By EFE
08 May 2024, 18:37 PM EDT
San Ysidro (USA).- A pair of young dreamers, spouses of Americans, were able to return this Wednesday with humanitarian visas to the United States, after having left the country to process permanent residency, which was denied to them by the consular authorities and the forced to stay in Mexico for more than a year.
Ángel Damián and Eduardo Arriaga, both 30 years old, hugged, crying, with their wives and families in San Ysidro, California’s port of entry, after they were allowed to return to the country with humanitarian permits.
The two beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program left the country in separate cases to process permanent residence because they were married to Americans.
An unexpected nightmare
Both went to the US consulate in Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) on the recommendation of their respective lawyers, Damián two and a half years ago, and Arriaga a year and a half ago. But they found that the consular authorities denied their request on the grounds that they had entered the country as undocumented immigrants when they were children.
“I thought that because of that experience, because I have my business, pay my taxes, and because I married my wife who is an American national, and because a lawyer told me so, I would have no problem leaving the country to apply for permanent residence,” Damián warned, “I never expected that instead of that joy so many problems would arise.”
The news devastated immigrants who consider the US their country and forced them to be separated from their families. Damián had to settle in Michoacán. When her mother traveled from Florida to see him, she sometimes ended up hospitalized in an emergency because the absence of her son shocked her heart.
Damián, his wife, Perla Damián, and his mother suffer from anxiety and depression due to the separation, they told EFE.
Arriaga lived a similar story, spending a year and a half in the State of Mexico, but both he and his wife, Sara Mireya Martínez, and their seven- and four-year-old children suffer from depression and anxiety.
Both immigrants had lived in the US since they were nine years old. Damián is the owner of a gardening and maintenance business, and Arriaga is a driver, both certified.
Back home
When they crossed back into the United States through the busiest checkpoint in the world, upon meeting their wives and family, the two ‘dreamers’, as those protected by DACA are known, burst into tears for a long time.
After drying his tears, Damián sent a message “to all the dreamers, tell them to keep fighting, keep fighting, keep having faith, which at the end of the day is the most important thing, so try hard and keep dreaming.”
Arriaga, for his part, recommended to dreamers who face similar situations “to be patient and surround yourself with good people, that is the most important thing, people’s support will always be very important.”
The immigration lawyer, Jessica Domínguez, who represented both cases and accompanied them from Tijuana, Mexico, to cross to California, explained to EFE that to request humanitarian permits she gathered all the evidence of the way in which both separations impacted spouses, children and an American mother.
“The success belongs to them and their families for having managed to obtain humanitarian permits after everything they have been through,” said the lawyer.
The two each said in their respective words that they actually consider the United States their country, since it was where they grew up and established their relationships since childhood.
“It has been a very difficult experience and I hope it helps other dreamers who plan to leave the country to apply for residency by marrying US citizens,” said Arriaga, “that what happened to us serves to warn other dreamers.”
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