Aliya is barely 6 years old, and although her life had been full of joy and much love in the home she shared with her “daddy”, Julio Patricio Gómez, on the morning of October 14, being so small, things for her and the Ecuadorian family, turned upside down.
‘La Migra’ arrived at his home in Staten Island, and after informing the construction worker that there was a deportation order issued against him, issued since 2010, they arrested him and took him to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center Detention Center, in Pennsylvania, where there are currently more than 900 immigrants deprived of their liberty.
Despair, sadness, anguish, and immense pain for being separated from her “daddy” have seized the little girl, who in her most recent visit to her father, together with her aunt, before Christmas, in the middle of of his innocence he wanted to stay in the Detention Center. Aliya did not want to be away from the Ecuadorian, who is a single father and sole caregiver for her girl since she was only 1 year old.
Aliya, born in the United States, is very sad and with her childish little words she only asks the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) to be moved and release her father soon. She wants to play with Patricio again; she wants everything to go back to the way it was before October and to have her “daddy” back.
“I feel sad because I can’t see my dad. We went to Chuck E. Cheese together, soccer together, and we went to Legoland together. I always wanted to go to Legoland before and he took me. Release my daddy so he can be with me,” said the little girl, who is currently under the care of other relatives. “I love you daddy,” added the little girl in a couple of drawings that she has made for her father, with images from the movie Frozen and the wish that this situation has a happy ending.
Rosa Gómez, older sister of Aliya’s father, in tears, narrated that the life of the family, originally from Azogues, Ecuador, has become a nightmare since ICE took Patricio, and they implored the Immigration authorities that they think about the damage that the arrest of an exemplary father is doing to the little girl and the rest of the Gómez family.
“We are living in a very ugly moment. We can’t be okay with Patricio in custody. There is not a single second of tranquility. It is very painful and it breaks our hearts to hear the girl saying: ‘I love my daddy, I love my daddy,’” the sad aunt narrated. “I tell all the lords (authorities) to get my brother out of there. My brother is not a bad person, he is a good worker, a good citizen. He is someone who has been paying taxes forever. I ask you to help us because we are all suffering”.
Gómez’s sister added that the arrest of the father of the family has also affected his 68-year-old mother, who is suffering a lot.
“My mother is in Ecuador full of pain and as a family we ask everyone from Immigration to touch their hearts and we hope that this will end soon, because Patricio is getting sick from despair,” added the Ecuadorian, warning that her brother was His bones are aching, he is dizzy, and he is very cold at night because he only has the right to a thin sheet to wrap himself in. But beyond that, she insisted that Aliya hurt everyone.
“They have a beautiful relationship, and she hasn’t been the same since he was taken away. She cries every day and asks, ‘When is my daddy coming home?’” she concluded, noting that Aliya has two wrapped Christmas presents for her father that she couldn’t open last month and is looking forward to giving them to her when she arrives. to home. “Our family is asking ICE to please bring my brother home to his daughter and his family where he belongs.”
On a legal level, the Ecuadorian’s immigration situation is complicated, as explained by the lawyer Paige Austin, from the organization Make the Road NY, who is handling the case, who nevertheless assured that they will continue to fight with all possible resources so that in the first place the Ecuadorian is released and thus be able to continue fighting so that the immigrant is not deported.
The defender mentioned that Patricio is waiting for the Board of Immigration Appeals to decide on a request presented last December to reopen the immigrant’s case, so that his deportation can be fought in court. In the middle of the process, the good news is that they managed to get a brake on his deportation approved until the result of the appeal is known, which guarantees that while the case lasts he will not be sent to Ecuador, but it still cannot be sung victory.
“The first thing we ask is that Immigration release this father so that he can be with his daughter while the process lasts, because we know that a problem with the courts is that the processes there are slow, so we estimate that the response of the appeal arrives in about two or three months, not before that, and there is no point in keeping him detained,” said the lawyer. “Until the appeal is resolved, he is protected from being deported, but it does not mean that he can stay, because each step is slow, there is no fast step and this is going to take months. If he wins the case, he will be returned to the Newark Immigration court, and there we have to fight with the good arguments we have so that he is not deported ”.
And about the way in which Patricio Gómez ended up in this legal mess, the lawyer explained that the Ecuadorian, who had entered the United States border when he was 16 years old, later went to Canada and when he re-entered the country, in 2008 , he applied for asylum at the northern border and although he appeared at several hearings, he later changed his address and in 2009, without learning that he had a new appointment, he did not attend court and his case was dismissed. A year later, in 2010, the case was reopened, and Gómez, who did not have a lawyer, was not aware of a new court date and, in absentia, was issued a deportation order, a measure that has never been confirmed. found out, until last October 14, when ICE agents came looking for him at his Staten Island home.
Another rather worrying fact that is being investigated by defenders has to do with the way in which ‘La Migra’ found Gómez’s whereabouts. The immigrant, who is fluent in English, assured his lawyer and his relatives that when the ICE agents showed up and informed him that they were looking for him because there was a deportation order against him, he asked them how they could get to his house. , if it was a new address.
The detainee assured that a ‘La Migra’ officer told him that they had been able to track him down by obtaining data related to the application for a New York State driver’s license for undocumented immigrants that he had processed just a few months ago, information that supposedly should be protected. by law and that according to state regulations cannot be shared with federal authorities.
For this reason, immigrant advocates are requesting a meeting with the authorities of the New York Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to establish whether that agency shared protected information with ICE to help detain the immigrant, if it was an accident or if there was a data exchange procedural error.
For now, and while Aliya continues to cry over the imprisonment of her “daddy” and the family and the community demand that the Ecuadorian be able to return to his Staten Island home, Gómez’s lawyer insisted that the first thing they will continue to urge is that ICE release Patrick.
“The first thing is to demand that ICE release him and that the Biden Administration keep its word not to arrest people like Mr. Gomez who is a good member of his community and on whom his daughter depends for her care. With this detention we see that this Administration is treating immigrants almost like the previous Administration”, said the defender. “We hope that he will be released soon so that he can be reunited with his daughter and then we hope to win so that we can request an immigration remedy.”
The ICE Office assured us that it would respond to these questions, but at the time of writing this edition they had not yet issued a response, and Patricio Gómez was still detained in Pennsylvania.