Linda Bonduel of Cumming wonders how she and her husband would survive if they were deported to their native Venezuela, which is descending into chaos amid food riots, looting and economic collapse. If her parents get expelled to Peru, Marie Cruzado Jeanneau of Lawrenceville says she might be forced to halt her college studies and look after her 10-year-old sister. And Dety Ngassa of Paulding County fears being sent back to Belgium, where she says she and her son suffered from domestic violence.
All three women are anxiously awaiting a U.S. Supreme Court decision on President Barack Obama's plans to temporarily shield millions of people like them and their relatives from deportation. A ruling is expected by the end of this month and could come as soon as Thursday. The women's stories reflect how the court's decision could impact a broad variety of immigrant families that have established firm community ties in Georgia. Many hold jobs in the Peach State, attend churches here and have their children enrolled in Georgia's public schools.
Bonduel is now considering the prospect of having to quit her job at a local cookware company; abandon the Catholic church her family attends; leave behind the home she owns with her husband, Edward Cervantes, in Cumming; and move back to Venezuela.
“It is a difficult situation because they don’t have food,” Bonduel said of Venezuela. “They don’t have medication. They don’t have good hospitals.”
Bonduel and her husband, a Democratic activist, fled political persecution in Venezuela in 2003, arriving here on tourist visas and then seeking asylum, said their attorney, Sarah Owings. They lost their asylum case after a judge ruled their accounts of Cervantes being beaten and kidnapped could not be confirmed, Owings said. The couple, who have been ordered deported, are scheduled to report back to immigration authorities next month, when they could be expelled.
But they have a 10-year-old daughter who was born in the U.S., which could make them eligible for a deportation relief program the Obama administration has proposed. Called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents or DAPA, the program provides three-year work permits and deportation deferrals for parents who don’t have legal status but do have children who were born here or are legal permanent residents.
To be eligible, applicants must have lived in the U.S. continuously since Jan. 1 of 2010, and submit to background checks. About 4 million people would be eligible nationwide. As many as 125,000 in Georgia may be eligible, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
Georgia is among 26 states — led by Texas — that are suing to stop Obama's plan, saying it amounts to an unconstitutional end run around Congress and would create additional expenses for them.
“What President Obama did — he thumbed his nose at the Constitution and the type of government our founding fathers set up,” said Debbie Dooley, a Buford resident and one of the founders of the Tea Party movement. “This is a bad precedent.”
Dooley also said the president’s executive actions are unfair to immigrants who have spent considerable time and money to legally come to the U.S.
“It’s a slap in the face to those who go through great lengths to follow our nation’s immigration laws at great expense,” she said.
The White House says it has the authority to do what it is doing and refocus the federal government’s limited resources on deporting criminals. Fifteen other states and Washington, D.C., have filed court papers in support of the Obama administration.
Dooley predicted the court could split 4-4 in the case since the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat remains vacant. That result would leave a lower court’s injunction in place, keeping the president’s executive actions on hold and possibly triggering more legal battles.
But the parties in the case could ask the court to reconsider the case when someone is appointed to replace Scalia, said Karen Tumlin, legal director at the National Immigration Law Center, which has filed court papers in support of the Obama administration’s position. Or, Tumlin said, the lower court judge in Texas who issued the injunction could move forward and rule on the case. Judge Andrew Hanen’s decision could then be appealed all the way back to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ngassa is hoping the court won’t reach a deadlock. She fled Belgium in 2003 and unsuccessfully sought asylum in the U.S., claiming she was the victim of domestic violence, said her attorney, Carolina Antonini. She has since married a U.S. citizen and now has two U.S.-born children, but the government has denied her application for a green card.
“I have my kids to look after. I have a health condition,” said Ngassa, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and who sought medical care in Belgium for sickle cell anemia, a condition that afflicts two of her children. “I pray that we are not going to have a 4-4 (tie on the court) and that one person will switch to the other side for it to pass… I can’t wait. I am so nervous.”
Like Ngassa, Jeanneau worries about her family’s fate. They came here from Peru to start a better life and then overstayed their tourist visas. Jeanneau and one of her sisters have received temporary deportation deferrals and work permits through the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program or DACA. Obama’s executive actions would also expand DACA by making the work permits and deportation deferrals good for three years, up from two. As of March 31, there were 22,729 Georgians approved for the program.
Jeanneau’s parents would be eligible for similar relief under the president’s executive actions because one of their daughters was born in the U.S. Jeanneau is concerned about her mother because she routinely drives without a license to work.
“We are always afraid for her to be stopped and for her to be taken into jail and for us not to see her again,” said Jeanneau, who is studying Spanish and business management at Oglethorpe University. “We are just always scared. She is our mom. She is the backbone of the family just as my dad.”
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