Gladys and Nelson Gonzalez have called the United States home since 1989. Their three daughters, now grown, were all born and raised in California.

“For nearly four decades, they have built a life here — raising three daughters, giving back to their community, and recently welcoming their first grandchild,” their daughter Stephanie Gonzalez wrote on a GoFundMe page for the family. “Now, they are being treated as criminals.”

Last month, the parents checked in at an immigration court in Santa Ana, just “like they have been doing since 2000,” Stephanie wrote in an email to CNN.

But this check-in ended with a much different outcome.

The couple was arrested and handcuffed during their February 21 appointment and put in federal custody, where they spent three weeks before being deported to Colombia.

“We didn’t expect that they would be apprehended and held in custody. And again, it’s not really unique to them anymore. It’s happening across the country,” Crooms told CNN, pointing to recent immigration policy changes in the US two months into the current administration.

The Gonzalezes spent many years searching for a viable path to citizenship, paid their taxes and never had any trouble with the law, according to Crooms and their daughters.

Ideally, the couple would have been given time to get their affairs in order and say goodbye to their daughters and grandchild, according to Crooms. But that didn’t happen.

“We had to go and pick up their car from the parking lot and didn’t get to say goodbye,” Stephanie said.

  • @[email protected]English
    0•21 days ago

    The United States, starting centuries before it was founded, and continuing for centuries afterward, has been founded on the undebatable strength of industry we have gained from immigration. This entire country is built from immigration – mostly because those who came before committed in massive genocide against the natives of this land.

    So when you question the value of any incoming immigrant, just remember that nobody ever had to endure such shitty fascist in dignity until shitty fascists made it a thing.

    And, as someone who is continuing the shitty, fascist viewpoint that nearly destroyed the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, you are advocating for that same amount of undemocratic, un-American, absolutely fucking shitty fascist bullshit that, nearly a century ago, we very well knew was shitty, fascist, bullshit that would terror our country apart.

    And you are no better, because the only reason you would endorse this shitty, fascist, bullshit is because you are so stupid that you have yet to learn why it is ultimately self-destructive.