President Barack Obama's speech calling for Congress to push forward with immigration reform on Tuesday in Las Vegas was great news for many.
But for one boy, the president's words made little difference. When Jose Garcia Ramirez was on his way to school earlier this month in Phoenix, Arizona, immigration officials detained his father and put him into deportation proceedings, CNN reports.
"When I was trying to say goodbye, they pushed me away," Garcia Ramirez told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. "I was crying when they took him, and my sisters and my mom too were crying."
Garcia Ramirez received the news that his father will be deported to Guatemala on the day of Obama's speech, according to CNN. The 11-year-old boy says he wasn't told why his father was picked up by ICE.
The Obama administration has set records for deportation, with nearly 410,000 last fiscal year, causing a spike in family separation that has made the issue of immigration reform all the more urgent for many Latino families. At least 9 million people in the United States live in "mixed status" families, which include at least one undocumented adult and one U.S.-born child, according a 2011 Pew Hispanic Center report.
Watch Jose Garcia Ramirez discuss his father's case in the video above.
Before You Go
