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DACA student might face deportation, asked to meet with ICE

I'm sure more details will come out soon. But this is... Something. No criminal record. The article is too long to paste. Click the source to read the rest.

Quote:

FOREST CITY - Sthefany Flores Fuentes spent last week studying for final exams and wrapping up class projects. Now she has no idea whether she will see the payoff for her hard work.

The 20-year-old honors student at Gardner-Webb University will drive to Charlotte Wednesday morning for an immigration meeting that could lead to her deportation to Honduras.

A DACA recipient, Flores Fuentes received a formal letter from the U.S Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement April 1, saying arrangements had been made to send her back to a country she hasn't been to since she was 7 years old.

Status as part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, allows certain people who came to the U.S as children and are here illegally to stay for up two years at a time subject to renewal.

Participants are given work permits and many seek employment to pay for higher education. President Donald Trump has given conflicting indications on whether he might extend the program, creating uncertainty for the tens of thousands of people brought to the United States as children. This is the only country many of them have ever called home.

"I'm nervous and I'm still very sad that this is happening," Flores Fuentes said Sunday. "I just don't know (what will happen) and that's what scares me the most. Hopefully, with all the work I have done so far, enough people will know about it so something extreme can't take place

Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not speculate on potential future actions, Bryan Cox, southern region communications director for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Monday.

"In general, a person who has been ordered removed from the United States by a federal immigration judge is subject to removal by ICE at any time," he said. "However, ICE makes custody and removal decisions on a case-by-case basis based upon the totality of the circumstances given humanitarian and other factors that may be presented to the agency."

Flores Fuentes said she was first given DACA status in 2013 when she was a student at East Rutherford High School. She has since renewed her application three times, most recently in March. She has a work permit valid through 2019 and no criminal record.

Yet the letter, which she found in her mailbox after returning from a university Model United Nations trip, was not so hopeful.

Flores Fuentes was told to arrive at 10 a.m. at the federal immigration office in Charlotte with no more than 40 pounds of luggage.

Her date of deportation was "to be determined," but Flores Fuentes should be "completely ready for removal," it says. She will officially surrender herself in Atlanta where a plane will take her back home, according to the letter.

"A review of your file indicates there is no administrative relief which may be extended to you, and it is now incumbent upon this agency to enforce your departure from the United States," the March 23 letter notes.

Flores Fuentes was ordered removed by an immigration judge in April 29, 2005, according to the U.S. Executive Office for Immigration Review. She was 8 years old at the time.

Orders for removal are issued by immigration judges who either decide someone has not presented enough evidence to stay in the country legally or a defendant missed a hearing and their removal was ordered in absentia.

Flores Fuentes said her mother told her she was never notified of a hearing. She is the only one in her family to receive a letter from ICE calling for a voluntary surrender.

"ICE still has the right to deport me, which is a really scary prospect," she said. "This is a very big deal."

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