President Trump has ramped up an aggressive immigration policy — one that targets people without criminal records, and even people with pending asylum claims or visa applications. In Milwaukee, there may not be a clearer example than Yessenia Ruano.
“I started at ALBA [elementary school] in 2017 and I have worked with different levels [from] sixth graders, K4 kids,” says Ruano, who was a teacher's aide in Milwaukee and has lived here for over 10 years.
Ruano is from a small mountain village in El Salvador. Growing up, her family didn’t have much. But she’s always had big dreams.
“Since I was 11, I had a dream to go to university and I never knew how I could get that goal,” she says.
At 14, she moved from her village to live with an aunt and uncle, who lived closer to better schools. She became the first person in her family to graduate from college.
But soon, everything would change. She says her family was targeted by local gangs and she received death threats and was robbed multiple times. Her brother and friends of hers were murdered.
In 2011, Ruano crossed into the U.S. seeking asylum. For almost 15 years, she lived in Wisconsin, in relative peace.
“In November 2024, that's when the storms started,” Ruano says, referring to when President Trump won the election. “I was struggling for a hard week. I was very scared at the point when the new government started.”
At the time, she had a lawyer who she trusted. But there was a lapse in her status, making her vulnerable at the worst time.
“He said, 'I want to be honest with you, you will be deported. I can do nothing for you,'” says Ruano. “My husband (Miguel Guerra) and me, we said 'OK, no more American dreams. We have to go back to El Salvador.' And the other part was my daughters.”
Ruano's twin daughters had grown up in Milwaukee — they're U.S. citizens.
“I was very sad because I work very hard…to accomplish every goal: like a house, a car, working hard,” Ruano says. “I had to say goodbye to everything that I worked hard for many years.”
In June of 2025, Yessenia Ruano, her daughters, and their dog Copitos (Snowflake) were forced to leave their lives in Milwaukee, heading to a country her girls had never been to. One where the family had no clue how they’d make a living, or continue their dreams.
Seeking safety across a border
When Yessenia Ruano fled gang violence in El Salvador and first tried to enter the U.S., she says she was clueless about the process.
“We don't know about the laws here and how the system works,” Ruano says. “So, they told me I was unable to apply for asylum and they forced me to sign the first time.”
She was quickly deported back to El Salvador, and eventually tried to come back to the U.S.
She says she worked with local coyotes, or traffickers, to get her across the border. This time, she was picked up in the Chihuahua desert outside of San Antonio by immigration officers. Ruano says she and the people she was with had gone three days without food.
“The second time I speak with an official immigration official and I ask for withholding [of removal], which is a kind of asylum,” Ruano recalls.
She was interviewed by an asylum officer while in a Texas detention center. After six months, she was bonded out of detention for $5,000 from a friend in Wisconsin.
“People told me, 'Why are you going to Wisconsin?,'” Ruano remembers. “'It's very cold over there! It is a horrible place.' And I say, 'I don't know, because…my friend who is paying my bond gives the address and I have to move there.'”
Life in Milwaukee, and immigration limbo
Over the next 12 years, Ruano built a life in Milwaukee. Finding work, and love, all while keeping in touch with a young, growing immigration agency called ICE.
“I started with my check-ins in January 2011 here in Milwaukee [with ICE],” Ruano says. “An official told me, you have to come here every year and we will check your background with the police and everything…It was never dangerous. I feel comfortable doing that kind of process.”
In 12 years, she had 18 check-ins. No trouble. But the problem with her status actually started the first time she tried to cross into the U.S.
“When she came in the first time, it would have been her opportunity to present her asylum claim,” says immigration lawyer Marc Christopher. “But what they do is they round up large numbers of people, and they just kind of push them through. So when she got sent back, she essentially had a removal order at that point, at the border.”
That last part, about the removal order, is important.
“So when she came back in and actually presented her asylum claim, the fact that she had been the target of violence, her family had been the target of violence in her home country, she was no longer eligible for asylum,” he says, because of the removal order.
Withholding of removal, the status Ruano applied for, basically allows someone to get a work permit, get stable — but not too stable — because it never gives a person permanent status. They’re always in limbo.
Deportation
Knowing the withholding of removal status wouldn’t keep her safe when President Trump returned to office, she applied for a T visa, which is something available for trafficking victims. The cost was another $16,000, but at least this would keep her safe from deportation. That’s because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) doesn’t deport people with open T visa cases — or at least, they didn’t before.
