2017 ICE report<\/a>, when compared with the same months the previous year. Trump\u2019s administration deported 61,094 people; the Obama administration deported 44,512.<\/p>\nRamos has been living undocumented in the U.S. since 2003 when he left Honduras because of widespread corruption and crime. He settled in Bayfield, where he met Thalia in 2006. The couple married a year later and had three children.<\/p>\n
In 2006, they opened a medical facility cleaning business, Sun Cleaning. In 2015, they opened Sun Linen Services, a commercial laundry business. Between the two businesses, the Ramoses employ 13 people.<\/p>\n
Thalia said it has been an ongoing struggle for her husband to obtain lawful permanent residence, which started after they were married in 2007.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though a person might be here illegally and marry a U.S. citizen doesn\u2019t mean they can automatically adjust their status,\u201d she said. \u201cIt depends on a lot of factors.\u201d<\/p>\n
After their marriage, Edin applied for an adjustment of status, which required him to return to Honduras for an interview at the American consulate, but his application was denied. Edin returned to the United States rather than move his family to Honduras, because it is unsafe.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople might disagree with his choice to come here illegally, but that was his only option at the time,\u201d Thalia Ramos said. \u201cHe\u2019s always done his best to put the country first. He loves the United States and believes this is a really great country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thalia said Edin had been detained by ICE once before, in 2012, but he was later granted a stay of removal, or a temporary postponement. Edin successfully renewed his stay of removal every year, as required.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt pretty confident with having our businesses and Edin not having a criminal record, but this current administration doesn\u2019t care about anything but their deportation numbers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Miller, Edin\u2019s attorney, said ICE denied his stay of removal in November 2017, which she believes was because of a shift in immigration policies under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
She said Edin was given a grace period of an undetermined amount of time to get his affairs in order before being deported.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was emailing with the immigration officer, and there was no official date for deportation,\u201d she said. \u201cThey said he had another check-in on Feb. 5, and they detained him. It feels very arbitrary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for ICE, said the agency has granted Edin four stays of removal since March 2013.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Nov. 13, 2017, ICE denied his fifth request for a stay of removal,\u201d Rusnok said in an email to The Durango Herald. \u201cRamos was arrested without incident after he checked in to the Durango ICE office \u2026 and he has exhausted his requests for a stay of removal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rusnok said ICE continues to focus its resources on individuals who pose a threat to national security, but anyone in violation of immigration laws could be arrested and deported.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan has made clear, ICE does not exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement,\u201d he said in the email.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
When speaking to national media reporters in December, Homan said: \u201cThere\u2019s no population that\u2019s off the table. If you\u2019re in the country illegally, we\u2019re looking for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thalia said her husband was taken to the detention facility in Aurora. Neither he or his attorney know when he will be deported to Honduras.<\/p>\n
Miller said the Ramos family has exhausted their legal options, and there is little more they can do than wait.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of people who are good, upstanding citizens who face deportation,\u201d she said. \u201cHe has never tried to hide from immigration or be sneaky about it, but because of this administration\u2019s stance on immigration, we couldn\u2019t get that renewal. ICE has made it clear he will be detained until he is removed, but we don\u2019t have a sense of how much longer that will be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edin\u2019s story is not uncommon in this region, said Danny Quinlan, executive director of Compa\u00f1eros, the Four Corners immigrant resource center.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are seeing a lot of people from this area who had a stay of removal that needed to be renewed yearly, and all of a sudden, they\u2019ve been denied this year or last year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said the process of applying for lawful permanent residence is sometimes counterproductive for immigrants because ICE denies their applications and it puts them on the agency\u2019s radar.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps if he (Edin) had never attempted and flew under the radar, they wouldn\u2019t be in this situation,\u201d Quinlan said. \u201cWe don\u2019t advocate for people to avoid applying, but a lot of people who attempted are suffering the consequences. Ramos\u2019 case is quite frustrating; his family is going to get torn apart.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, a Democrat, advocated for a permanent solution for the Ramos family during a speech he gave on the House Floor in April 2016 defending the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policies.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe fled his home country to avoid persecution,\u201d Polis said during his speech. \u201cHe is married to a U.S. citizen. \u2026 They make investments in our local community and we rely on them for jobs and the services they provide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Polis represents Colorado\u2019s 2nd Congressional District, which includes 10 counties in north-central Colorado. During his nearly six-minute speech, Polis referred to the Polis family as his \u201cconstituents\u201d and said \u201che is a very successful business owner in my district.\u201d But Edin and Thalia Ramos have never lived in Polis\u2019 district; they were living in Bayfield at the time of his speech.<\/p>\n
Jessica Bralish, spokeswoman for Polis, clarified his speech in an email to The Durango Herald on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cCongressman Polis references Edin\u2019s family, and he does have family members in the district,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIt could have been clearer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thalia Ramos said her parents live in Fort Collins, which is in Polis\u2019 district, and alerted him to their son-in-law\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n
Under the deportation order, Edin will have to stay out of the United States for 10 years before he can apply for a waiver to return, Miller said.<\/p>\n
For Thalia, that means making the difficult decision of remaining in the United States with a fractured family, or leaving her home to join Edin in Honduras.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt puts us in a pretty tough position, because Honduras is not a safe country,\u201d she said. \u201cMy children understand Spanish, but they do not speak it very well, so it makes us easy targets for violence. But staying here and trying to raise my children without a father and running two businesses is also difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
mrupani@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"rejected man\u2019s fifth \u2018stay\u2019; agency in process of deporting him<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[731,13,2194,904],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-100994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-bayfield","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-illegal-immigrants","tag-immigration"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100994"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=100994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}