Undocumented Mableton Man Voluntarily Returns to Mexico

Juan Carlos Guevara, a Pebblebrook graduate and undocumented Mableton resident, left for his native country of Mexico on Friday on a bus headed to Dallas, TX.

"It was really tough," Guevara, 22, told South Cobb Patch Saturday as he waited at the Mexico-U.S. border.

"Painful. Depressing," he continued slowly, with long pauses, as he held back tears it seemed.

After being accidentally deported in March and brought back again in June, Guevara risked deportation again if he did not leave voluntarily or show up for a court hearing on Monday, Aug. 13.

After a drunk driver hit his vehicle on June 4, 2011, Guevara was arrested and taken to jail by Cobb police for driving without a license, which is when his immigration issues began.

Guevara said Wednesday he shouldn’t be deported because he came to the U.S. as a teenager, graduated from high school and a clean criminal background before he was arrested for driving without a license.

“I want to provide and to be helpful for this country,” Guevara told South Cobb Patch this week before he departed for Mexico.

Vincent Picard, spokesman for the Atlanta bureau of Immigration Customs Enforcement, said Guevara’s “was just a very unusual case.”

It all began when Guevara paid his original bond at the Cobb County Adult Detention Center, where he was being held. Because ICE had placed an immigration hold on him, he could not be released and was instead detained in a room with other inmates who waited to go to immigration hearings.

It was then that Guevara realized that he could be deported, and it scared him, he said.

Guevara’s family raised funds from friends and neighbors to pay his larger $7,500 bond so that he could be released.

 “I knew they would go through so much trouble, and I was thinking, I can’t let them do something like this…If there is something I care too much about, it’s my family.”

Although his bond was paid on a Thursday, Guevara was not released until the following Monday. He was told that documents showing that his bond had been paid had not been faxed.

Now released and back at home, Guevara waited six months for any notification of his court date and called immigration courts several times to check the court schedule. So Guevara sought legal representation on Feb. 21.

His attorney said his court date had been scheduled and they had time to work on his case.

But three days later, on Feb. 24, ICE arrested him at his Mableton home. Guevara was told that he missed his court date and a judge had ordered his removal.

He called and told his family what happened and was then transported to a different Georgia detention center for a month.

While he waited in a cell, Guevara’s family hired a different attorney, Erik Meder, who filed an appeal. Guevara could not be removed until there was a final ruling on the appeal.

“It gave me a little hope,” Guevara said.

Guevara’s requests for deferred action were denied because Guevara came to the country at the age of 16, so he was not eligible to remain under President Barack Obama’s executive order issued in June. Requests for prosecutorial discretion were also denied.

“Then one day they came to my cell and they took me to the Atlanta detention center and ICE offices and they told me I would be sent to Mexico the next day.”

Meder was notified and despite his efforts, he could not halt the order for Guevara’s removal. He was taken to Mexico.

When he called and told his family he was at the U.S.-Mexico border, they sent him money. He took a bus to Acapulco because it was the closest city, he said, thinking that he may never see his family again.

“When I was in Mexico, I was like God knows when I’m going to see them again. Once again, I’m on my own.”

His immediate family, including Guevara’s twin brother, left for the U.S. when he was 10.

Guevara was left behind because he had been accepted into a specialty school in Mexico so that he could begin a career in biology. He lived with and cared for his sick grandmother there, and his family sent money back to him.

“Basically I spent part of my childhood and my teenage years as a lone boy,” he said. “It was really nice to see them again.”

Just as he began to believe that his dreams of going to college in the U.S. and pursuing degrees in sociology or theology were dashed, he received a call from his family saying, “The people in immigration made a mistake, and they didn’t know about you. So, they’ve been considering to give you the chance to come back," he paused while telling his story.

"And I was like ‘Ok, what’s the trick?’” he said.

Meder told him that if they decided to reopen his case, it’d mean that he could remain in the U.S. until there was a final outcome for his case.

“And that was their ruling: let’s wait,” Guevara told South Cobb Patch.

Now, Guevara was undocumented in Mexico.

He needed to obtain a passport. In order to obtain a passport, he needed to travel 10 hours by bus each way to the U.S. Embassy, which was only open on Monday and Thursday.

He went three separate times over the course of a month to the embassy to try to get his passport and other necessary documents.

Finally, he was successful. After paying a $12,500 bond and through a special visa called a significant public benefit parole, ICE brought him back to the U.S., where he hoped to remain.

For Guevara, Mableton was his home. He worked, was active in his Mableton church as youth teacher. He would have begun his second year of theology this fall, he said.

Despite all this, Guevara volunteered to return to Mexico so that his family could have the $20,000 total spent for his bonds returned.

“Over these six years, I made a life in the U.S.” he said.  When he sent to Mexico in March, he realized that the life he once had there was gone, he explained. “Basically, the only life that I truly have is the life I have here.”

What do you think about Juan Carlos' story? Should illegal immigrants who come to the U.S. under the age of 16 (which Juan Carlos did not) be allowed to stay? Tell us what you think in the comments below.