Carmen and Maria have been living illegally in the U.S. for several years and soon the former will be deported to Peru while the latter to Mexico.
The problem? Both have children born in the U.S. and their deportation may just cause them to leave their kids behind.
According to a report by CBS, Carmen has been living in the U.S. for 22 years and is scheduled to return to her native Peru in a couple of weeks.
She doesn't want to leave because she wants to stay with Brian, her 14-year-old son and her other children. This prompted her and Maria--second mother of four children--to visit ICE in Los Angeles and publicly plead to authorities:
"Please help me, I want to educate my children and give them the best," said Carmen.
"Give her an opportunity to stay with us," said Brian in return.
Maria on the other hand has four children and although sentenced to be deported at first she was later granted an extension to stay one more year.
As stated in ICE's June 2010 Civil Enforcement Priorities memo, "ICE will typically not detain individuals who are the primary caretakers of children, unless the individual is legally subjected to mandatory detention based on the severity of their criminal or immigration history."
CBS is reporting that Carmen infringed the law twice in that she tried to escape from ICE who raided her house and then she lied to them.
"If she does leave I guess I'll have to go with her although I don't want to because I don't want to lose her I want to be with her step by step," said Brian, in the end.
In 2011 fiscal year, the U.S. deported some 87,340 parents with U.S. citizen kids according to ColorLines.com, a huge jump when considering the fact that from 1998 to 2007, there were 176,000 total deportations of the same type. This means that deportations in 2011 were almost 500 percent more than deportations occurred on an yearly average between the 1998 and 2007.
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