At just nine years old, Fernando Ochoa is fighting to stop his father’s deportation over fears that he may be separated from him a third time, despite a 100-day moratorium on deportations put in place by President Joe Biden and the creation of a family reunification task force.
On Wednesday morning, just outside an immigration court, Fernando gave his lawyer a letter he wrote in Spanish to Biden asking him “from my heart that you let my dad go free.”
Fernando and his father, Ubaldo Ochoa Lopez, fled Guatemala over two years ago to seek asylum in the U.S., but their quest for asylum turned into a nightmare after they were separated at the southern border.
Fernando was one of at least 2,800 migrant children who were separated from their parents in 2018 when the administration of former President Donald Trump instituted the “zero tolerance” policy in an effort to deter migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S.
He was only 6 years old at the time of the separation. Two months later, Fernando and his father were reunified.
“During the first 35 days of those two months, Ubaldo couldn’t even contact Fernando. So, those 35 days of zero contact, not knowing what was going on, were very traumatic for both of them,” their attorney Andani Alcantara said in a press conference Wednesday.
Once reunited, Ochoa Lopez and his son resumed their legal efforts to get asylum in the U.S., but were separated for a second time.
Fernando and his father were separated in October when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Ochoa Lopez following a conviction for driving while intoxicated a month prior, according to Alcantara.
“It was only a Class B misdemeanor, but ICE has treated it as a huge crime and it has decided that it is enough reason not to allow Ubaldo to be with his child who doesn’t have another parent in the U.S.,” she said.
“Punished twice”
Ochoa Lopez has been in the Pearsall Detention Center in Texas for four months now.
The immigrant rights advocacy group RAICES in Texas has been helping Fernando with his asylum case while also urging ICE to reunite him with his father, said Erika Andiola, the organization’s chief of advocacy, during the press conference.
Andiola said it’s 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 who was born in this country, if he was another person, perhaps he would be back with his son, but he’s not. He’s being punished twice for something that already happened — even after what we, as a country, did to take away his child,” said Andiola.
“I feel very sad for my dad who is not with me. During Christmas, I was sad for my dad who was not with me. It makes me very sad to see other parents playing with their children because I can’t play with my dad nor receive a hug from my dad,” Fernando wrote in his letter to Biden.
Alcantara said she has completed multiple requests to ICE calling for Ochoa Lopez’s release from detention, most recently on Monday after the administration of President Joe Biden announced new guidelines related to immigration enforcement priorities. The public safety guidelines for immigration enforcement say to prioritize those “who have been convicted of an ‘aggravated felony.’”
“The reality is that ICE always has the discretion to let anybody out of detention and they are choosing not to,” she said. “That’s harming his child who’s nine years old and cries on the phone with Ubaldo because he hasn’t seen his dad in so long.”
“They’re choosing to keep a parent and child separated that they had already separated before and traumatized,” added Alcantara.
ICE has not responded to NBC News’ email seeking comment.
Biden went into his presidency carrying the weight of Trump’s hardline immigration policies as well as the criticism for the record deportations under former President Barack Obama, when he was vice president.
There’s been an urgent push by progressive supporters and immigration advocates to do things differently.
An early Biden executive order placing a 100-day moratorium on deportations until an enforcement review could be done was suspended by a federal judge in response to a Texas lawsuit. But the ruling did not require ICE to schedule the deportations. The agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has already deported at least 269 people to Guatemala and Honduras in recent days.
More deportation flights are scheduled for this week to Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cameroon and Honduras in addition to last week’s deportation to Mexico of a woman who witnessed the 2019 anti-Latino mass shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart store.
‘”If Ubaldo is sent back to Guatemala, Fernando is left here without any parent which is harmful enough in itself, but given his history of prior forceful separations by the government, it would be really harmful for him,” said Alcantara, adding that the child would be left “to fight his asylum case on his own.”
Against this backdrop, a group of 120 law professors and legal experts calling on the Biden administration to hold ICE officers accountable to Executive Orders and other directives that reflect “the president’s intention to rebuild the immigration system in a way that respects human rights and due process,” the group said in a press release Tuesday. They sending a letter to newly confirmed DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urging his agency to “use all the tools of prosecutorial discretion at its disposal to comply with the Biden administration’s interior enforcement immigration policies and stop ongoing deportations of asylum seekers and families.”
They warn continued practices “will inevitably result in the continuation of enforcement practices that send asylum seekers back to their persecutors and destabilize families and communities.”
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