Not every deportation story has a sad ending.
A judge canceled 37-year-old Mexican immigrant Isaide Serrano’s deportation order Thursday when she showed up for a court appearance just five hours after giving birth, La Opinion reports.
“Today I’m celebrating for two reasons,” Serrano said, according to La Opinion. “The birth of my son, Jayden Israel, and that I’m staying in the country with my family.”
The judge found that deporting Serrano, a North Carolina resident, would put her family through extreme hardship.
Serrano was detained two years ago at a traffic stop. Police discovered her undocumented status through the information-sharing program 287(g), according to La Opinion. She’s been living in the United States for 21 years without a criminal record and has six children.
“It’s very difficult to imagine life without mama,” Serrano’s daughter Cinthia, 16 said, according to La Opinión. “She’s our support in every way, we want her here with us.”
Even as politicians from the left and right take a renewed interest in immigration reform, after the Latino vote played a key role in tilting the 2012 election toward Obama, Serrano’s case is one of the many that continue to highlight the problem of family separation for an immigration system that deports roughly 400,000 people every year.
The Huffington Post reported earlier this month on the case of Maximino Hoz, an immigrant held at Broward Detention Center in Florida who faces deportation. His 12-year-old son wrote a heart-wrenching letter pleading for Judge Rex Ford to let Hoz go.
Hoz faces greater obstacles in his deportation case than Serrano, however. He has drunk driving offenses on his record and Ford is known for his harsh sentences. He once ordered a Chinese woman deported for answering questions before the court interpreter had translated them. “The respondent, after proper notice, has failed to appear,” Ford said, though the woman, Xiu Ping Jiang, was standing before him, according to a transcript reported by The New York Times.
Before You Go
