A Father, A Husband, An Immigrant: Detained And Facing Deportation
The day was going to be perfect.
Alex figured he would wake up at 6:30 a.m., help get his little brothers up and off to school and catch the bus by 7. After school, the 14-year-old would do something he had been looking forward to for weeks — play in his first football game.
He would get to put on the team jersey — purple, with a camouflage print collar. And most importantly, his dad, Manuel, would be there, cheering from the sidelines.
Instead, Alex woke up to his mom screaming and crying outside his bedroom door.
By the time he got out of bed, it was too late. His dad was already gone — on his way to the county jail and then to immigration detention, where he would spend the next six months waiting to learn his future in the United States.
Manuel came to the United States from Mexico illegally two decades ago. He is one of the 143,470 immigrants arrested in the interior of the country last year by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities. These kinds of arrests are up 25 percent compared with in 2016 — part of an effort by the Trump administration to fulfill a campaign promise to deport more immigrants who have come to the U.S. illegally.
Manuel's story points to a broader policy directive of President Trump's first year in office. At a time when arrests at the
