father, Erika Andiola, the head of the organization, during the news conference.
Andiola said it was important to note that Ochoa Lopez “went through the criminal justice system” when he was charged and convicted last year.
“If it was someone else, someone born in this country, if he were another person, he might be with his son again, but he is not. He is being punished twice for something that has already happened – even after what we, as a country, have done to take away his child, ‘Andiola said.
Fernando writes in his letter to Biden: “I feel very sad for my father who is not with me. During Christmas I was sad for my father who was not with me. It makes me very sad to see other parents with their children play. because I can not play with my father nor can I receive a hug from my father. ‘
Alcantara said it had completed several requests to ICE requesting the release of Ochoa Lopez, most recently Monday after the Biden government announced new guidelines on the priorities of immigration enforcement. According to public safety guidelines, those “convicted of a ‘serious crime’ should be given priority.”
“The reality is that ICE always has the discretion to release someone from detention, and they choose not to do so,” she said. ‘It hurts his child, who is 9 years old and cries over the phone with Ubaldo because he has not seen his father for so long.
“They choose to keep a parent and child separated who they have previously separated and traumatized,” she added.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
Download the NBC News app for news and politics
Biden took over the presidency with the weight of Trump’s tough immigration policies, as well as criticism of the record number of deportations under former President Barack Obama when he was vice president.
There was an urgent pressure by progressive supporters and immigration advocates to do things differently.
An early Biden executive order imposing a 100-day moratorium on deportations pending a review of enforcement was suspended by a federal judge in response to a Texas lawsuit. But the ruling does not require ICE to plan the deportations, and the agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, has deported at least 269 people to Guatemala and Honduras in recent days.
More deportation flights to Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cameroon and Honduras are scheduled this week, in addition to the deportation last week to Mexico of a woman who witnessed the anti-Latino mass shooting in 2019 at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas.
“If Ubaldo is sent back to Guatemala, Fernando will be left here without any parent, which in itself is harmful enough, but given his history of previous powerful divisions by the government, it will be harmful to him,” Alcantara said, adding . that he would be left “to fight his asylum case alone.”
A group of 120 law professors and legal experts called on the Biden administration to hold ICE officials accountable for executive orders and other regulations that reflect the president’s intention to rebuild the immigration system in a way that respect human rights and due process’. said in a news release on Tuesday.
They sent a letter to the newly confirmed Home Security Minister Alejandro Mayorkas urging the agency to ‘use all the tools of the prosecution’s discretion at its disposal to comply with the Biden administration’s immigration policy and to stop the ongoing deportations of asylum seekers and families’.
They warned that continued practices “would inevitably lead to the continuation of enforcement practices that send asylum seekers back to their persecutors and destabilize families and communities.”
Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.