By Edgar Munoz and Luis Antonio Hernandez Owned
When Jaime Ávalos traveled last year from the United States to Ciudad Juárez (northern Mexico) to process an adjustment of immigration status, he did not imagine that the simple fact of crossing to the other side of the border would face him with the impossibility of returning to home for months.
Ávalos, who was a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program when he traveled outside the United States, was reunited Monday with his wife and young son on the Mexican side of the border, just before crossing into Texas together.
“Just seeing them on the screen was very difficult: watching him grow, running. He’s already getting on everything and I was missing that”she told Telemundo News between sobs, referring to the time she was separated from her son Noah, 1 and a half years old.
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A motorcade led by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, welcomed Ávalos at the El Paso port of entry on Monday.
“There are many dreamers who live this situation, the question is that they listen to them and that they see that they are US citizens,” Green, who fought for Ávalos to obtain a humanitarian permit to re-enter the country, told Telemundo News.
In August of last year, Ávalos went to an appointment at the US consulate in Ciudad Juárez to try to obtain his permanent residence. He had received legal advice from a nonprofit organization that helped him obtain DACA when he turned 18, but they did not warn him what could happen if he left the countryas he has said in several interviews his wife, Ariana Martínez.
“The lawyer assured us that there was no reason to be afraid because he had no criminal record,” Martínez said in a September interview with Telemundo San Diego.
However, when trying to re-enter the United States, immigration authorities at the border denied him entry.
They had discovered that after he first entered the United States as a baby, his family took him to Mexico to register his birth in Oaxaca. He then brought him back to the United States to live permanently, Green explained to the television. ABC 13. Because he had left the country before he was 8 years old, he was prohibited by law from re-entry for a period of 10 years.
Nor had his legal advisers informed him that, as a DACA recipient, he had the right to do the interviews for his application for permanent residence within the United States, without having to cross into Mexico.
“You have to obey the laws, but when you don’t know and things like that happen, you don’t expect it. Now, all we have to do is push it forward,” Ariana Martínez told Telemundo News.
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Ávalos, who was brought to the United States as a baby by his parents, like hundreds of thousands of other Dreamers, graduated from Bellaire University (Houston, Texas) and has worked since then, without incurring legal problems, according to his wife told ABC. .
His new lawyer, Naimeh Salem, managed to get him awarded a parole or humanitarian parole from Congress to be able to re-enter. The procedures took months. Salem explained to Telemundo News that Ávalos lost his DACA protection status due to his departure from the country last year.
“Now we have to find a way for him to get legal status in the United States, apart from his parole“said the lawyer, who added that the route could be through his wife, a US citizen.
Ávalos and his family plan to return to live together in their home in Houston.
