Marisela Vallejos came to Nicaragua proceeding from Miami on January 28 in the flight 969 of American Airlines. It was the worst trip of his life. There were no words of consolation that could relieve the sorrow that he was feeling after they were starting it of his children. This Wednesday evening, Vallejos turned into another victim of our cracked migratory system. It turned into one more than the thousands of immigrants who are deported after remaining illegally in the United States while they remain his born children in this country.

The Vallejos suffering was major knowing that his children, 12-year-old Cecia, and 7-year-old Ronald, had declared themselves in hunger strike to try to avoid his deportation. For 48 hours they were in permanent wakefulness opposite to the center of detention of immigration in Pompano Beach, where his mother was detained from the middle of December dependent on an appeal. But it was useless. On having interyielded in his case, neither his sacrifice, nor the efforts of local politicians were sufficient to stop the deportation. His mother was deported without at least they allowing him to say goodbye.

As most of the immigrants' cases that face the deportation, his is complex. She crossed illegally the border with his small daughter more than one decade ago to join his husband who was in the United States. They believed that the family might legalize his status under the Law of Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Mitigation, known as NACARA. The measurement turned into law by the president Clinton in 1997, has the intention of providing migratory benefits and of protecting from the deportation certain Central Americans, Cuban and citizens of the ex-Soviet Union, including to his clerks. For what Vallejos and his husband never waited is that his case was pushed back, that she was receiving a deportation order and that his process of appeal of four years was turning out to be useless.

I wonder if this is the type of cases that the president Barack Obama bore in mind when he answered to my question if he would consider a moratorium in the immigration raids. "Very well, one of the things that Janet Napolitano will do is to check what we have done. What has been successful and what has not been successful", he answered. "I want to be sure that we operate in a way that it is coherent with our values, that it is human. I do not want to see mothers separated from his children by reasons of a politics that has not been analyzed thoroughly and that finally is not also the key to solve the migratory problems", it added.

Neapolitan newly is in charge of the Department of Internal Safety and is not clear if it has had time "to check what we have done", but what it has already left in skylight is that he wants to clean the streets of "criminal foreigners". In one of his first comments on the migratory topic he affirmed to be examining existing programs of application of the migratory laws to see if the taxpayers are receiving "the best compensation for what they pay of taxes".

The new immigration chief explained to journalists and to officials of the agency of Fulfillment of Customs Laws that his target is that when a foreign prisoner who has been illegally in the country fulfills his judgment, it is possible to deport him immediately. He said that also it would be chasing fugitive criminals who are in the country illegally.
The question is if you present yourself like Vallejos and his husband whose supposed "crime" was to come to the United States in search of a better life, will be thought "criminals". And if the Vallejos deportation, being removed from his children born in the United States, is "human and coherent with our values".

Alfonso Oviedo, the lawyer of immigration that represents Vallejos thinks that a legal resource exists still. The judge did not accept the medical record that demonstrated that they were in the country during the time stipulated by NACARA, because they were coming from a private clinic and the list of valid examples requested in the record is of cities and counties. Oviedo believes that the words "not limited to" included in the law, extend the possibility of acceptable papers, although he admits that his claim to the court of appeals of immigration to re-open the case has only 50-50 of opportunities to be successful.

There exists a big hope that the inadequate migratory system is exact under the new government. Till now, it is more of the same. A migratory reform that opens the way towards the legalization for undocumented immigrants could have saved from the deportation Marisela Vallejos, and his children would not have to be suffering the sorrow of being separated from his mother.

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.