Christopher says he had a contact inside of ICE at the time who told him Ruano was a target for removal. So, at the advice of a close friend, Ruano decided to go public with her story in February.
Along with the Milwaukee-based immigration advocacy organization Voces de la Frontera, she held a press conference. Her lawyer Marc Christopher was there, along with her colleagues from ALBA elementary school.
At her April check-in, ICE gave her a 30-day extension. But in late May, she was ordered to carry out her own deportation. Christopher quickly filed for an emergency pause on her removal. It failed, and Ruano was out of options.
“And so that's when I think [she] made the very difficult decision that rather than fight out this legal battle while being detained and her two children being by themselves with her husband, that they were going to make the difficult choice to return back [to El Salvador],” says Christopher.
“I start giving [away] my plants, everything I donated to Goodwill,” Ruano recalls. “And my daughters would celebrate their 10th birthdays…I invited some friends…my daughter's classmate, we were there with the cake…and that feeling was like a funeral because we knew it was our last time in Milwaukee.”
On June 17, 2025, Yessenia Ruano and her daughters boarded a United Airlines flight from Milwaukee to San Salvador. It was the girls' first time on a plane, leaving the only home they’ve known.
Starting over in an unfamiliar place
“We arrive on Tuesday at night and the next day, I see my mom, my sisters, my family from my husband [side],” Ruano says. “My daughters are hugging their grandmothers. That was like a gift too…it's like a very special transition.”
Ruano and the girls shared a room in her mother-in-law's home. Copitos was there, too. Her husband, Miguel Guerra, who was undocumented, left Milwaukee and joined them a few months later.
The adjustment period in El Salvador was a whole story itself — the stifling heat and humidity, sharing space, trying to find a good school. All while Ruano had to figure out a way to make money.
One big difference between El Salvador and the U.S. is that while there’s a teacher shortage in the U.S., there’s a surplus in El Salvador. Ruano had to get creative and put her English skills to use working in a call center.
While she pieced together work, and a home, the girls struggled. Everything was unfamiliar. Even for Ruano, it felt like a different country than the one she knew.
“My hope was still there,” Ruano says. “My husband told me, 'Yessenia, just let it go.' Even though I was there in my country, I was keeping my hope, my faith that something good is going to happen. I don’t know when, but I feel it.”
Meanwhile, back in Milwaukee, something caught Marc Christopher’s eye.
“I'm always looking and talking to different immigrant rights groups, legal teams, lawyers,” he says. “And there was an immigration law group out in California where they were filing a lawsuit for people in Yessenia’s position saying, this is absurd. How are you going to deport someone who has a pending T visa? Nobody's ever going to be able to get a T visa."
Christopher reached out to the group and told them about Ruano. They agreed to add her to the lawsuit.
It was filed in mid-October. And for almost seven months, nothing. More waiting in limbo. Then in May of 2026, the ruling comes out: Yessenia Ruano and the others can return.
“It was then that they ordered the Department of Homeland Security to bring her and her children back into the United States to allow her to finish the T visa process,” says Christopher.
'Something good is going to happen'
Ruano remembers hearing the news for the first time: that after over a year in El Salvador, she and her daughters could go back to their lives in Milwaukee
“I cry, I cry for happiness,” Ruano says. “I was like, oh, that's my hope…thank you, God for this miracle. Because this was a miracle.”
The biggest challenge was that while she was clear to return until her visa was settled, her husband Miguel, who was undocumented, had no clear path back. The family would once again be split.
“In Spanish we say agrio dulce, like sour grapes…I was very sad,” Ruano says. "And Miguel told me, 'Yessenia, I think God is giving you this chance, so take advantage. I can wait here, I can finish our home in El Salvador. And you can [be with] the girls over there so they can go to school.'”
There are other avenues the family could explore. The girls are U.S. citizens, so when they turn 21, they can petition for Miguel to become a permanent resident. But even though Ruano is back in Milwaukee, with her daughters, she’s still scared.
“I don't know, I still feel a little afraid to be [captured] by ICE again,” she says. “I don't feel like I'm safe now. My hope is still waiting for my process, but I see news on how people are getting in detention.”
While Ruano has gotten lots of support, she has also heard from people who want her and her family gone.
“Every day they are closing doors. In my case, knocking on every door and every door is closing, closing,” she says.
There’s still no timeline for when Ruano’s T visa application might be processed.
For now, she’s getting the girls ready for another school year back at ALBA. She’s hoping to return to the classroom once her employment permit gets approved.
One more step, and just a little bit more waiting, she says.
