Bill de la Rosa made his urgent appeal Thursday.
In front of a bank of cameras at the south-side El Pueblo Neighborhood Center, flanked by a congressman, local elected officials and supporters, de la Rosa pleaded with the federal government. He asked that his deported mother be allowed to come home to Tucson to be with her husband one last time before Bill’s father dies.
If even for a day or one hour, grant her request for a humanitarian visit, he said. His prayer came two days after a nameless immigration official at the DeConcini Port of Entry in Nogales or in Washington, D.C., denied Gloria Arellano de la Rosa’s petition to hold Arsenio de la Rosa’s hands and touch his face, and to embrace and console her four children.
On Friday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reversed its decision and made the correct one: Gloria received a 30-day pass to be with her husband and children, all of whom are U.S. citizens.
It should not have come to this point.
Bill should not have had to ask for the intervention of Congressman Raúl Grijalva, who asked Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for “a sliver of compassion and humanity.” Bill should not have had to initiate an online petition of support on Wednesday, which by Friday evening had more than 16,000 signatures. And Bill, his mother and his three siblings should not have had to agonize for three nights over the insensitive decision.
But Bill, 24, did what he had to do because of the obvious lack of comprehension and compassion on the part of CBP.
CBP, said Bill, rejected his mother’s petition because in 2009 she was denied legal residency. His mother, a non-citizen, was banned from re-entering the U.S. after she had gone to Juárez, Mexico, to secure her green card, on the advice of her lawyer. Years before she overstayed her visa.
That doesn’t, however, make her a criminal, Tucson City Councilwoman Regina Romero said at the press conference, which was also attended by Pima County Supervisor Richard Elías and Tucson Unified School Board member Adelita Grijalva.
But the irony of CBP’s denial of Glora Arrellano de la Rosa’s humanitarian request is that in 2011, she received permission to visit her husband for five days — twice — after he suffered a stroke. And both times she complied with the orders that she return to Mexico.
It’s a fact that CBP refused to see as well. The agency was blind to the relevant factors that should have made the initial request a no-brainer. The immigration overlords failed to recognize the stand-up family behind the request.
Arsenio de la Rosa is 85. He last saw his wife on Thanksgiving 2017 when he went to Nogales, Sonora. The children have gone to Sonora as often as they could to see their mother. Bill has had less of an opportunity to see her because he is a graduate student, on scholarship, at the University of Oxford in England. Before going abroad, he went to college in Maine.
His elder brother, Jim, is a veteran of the Marine Corps and a Pima Community College student. Their younger sister, Naomi, just entered the University of Arizona after graduating from Pueblo Magnet High School. And the youngest, Bobby, is in middle school.
The de la Rosa family was the subject of the 2015 award-winning Arizona Daily Star series written by my colleague Perla Trevizo with photographs by Mike Christy. Our former colleague, Fernanda Echavarri, then with Arizona Public Media, contributed to the series.
Make no mistake, however. The de la Rosa family is not the only one in the country whose similar petitions have been denied by immigration officials. But those families don’t have the sympathetic factors of the de la Rosa family, and don’t have a member of Congress and a community to back them up.
“We all played our parts,” said Bill at the press conference, regarding his family’s resolve to remain strong together in the past nine years that the family has been forcibly divided by law.
The de la Rosa family played its part and held up its end of the separation deal, but the CBP did not. When the agency had the chance to do right, it failed. At the end, the CBP backpedaled to cover its shameful error.
At the end, the CBP backpedaled and did right by Gloria Arellano de la Rosa and her family, who were reunited Friday afternoon. Her son, along with the congressman, reporters and news cameras, greeted her when she stepped on U.S. soil for the first time in seven years. The next 30 days will be full of tears and embraces.
Bill’s emotional press conference and call for community pressure worked. A flawed bureaucratic decision was reversed. A family’s despair has been allayed.
It just didn’t need to get this far.
