How an American Preschooler Ended Up a Deportee in Guatemala : Long Island Wins

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How an American Preschooler Ended Up a Deportee in Guatemala: Written April 14, 2011 by Story by: Irie News

When Emily Ruiz and her grandfather stepped off a plane near the nation’s capital on March 11, the plan was for the duo to be reunited with family members after months away in Guatemala. Instead, Emily and her grandfather stepped into an immigration nightmare.

Although Emily is a U.S. citizen, her grandfather is not. And due to an infraction that reportedly took place decades ago, Customs and Border Protection agents blocked Emily’s grandfather from re-entering the U.S., despite his possession of a valid work visa. Her grandfather’s predicament presented Emily with her own unique conundrum. If she were an adult, Emily could have simply left Dulles International Airport and reunited with her parents in Long Island. But Emily can’t drive, make a cell phone call, or be of much help to her grandfather. Why not? She’s just four years old. To make matters worse, her parents are undocumented immigrants who say that Customs agents wouldn’t allow them to pick up their daughter.

According to Emily’s father, Leonel Ruiz, Customs officials gave him two choices: put Emily in the custody of a Virginia children’s center or send her back to Guatemala with her grandfather. That’s some choice. Allow your preschool-aged daughter to become a ward of the state or send her back out of the country without having seen her in months. (Emily’s parents reportedly sent her to Guatemala to begin with because they feared the cold Long Island winter would aggravate her asthma.) Presented with this awful dilemma, what did Leonel Ruiz do? He decided to return Emily to Guatemala in her grandfather’s care.

For the record, Customs officials deny Ruiz’s account, telling the New York Times on March 22 that they gave him the opportunity to retrieve Emily from the airport. Ruiz contests this, however, saying that had he been given the chance to collect his young daughter, he would have seized it. Because Ruiz is not fluent in English and the Customs official he discussed the ordeal with did not speak Spanish, it’s possible that something was lost in translation. But even if Ruiz had been given an opportunity to pick up Emily, he likely would’ve been deported himself, as he’d already admitted to Customs that he was an undocumented immigrant.

After weeks of legal wrangling, Ruiz family lawyer David Sperling plans to bring Emily home from Guatemala any day now, possibly as soon as March 30. Long Island Wins online editor Ted Hesson has been reporting on the ground from Guatemala about the ongoing saga. But even if Emily is successfully reunited with her parents, thousands of children in the nation could land in the same quagmire that she did. Join Long Island Wins in demanding that the federal government establish a protocol to prevent the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants from getting tangled up in the same red tape that cut off a preschooler from her parents.