A family in Pittsburg, Kansas, is claiming their mother was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) hearing on a pending petition for her to become a Lawfully Admitted Permanent Resident. Her United States citizen husband filed the petition. On Wednesday, the family says they were told their mother has an outstanding final order of deportation.
The woman, Rosmery Alvarado, an illegal alien from Guatemala, is now being held in an ICE detention center several hours from the family home. According to her daughter, Carina Moran, she faces imminent removal to Guatemala. The existence of the order, according to current immigration law, makes Alvarado’s pathway to becoming a Lawfully Admitted Permanent Resident extremely difficult, if not impossible.
In a FOX4 news report, Moran says the family’s attorney advised them that Alvarado has an existing final order of removal that stemmed from a failure to appear at a scheduled deportation hearing when Alvarado was a minor.
Alvarado’s daughter, Carina, has started a fundraising drive on the popular GoFundMe website, hoping to raise money to cover legal expenses and make international arrangements to send Alvarado’s belongings to Guatemala if needed. The fundraising effort also seeks to help with medical costs, according to Moran.
In the post, Moran describes the situation saying, “I am the daughter of two immigrants, my father was born in El Salvador, and my mother was born in Guatemala. My dad recently became a US citizen after a decade of hard work and multiple long drives to interviews. Today (Wed. 4/23) was my mom’s turn to present herself for her first interview. For an entire week leading up to today, I cried and prayed that my mom would stay home and that she was going to a routine interview. Unfortunately, we were lied to, and our family has been torn apart.”
Moran says she sat outside the hearing and, after an hour, saw her father and the family’s attorney walk out without her mom. She went on to provide details of her father’s account of what transpired in the interview, saying, “My dad was asked to step out of the office where my mom was sitting. The second he did, she was detained by two immigration officers. She was taken out the back side of the building and put into a white van. All we could do was watch.”
Moran says the family has filed a legal action seeking to stop Alvarado’s removal.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Before his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @RandyClarkBBTX.
