New Jersey man tearfully says goodbye to wife and children as he is deported

The Guatemalan immigrant ordered deported under the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration bid an emotional goodbye to his family early Saturday before boarding a plane for home, not knowing when he would see his wife and children again.

Jose Estrada Lopez’s two sons and daughter accompanied him to gate C-132 at Newark Liberty International Airport along with three immigration agents before he embarked on the approximately five-hour flight to Guatemala City – a place he hasn’t been to in more than 15 years.

“What do they gain from taking us out of here, who benefits from this?’’ said an emotional Estrada Lopez before leaving his Fairview apartment to go to the airport. “We are not doing anything wrong, we are paying taxes, working. We just don’t understand why.”

His children, all born in the United States, will remain here. He said he was worried about their well-being now that he won’t be around to help his wife, Gloria Chocoj, raise them.

“Who is going to protect my children when I’m gone?’’ he said.

Estrada Lopez had been fighting to stay in the country for nearly four years but his latest request to stay an order of deportation was denied and he was told last week that he had to go back to Guatemala.

“I feel empty,’’ his 10-year-old son, Christopher, said after saying goodbye to his father. He said his dad told him before he left “that he loves me and told me to take care of my brother and sister and mom.”

Estrada Lopez is among the approximately 11 million people who have been living in the county illegally and who have become the targets of policies by the Trump administration that aim to clamp down on illegal immigration. President Donald Trump has directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to follow the nation’s immigration laws.

Estrada Lopez had been ordered removed several years ago, but under President Barack Obama's administration, he had not been a priority for removal because deportation officers were directed to focus on convicted criminals. So for the past few years, he was on an order of supervision, which meant he would check in annually with immigration officers and was allowed to stay.

Estrada Lopez had been issued an order of removal in 1998 and was deported. He entered the country again, and was arrested in 2013 and the prior order of removal was reinstated.

His removal on Saturday will be added to the 2,095 deportations carried out by the enforcement and removal arm of ICE in Newark since October -- a 34 percent increase from the 1,561 people removed last fiscal year during the same time period, according to figures provided by the agency this week. Trump’s immigration policies have also resulted in an increase of arrests of immigrants by ICE, which increased almost 40 percent during the first three months of the president's term.

Orders of deportation have also risen. From Feb. 1 until the end of July, nearly 50,000 unauthorized immigrants were ordered deported from the United States, an increase of 27.8 percent from last year. Another 7,086 chose to voluntarily depart, according to figures released this week from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Supporters of Trump and his immigration directives approve of those rising numbers, saying that the president is keeping his campaign promises to expand immigration enforcement and deport unauthorized immigrants. They say that the immigration laws of the country must be followed, and that people that find themselves in immigration proceedings broke the law.

“The fact is that [Estrada Lopez] did not have, and never had a right to be in this country,’’ said Gayle Kesselman, a Trump supporter who used to head New Jersey Citizens for Immigration Control, an organization that is no longer active. “He is a Guatemalan citizen. He belongs in Guatemala.”

Last days in New Jersey

Jose Estrada Lopez was told last week that his most recent application for an administrative stay of removal was denied and that he would have to make use of a one-way ticket that was purchased weeks ago at the request of immigration officers. He bought travel insurance with the ticket hoping that he would be given a reprieve and allowed to stay.

The past week was fraught with emotion as Estrada Lopez attempted to console his children and wife while he tried to make sense of his future. He and his wife, who also came to the country unauthorized, considered moving into a church to seek sanctuary from deportation, but nixed the idea, which several people facing deportation across the country have done.

Sanctuary would have bought him time in the United States, but Estrada Lopez reasoned that it could have consequences for the family he was leaving behind, Chocoj said.

Estrada Lopez said that the last few days he had been trying to help his children, Christopher, 10, Joseph, 9, and Katherine, 8, cope with his pending absence.

“For them the first two weeks are going to be OK, but I think the third one is going to be difficult,’’ he said. “The thought of that last minute with them, I don’t want that moment to ever come, but I’m trying to prepare for that difficult moment.”

He also becomes silent and again teary when he talks about seeing his and Chocoj’s eldest son Jonathan, now 20, who lives in Guatemala. Estrada Lopez left when Jonathan was a toddler.

“I left him as a baby and now he is a man, I have to be strong,’’ he said.

Estrada Lopez, who speaks some English and has worked construction for years, took care of his children on weekends when his wife was working. He was the parent who planned weekend bike outings, who drove them to pick apples in the fall and to chop down a Christmas tree in December. He also took them to Washington D.C. last year, and has taken the family to the beach.

He said returning to Guatemala would be difficult since he hadn’t been in the country in so long. When he left the small village of Los Jometes, where he grew up and where he met his wife, there were dirt roads and no electricity or running water.

He said he would probably live with Chocoj’s parents, who have raised Jonathan, for the first few weeks, but said he wants to finish a house he started to build years ago. Here, Estrada Lopez fixed roofs, installed light fixtures, and painted rooms in homes in different parts of New Jersey.

He said his English language and construction skills could help him land a job and then he will work on his house. It is there, he said, that his children will stay the day they are able to visit him.

He already has some leads on possible jobs from people he met in North Jersey these last few days. Marina Polanco, of Union City and who was born in Guatemala, said her family has a busines in her home country and Estrada Lopez might be able to work as a driver. Polanco also offered to take his children to Guatemala for a visit.

Before heading to the airport Saturday, he said that he and his wife had agreed to consider the possibility of all of them joining him one day in Central America. They had said in the past it wasn’t a possibility because public schools in the village they are from only go up to the sixth grade and private schools are expensive and not affordable with the salaries people receive there.

“If they are not doing well because they miss me they might have to go,’’ he said.

Detained and deported, but he returned

Estrada Lopez initially entered the United States in February 1998, near Tuscon, Arizona, and was stopped. He was issued an order of removal and deported to Guatemala two months later. He then entered the United States illegally again. In December 2013, Estrada Lopez was arrested by the ICE Newark Fugitive Unit and a judge reinstated his previous deportation order. He was held at the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility with other immigrant detainees for nearly a year.

While in custody, Estrada Lopez applied for asylum, claiming he left Guatemala to flee gangs that pressured him for money and threatened his family. But his application was denied, and an appeal was rejected by the Board of Immigration Appeals.

In December 2014, Estrada Lopez was released from detention because he would have qualified for deportation relief under an executive order Obama announced that would have protected the parents of U.S. citizen children from deportation.

That immigration policy, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, was never implemented because several states filed a lawsuit against it. Earlier this year, on June 15, the Trump administration announced they would rescind the policy, and stop defending it in court.

Estrada Lopez doesn’t know when he will see his wife or children again. He will be barred from returning to the United States for possibly 10 years. Estrada Lopez attorney, Eric Mark said under current immigration laws, he will have to wait until his oldest U.S. born son, Christopher turns 21. At that time, Christopher will be able to petition his father for legal residency, a process that can take years.

Currently, there are four main ways to gain legal permanent status to the United States: family sponsorship, a U.S. employer sponsorship, humanitarian reasons and a green-card lottery.

Most legal immigration happens through family sponsorship, which can be a long and difficult process. Family sponsored visas can at times take more than 20 years to process. In March 2017, for example, the U.S. government was still processing some family-sponsored visa applications dating to August 1993, and some employment-related visa applications from March 2005, according to statistics by the Migration Policy Institute.

Earlier this month, Trump announced that he was in support of proposed immigration legislation that would create a merit-based immigration system, that would favor applicants who speak English and would not allow United States residents or citizens to sponsor adult children or extended family members, including their parents, for green cards.