The American immigration system is truly broken….
Congress needs to fix it….
Not just Federal judges….
Selene Saavedra Roman was nervous about going to work.
She’s been a “dreamer” since 2012, when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program first started. Born in Peru, she has lived in the United States for 25 years, since she was 3. But her immigration status has been in the back of her mind.
Which is why, when she got a job as a flight attendant, she decided to work for a regional company, Mesa Airlines, that wouldn’t ask her to travel around the world. And it’s why she told the company she was a DACA recipient and didn’t want to fly internationally.
Yet, in February, Mesa scheduled her to fly to Mexico, Saavedra Roman’s attorney said. And when she told them her concerns, the company assured her that she wouldn’t have trouble reentering the United States.
But on Feb. 12, customs officials detained Saavedra Roman shortly after she landed in Houston on her return flight. She would remain in custody for another six weeks. She was released Friday evening, but advocates are pointing to her case as an example of how the Trump administration’s attempts to end DACA — and the tug-of-war with the courts that followed — have confused recipients, their families, government agencies and private employers, muddling an already complex web of immigration policies.
“They’ve been lost in legal limbo, and it’s getting quite ridiculous,”….
…
In a statement, the airliner’s chairman, Jonathan Ornstein, apologized and said he was asking authorities to drop any charges that stemmed from Saavedra Roman’s detention.
”It is patently unfair for someone to be detained for six weeks over something that is nothing more than an administrative error and a misunderstanding,” Ornstein said.
Saavedra Roman is married to an American citizen, a man she met while they were both in college at Texas A&M. She graduated in 2014, and the couple has been working to get her permanent residency.
After her arrest, officials tried to revoke her DACA status, Arroyo said….
image….Selene Saavedra Roman pictured last fall. In February, the flight attendant and DACA recipient was detained after working a flight to Mexico. She was in custody for six weeks before being released March 22. (David Watkins)