Irma García made the painful decision to leave Portland and reunite with her husband, Moises Sotelo, in Veracruz, Mexico, after immigration officials arrested him in June and deported him the following month.
“I need to be with my husband. It’s the first time we’ve been separated. We’ve lived for 31, 33 years together. I think that for both him and me, it’s best to be together,” García said tearfully before boarding her flight at Portland International Airport.
García, who is undocumented, left behind three children—one still in high school—and five grandchildren. She traveled with her daughter, 26-year-old Alondra Sotelo García, who plans to return to Oregon to run her father’s business, Novo Start Vineyard Service. The family described the deportation as a sudden rupture after more than three decades of building their lives in the United States.
Moises Sotelo was removed from the country without the chance to properly say goodbye. “I think it is a very emotionally draining situation to do it the way that dad was just tossed out of the country. He didn’t get the opportunity to say goodbye to friends, family, pick up his things,” Alondra said.
The abrupt deportation left the family struggling to adjust. Alondra and her younger brother, 17, accompanied their mother to Mexico but will soon return to a home without parents. “It’s going to be an empty home. It’s not mom and dad anymore being at home. It’s just going to be brothers and I and my nieces,” Alondra explained.
The separation has been hardest on the youngest family members. García said goodbye to her grandchildren before leaving, describing how they smiled through the moment without grasping the weight of the situation. “About 40 minutes ago, I stopped by to say goodbye to my young grandchildren. They don’t understand the magnitude of the problem that we are living because they stayed with a smile, asking me only, ‘When are you coming back?’ I told them, I don’t know, I don’t know when I will be back.
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