The Cruz family’s home on Thursday evening could have been the scene of any family reunited for the holiday season. The grandchildren played in the yard with their uncle, an Army officer who had returned home that morning. The grandmother doted on the youngest, a toddler. The air inside her home’s newly erected wooden fence echoed their laughter. But mixed in with the joy of togetherness was the knowledge that right after the holidays, the family matriarch Rocio Rebollar Gomez, 50, will have to leave the United States. Rebollar Gomez is waiting for a miracle, her only remaining option after all legal avenues for keeping her in the United States have been exhausted. But she believes it will come before Immigration and Customs Enforcement requires her to leave the country on January 2.
The Cruz family’s home on Thursday evening could have been the scene of any family reunited for the holiday season.
The grandchildren played in the yard with their uncle, an Army officer who had returned home that morning. The grandmother doted on the youngest, a toddler. The air inside her home’s newly erected wooden fence echoed their laughter.
But mixed in with the joy of togetherness was the knowledge that right after the holidays, the family matriarch Rocio Rebollar Gomez, 50, will have to leave the United States.
Rebollar Gomez is waiting for a miracle, her only remaining option after all legal avenues for keeping her in the United States have been exhausted. But she believes it will come before Immigration and Customs Enforcement requires her to leave the country on January 2.