On June 1 in Milwaukee, Elvira Benitez-Suarez spoke out about being detained by ICE for over two months. The Sheboygan Falls mother of four was granted bond after being detained during a routine immigration check-in in March.
Her attorney, Marc Christopher, says that her circumstances, and the fact that she was ruled eligible for a green card last year, makes her story unbelievable.
But it's more and more common under President Trump’s immigration policy that targets immigrants indiscriminately. Just last month, border czar Tom Homan talked about how he expects more deportations this year than last, saying, “mass deportations are still coming.”
Christopher is submitting his final briefs in support of a judge’s decision to release Benitez-Suarez. A decision on her fate could take up to two years.
WUWM’s Jimmy Gutierrez talked with Christopher about his client's story.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Elvira Benitez Suarez is 51, she's lived in the U.S. for 36 years. She has a family of four kids, four grandkids, owns a small cleaning business with her husband, is active in her church and has no criminal record. Why are we talking about her?
Marc Christopher: Well, because we are seeing an unprecedented enforcement crackdown on [immigrants]. It used to be more targeted, and we used to be going after criminals. We used to be going after repeat immigration violators. That's no longer the case. We've seen the federal government flush with money to proceed with the enforcement – over $170 billion was allocated during the last budget. And so we're using taxpayer dollars to incarcerate and try to remove mothers and fathers and community members.
Benitez-Suarez was recently released after spending two months in a detention facility in Kentucky. This also wasn't her first time being detained by ICE after spending six months in an Ohio facility. But we've gotten to know about her story before detention. She entered the country when she was 15, basically seeking asylum from Mexico. And there have been people out there commenting things like, “you've been in this country for so long, 36 years and you haven't gotten your green card.” What should folks know about her struggle to find a pathway to citizenship?
For many people that come in as children, there is no ability to easily get a green card. In Elvira's case, she was trying to go through the process. But when I say that process can take 15 years or more, that's the case. She had to wait for one of her daughters to turn 21, and then she had to wait for her husband to become a permanent resident so the daughter could file a petition for her. Then she would also have to file a waiver.
This is a process that can take 15, 20 years in some cases. And it was only when she was detained by ICE that she was allowed to go through the court process, rather than the affirmative process, which shortened her ability and gave her options in court that she did not have before she was detained by ICE.
And that affirmative process came to a head last year when a judge ruled that she was eligible for a green card. And now she's kind of in the middle of this fight between the immigration court system and the federal government. The federal government is looking to detain her. The immigration court is kind of giving her the all clear.
Yeah, absolutely. So a judge looked at her case and this is something that's allowed in the law. There’s a certain amount of visas that are allocated every year for somebody who's been in the United States for ten years or more, is a person of exceptional character and it would be an extraordinary and extremely unusual hardship on a U.S. citizen, spouse, parent or child. And the judge looked at her case and said, "yes, you definitely meet all of these criteria." And she — the judge — granted the green card.
It was on the 30th day, the last day that they could possibly appeal, that the federal government appealed her case, which meant that there is no final order, that there's no green card yet. And then on top of that, an extremely cruel move — they then sought to re-detain her and put her back in a detention facility, this time in the middle of nowhere Kentucky. Her process is still playing out.
