Tresa Baldas | Detroit Free Press

Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press

It was a routine day for Mikey Gojcaj. His mom had dropped him off at school for a tutoring session in chemistry when she bid him farewell with the familiar kiss on the cheek.

For the 15-year-old boy, it was the last such ritual outside Sterling Heights High School.

When he got home from school that April day, the ninth-grader learned that his mother had been arrested by immigration authorities. She was jailed, and three weeks later, deported to Albania.

Tears, anger and frustration followed. But amid the chaos and fear of living without mom, a decision was eventually made: The children are leaving America.

At 6 p.m. Tuesday, Mikey and his two little sisters will board a plane with nine suitcases at Detroit Metro Airport and bid farewell to their father and the only country they have ever known. The siblings are moving to Albania — a tough decision made by their father, who firmly believes the children belong with their mother.

"I'm excited, but at the same time I'm nervous. I feel disappointed that I'll be leaving everything," Mikey told the Free Press late Monday night as he gathered with friends and family who came to say goodbye. "This is my last night sleeping in America."

Mikey is among millions of American-born children who may soon be faced with the same agony of having to decide whether to stay in this country, or leave for a foreign land to be with a parent. According to the American Immigration Council, 4.1 million U.S. citizen children live with at least one undocumented parent.

If recent deportation statistics are any indication, many more children may soon face the same fate as Mikey and his sisters. Under the Trump administration, the deportations of immigrants with no criminal records have soared, tripling from nearly 16,500 in 2016 to almost 45,800 last year. That's an average of 4,143 arrests a month, compared with an average of 1,700 a month under the Obama administration.

The surge is largely because of President Donald Trump's tougher directive to ICE agents: Before, they were instructed to target those with serious criminal pasts; Now they're told to arrest any immigrants here illegally.

And there are no signs of deportations slowing down. As Trump stated on Tuesday, when asked about the government missing a court-ordered deadline to reunite about 100 immigrant children under 5 with their parents: "Well, I have a solution. Tell people not to come to our country illegally. That's the solution. Don't come to our country illegally. Come like other people do. Come legally."

Trump, whose zero-tolerance policy separated about 3,000 children from their parents at the border this spring, added: "I'm saying this very simply: We have laws. We have borders. Don't come to our country illegally. It's not a good thing."

For Mikey, the current immigration policy is hurtful and unfair, though he still hopes to return one day and live here. He plans on visiting his father next summer and stresses that he loves this country and the freedoms and opportunities it offers.

But he's angry right now. And hurt.

His mother, Cile Precetaj, 46, had no criminal record. She did not enter the country illegally, but rather sought asylum when she arrived in 2000, claiming that she feared for her life in Albania and that her family was threatened by criminal groups that sought to kidnap her and make her a prostitute. She also expressed fears about an abusive fianceé she left behind.

Ultimately, her asylum request was denied and she lost all appeals.

"She was trying to escape prostitution. She came here for freedom. She never did anything wrong in this country. She did nothing wrong — so why should she be kicked out?" Mikey said. "I just hope this country learns from what it's doing. This isn't right."

He stressed: "Stop this. Stop separating families."

family photo

Related:

Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press

'There's nothing like a mother'

Pete Gojcac has been wringing his hands for months. His wife's immigration ordeal has taken its toll on him, emotionally and financially.

The Yugoslavian-native sold his restaurant to give his children money to live on in Albania. He has no job now. He has worked in restaurants his whole life, and still has to care for his elderly mother, a U.S. citizen who is blind and crippled and lives with her son and grandchildren in Troy.

For Gojcac, sending his children to Albania is gut-wrenching, but he believes it's what's best. With him as the breadwinner (he's looking for full-time work), he fears he won't be home enough to look after the kids, like their mom did. And he worries they could go down the wrong path.

"I don't want my kids to go to waste and start hanging out with the wrong crowd. No way," Gojcac said. "There's nothing like a mother. I don't care how much a father loves his kids — there's nothing like a mother."

But inside the tough exterior, his heart gives way.

"I've been looking at my children, crying. I'll miss their faces coming and waking me up when I'd sleep in ... I'll miss when I'd jump in bed with them and play around," Gojcac said through tears Monday night. "I'm losing everything."

'This is our country'

On their last night in the U.S., the Gojcac children had Chinese food. It's 10-year-old Megan's favorite. Like her brother, the fifth-grader at Holden Elementary School is feeling mixed emotions. She's excited about reuniting with her mother, but sad and disappointed about leaving her father, school, friends and her cheerful, pink-flowered bedroom.

As a farewell gift, one friend at school gave her a charm bracelet with both of their names on it. Another friend gave her a unicorn bracelet. Megan cried, but promised to come back and visit. What she loves best about this country, she said, is the freedom.

"You have a free life. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion," said Megan, who also plans to live in the U.S. in the future. "This is our country. We were born here."

The last time Megan saw her mom face to face was April 26. Cile Precetaj had walked her girls to the bus stop and kissed them as they made their way to school. When Megan got home, she and her siblings learned from her father that their mother had been arrested during her routine immigration check-in.

Mikey punched a wall, Everyone cried. The threat of deportation was always there, but their mom had managed to escape it thus far. In 2013, she received a removal order. But after the Free Press wrote about her ordeal, the government temporarily changed its mind and an executive order was issued, sparing her deportation. She would just have to report to check-ins, and stay clean.

Cile Precetaj did that. But on April 26, without warning, she was arrested during a routine check-in. A clerk at the counter told her to come around back. There, they broke the news to her. They arrested her. She fainted and was temporarily hospitalized.

The family was blindsided.

"I thought it would be like the last time. I did not think they would detain her. ... I had faith that she would come back home," Mikey recalled.

Weeks passed but nothing happened. On Mother's Day, the children video-chatted with their mother, who was among more than a dozen mothers with U.S.-born children locked up at the Calhoun County jail, awaiting deportation.

"I told her to be strong, not to worry," Megan recalled.

Four days later, she was deported.

“I want people to pray for us,” Precetaj told the Free Press in a May phone interview from jail. “We never did any crime. We just came here to this country to have better life and better education for our kids. That’s the only reason we came here and I pray to God it’s going to work out.”

The U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement has long stressed that it had legal standing to remove Precetaj from the U.S. and that it allowed her to remain here to pursue the appeals process.

"In June 2005, Ms. Precetaj, an unlawfully present national of Albania, was ordered removed from the United States by a federal immigration judge," ICE has stated, noting her multiple appeals have failed. "For more than a decade between 2007 and 2018, ICE allowed Ms. Precetaj to remain free from custody while exhausting all of her legal options for relief."