Meet the man deported by Donald Trump : With three children, 19 years in the US and no criminal record

After 19 years living and working in the US, paying taxes and raising a family, Mario Hernandez Delacruz, was deported to a country he had not seen for two decades.

His daughter, Estrella Garcia, and one of her younger sisters, drove him to the airport in the family’s Jeep Wrangler where he caught a flight to Mexico. On the way, they talked about their plan to carry on appealing his right to live in the US; on the way home, there were just tears.

© Provided by Independent Print Limited Mr Delacruz has been forced to leave his family in Michigan (Courtesy of family)
“My mother has been so depressed. My two sisters - aged 15 and 12 - cannot concentrate at school. I’ve have to carry on because I’m now the head of the family,” said Ms Garcia, seated in family’s modest home in south-west Detroit. “I don’t think [Trump] cares. He just wants to get out people he doesn’t think belong here.”

Mr Trump had originally said his priority was deporting those undocumented migrants who had broken the law. But in Detroit and elsewhere, people who have lived in the country for decades and who have no criminal record, are being detained deported. Agents have been arresting people in courthouses and even as they leave church-operated cold weather shelters.

“My father had no criminal record. He worked, he volunteered in the community, and two of his children are US citizens,” said 23-year-old Ms Garcia. “Now, Dad is in Cancun with his mother and she is living in poverty. He calls every day and he says it's bad. He’s not allowed to apply to come here for 10 years….And neither my mother or myself can go there.”

Mr Delacruz, 44, entered the US illegally in 1998. He had grown up in Tabasco in southern Mexico. He crossed with wife, Matilde, and with Ms Garcia, who was then aged just five. Her only memory of the journey is of being carried, by her father and another man.

In Michigan, Mr Delacruz worked as a carpenter and flooring specialist. He had two other daughters, Lucero and Diana, and was a member of the United Hispanic Pentecostal Church, located a couple of streets from their home. He also volunteered with a local organisation, Michigan United, which works to help poor families, many of them immigrants.

The group’s executive director, Ryan Bates, said the issuance of the president’s executive orders was a moment when people in the community came together to fight in a way that was unprecedented.

“What is at stake is not just immigration policy, but the vision for our country. Are we going to be a place where everyone has an equal political voice,” said Mr Bates.

“Because, for more than 200 years, we’ve not been that. It took generations of struggle to bring in people. But Trump wants to turn back the clock to a time when only people who looked like me were full citizens.”

The man's daughter also said as couple they have two children, a 14-year-old daughter, Soleil, and 11-year-old Jorge Jr, who were also US citizens. She said her husband worked and paid taxes. She could not understand why the authorities would want to threaten her husband  too with deportation.

Mr Garcia said that if he were to return to Mexico, he could struggle. “It would be like going to a country I don’t know because things have changed,” he said. “I’ve not been back, since I came here.”

© Provided by Independent Print Limited Estrella Garcia drove her father to the airport when he left the country (Andrew Buncombe )

“The Trump administration has launched an unprecedented attack on the American idea that we should welcome immigrants and refugees, and build a stronger country in the process,” Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigrant America’s Voice Education Fund, told reporters earlier this year.
“They are using the cover story of “bad hombres” as a smokescreen for a strategy that declares open season on each and every undocumented immigrant in America.”