Deportee torn between two countries
"In Texas, Fuentes worked as a machinist, earning about $100 a day. Each month, he sent home about $500. "I want my children to be professionals," he said. "Earning $5 a day in my country, I couldn't do that. That's why I came."
But a few years after settling in Houston, he met and married a Colombian woman who has a green card as a legal U.S. resident. Fuentes became stepfather to her daughter, Natalie, and the couple had a son, Sebastian. Both children are U.S. citizens by birth.
For several years, Fuentes had temporary legal status that was granted to many Salvadorans. But on the morning of Jan. 10, immigration agents showed up at his door. They told him he had a deportation order for failing to appear at an immigration court hearing in 2006. Fuentes told them he had moved and never received the notice."
ANNA GORMAN in the Los Angeles Times.