Painesville family split because of deportation

Rally held for Hispanic Painesville family

Marcus Atkinson

Hispanicohio.com editor

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A Painesville man was taken into custody last week and deported back to Mexico according to reports.  

Diego Maldonado was sent back to Leon Mexico, despite living in Painesville for 10 years and having children in the U.S.
Maldonado is a casualty of the recent heightened attention to deporting those who are not in the country legally.  As the nation’s deficit continues to increase, politicians view deporting undocumented people as a way to decrease the debt.  

“Why do we need the government to crack down so hard?” said Juan, 18, the oldest of Diego’s six sons.” They say it’s the land of the free, but sometimes it’s not.”

 

Diego Maldonado has a wife and two sons are not citizens as well, but there are four children who were born in the U.S.

 

Thanks to Veronica Dahlberg, executive director of Hispanas Organizadas de Lake y Ashtabula (HOLA), the family has until Dec. 14 to get their lives in order, that means finding money to get to Mexico, and if they choose to leave their four U.S., citizen children, in the states, they would have to find guardians. 

“How are we going to do this?” Dahlberg said. “I don’t know.” “We know the agents were just doing their job,” Dahlberg said. “What we want is a policy change. The government isn’t angry at Canadian immigrants or other immigrants. They are angry at Mexican immigrants.”

 

While Juan Maldonado will be departed, he has a one year old son, whom he will have to leave behind with his mother.

“In a couple weeks, we could be doing the same thing with another family,” Dahlberg said.

 

Information gathered from the News-Herald