by Brenda Medina
...But during the interview, (click here) she was asked to step out of the office. Twenty minutes later, she was told that her husband, who had a deportation order pending from long ago, had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Oscar, 42, who crossed the Mexico border in 2004 undocumented, has been held since then in an immigration detention center in Broward County. He could be deported at any time.
“I went to the immigration appointment with a lot of confidence because it was an interview. I never imagined they would take my husband away under arrest,” Maria said of the meeting Tuesday. “We are trying to do the right thing.”
Arrests of immigrants during the marriage interviews in USCIS offices is becoming more common in South Florida, according to attorneys in an agency that offers legal assistance to immigrants.
Immigrants with old deportation orders are following the procedures for obtaining legal status known as Petition for Alien Relatives and turning up for required interviews but “some of them are finding that ICE agents are waiting to arrest them,” said Alexandra De León, an attorney with Americans for Immigrant Justice.
An ICE spokesman in Miami, asked about the Hernández case, told el Nuevo Herald that any undocumented immigrant facing a deportation order can be detained by the agency at any time....
