This undocumented mom won’t be there when her kids get home

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Denver (CNN)Like parents around the country, Jeanette Vizguerra kissed her kids last night and sent them to bed. She didn’t know if she’d be there when they got home from school today.

Vizguerra is an undocumented immigrant. She was due to check in Wednesday with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Such check-ins are routine. But this one was different. The stay on her deportation order expired last week. It means she’d likely have exhausted all avenues to ward off separation from her American-born children, the youngest of whom is just 6.

The detention and deportation last week of another mother, Guadalupe Garca de Rayos in Arizona, scared Vizguerra’s children. They were anxious — and so was she.

“My intuition,” she told CNN the night before her hearing, “is it’s a bad day.”

All come to look for America

Vizguerra lives in Denver with her husband and three youngest kids — Luna, 12, Roberto, 10, and Zury, 6. They were all born in the US.

Her eldest, Tania, also lives in Denver and has children of her own. She described Vizguerra as the “backbone” of the family.

Vizguerra came to the US from Mexico in 1997 with her husband and Tania, who was 6 at the time. Tania said she lives in the US under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which lets undocumented people brought to the country as kids attend school and work.

Like thousands of immigrants, the family came in search of a better life. Vizguerra’s husband had been kidnapped three times during his work as a bus driver in Mexico City, they said.

She wished for a life “without fear of being detained or deported, and the fear of being separated from my children.”

ICE issues its decree

The next morning, just before 11:30 ET, Meyer, the lawyer, walked past about 50 of Vizguerra’s supporters gathered outside the ICE office in Centennial, Colorado. He made his way through the door.

Vizguerra was not at his side.

Armed officials greeted Meyer at the door, he said. They handed him the paperwork.

“This letter is in response to your recent correspondence requesting a stay of removal for your client, Jeanette Vizguerra-Ramirez,” the letter reads. “After a careful review of the evidence you submitted and the immigration file, your request for a stay of removal is denied.”

Church as a haven

Vizguerra didn’t go to the check-in because Meyer suspected ICE agents would have arrested her.

As soon as he’d learned her fate, the phone rang inside the First Unitarian Church. Vizguerra and her children were just finishing up their showers, getting ready for the day. A friend who’d come to keep vigil with the family answered the call.

Vizguerra broke down.

On the phone with Meyer, she spoke in Spanish to the crowd outside the ICE office. She said she felt she made the right decision.

Zury passed her mom a tissue.

Meyer said he will talk with Vizguerra about next steps, legally. He said he’s optimistic her U visa application will be granted, though he said he thinks ICE’s denial of the stay request owes to the fact that “we are living in Trump’s administration.”

For now, Vizguerra plans to continue seeking refuge at her church.

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