179 ISSUES OF FAMILY SEPARATION: AN ARGUMENT FOR MOVING AWAY FROM ENFORCEMENT-ONLY SOLUTIONS TO OUR IMMIGRATION “PROBLEM” Maria del Pilar Castillo* Please do not deport my parents because you will also deport a girl who only has a year left of high school and a dream to become something more than the daughter of illegal immigrants. 1 What happens to the hope of a single child—anywhere—can enrich our world, or impoverish it. 2 In October 2005, Ruby Arcos, a United States citizen and daughter of undocumented immigrants, wrote to the Ninth Circuit begging them to let her finish high school and to stop the deportation of her parents. 3 She implored the court to consider her future and that of her four U.S. citizen siblings. 4 However, the Ninth Circuit’s affirmed the decision to deport them and Ruby’s parents, who had lived in the United States for eleven years, were deported to their native country by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 5 Judge Pregerson dissented from the court’s opinion and prayed that as soon as possible “the good men and women in our Congress will ameliorate the plight of families like the [petitioners] and give us humane laws that will not cause the disintegration of such families.” 6 In 2008, it was estimated that four million U.S. born children of unauthorized * 1. Memije v. Gonzales, 481 F.3d 1163, 1167 (9th Cir. 2007) (letter from the sixteen year old child of undocumented parents who will be deported to Mexico). 2. Barack Obama, Remarks by the President to the United Nations General Assembly (Sept. 23, 2009), in THE WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF THE PRESS SECRETARY, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/remarks-by-the-president-to-the-united-nations- general-assembly/. 3. Memije, 481 F.3d at 1166-67. 4. Id. at 1165. 5. Id. at 1164. The court in Memije found that it lacked jurisdiction to review this petition because Section 242(a)(2)(B)(i) of INA eliminated its “jurisdiction over decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals that involve the exercise of discretion.” Id. at 1164. The Memije family had failed to establish the requisite “exceptional and extreme hardship” standard. Id. 6. Id. at 1165-66 (Pregerson, J., dissenting) (quoting Cabrera-Alvarez v. Gonzales, 423 F.3d 1006, 1015 (9th Cir. 2005).
ISSUES OF FAMILY SEPARATION: AN ARGUMENT FOR MOVING AWAY FROM ENFORCEMENT-ONLY SOLUTIONS TO OUR IMMIGRATION “PROBLEM�
Jul 09, 2023
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