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9733: Carillo spends much of her day working on tires, a job she says is
very tiring. "It's a man's work." July 25, 2017. Jupiter, Florida.
Photo: Maryam Saleh
Around Mar-a-Lago, No Deportation Exemption for Trump Supporters
Maryam Saleh
August 7 2017, 9:00 a.m.
Francisco Javier Gonzalez manages an upscale pizzeria in Palm Beach, just
two miles down the road from Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump's private
Florida club. The Trumps have long been a presence in the community, and
back when he was working his way up through the industry, Gonzalez, then in
his early 20s, waited on the future president.
"I didn't know much about him at the time," he said of that day back in
2004. "I just knew that he was a multimillionaire. We didn't know that he
was ever going to run for president. I didn't really pay much attention
because over there you get a lot of customers at the same level."
Over the years, Gonzalez has crossed paths with some of Palm Beach's most
influential figures, including news personalities and entrepreneurs. Trump's
nephew, David Desmond, referred to Gonzalez as an "old friend" in a 2011
column for the Palm Beach Daily News.
When Trump announced his candidacy, Gonzalez hoped he would win.
"I knew that 90 percent of my customers wanted him to be the president, and
I had a feeling that it was good for us, for the economy, and I thought that
people would be happy and spend more money," he said. After the election,
with local officials complaining that Trump's frequent visits to his "Winter
White House" were bankrupting the town, Gonzalez stuck up for his old
customer in the pages of the Tampa Bay Times.
But there is no deportation exception in current immigration policy for
Trump supporters, so Gonzalez remains a potential target for removal. By the
time he waited on Trump, he had already been in the country without proper
papers for seven years, having arrived when was a 15-year-old boy.
Gonzalez, a father to three U.S.-born daughters, came to the United States
in 1997 to live with his brother. He entered using a tourist visa, attended
school, and worked in a restaurant. A few years later, he traveled to Mexico
to visit his parents. He didn't understand immigration policy at the time -
very few teenagers do - but if he had, he would have never left. He tried to
re-enter the U.S. using the same visa, but border agents told him it wasn't
valid and sent him back. After four years in Palm Beach, Gonzalez couldn't
imagine returning to life on his family's farm, so he crossed the southern
border illegally.
"When you cross the border illegally, you don't think of any of it - you're
just looking for a better life, you want to be at a better place," he told
The Intercept. "You don't think you're committing a crime."
9745: Francisco Javier Gonzalez supported Donald Trump's bid for presidency.
Now, he finds himself a potential target for deportation under Trump's
immigration policies. July 25, 2017. Palm Beach, Florida.
Francisco Javier Gonzalez, who supported Donald Trump's bid for presidency,
now finds himself a potential target for deportation under Trump's
immigration policies.
Photo: Maryam Saleh
He stayed in the restaurant business after finishing high school, and for
the past nine years he has run Pizza al Fresco, a restaurant tucked into a
courtyard in a downtown Palm Beach shopping district that hosts a number of
high-end shops like Chanel and Tiffany & Co.
Gonzalez was due to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement under
a supervised release program earlier this month, and he feared he might be
detained as a result of changed enforcement policies. ICE granted him a
three-month reprieve, though, giving Gonzalez relative peace of mind.
Two miles from the restaurant, down roads lined with mansions concealed by
towering hedges, is Trump's Mar-a-Lago club. Despite the president's
"America First" agenda, his businesses are seeking to hire 70 temporary
foreign workers for Mar-a-Lago and the Trump National Golf Club in nearby
Jupiter, Florida, according to a recent Buzzfeed News report.
The businesses' requests under the H-2B visa program claim - or perhaps
admit - that there are no American workers to do the job. When asked if,
given the opportunity, he would work at a Trump-owned business, Gonzalez
said yes without hesitation. "Absolutely," he told me. "I mean, I think he's
a great guy."
Not everyone in South Florida - home to an estimated 450,000 of America's 11
million immigrants living in the country illegally, according to the Pew
Research Center - has such an optimistic outlook about Trump.
For the last four years, Matias Muy Carrillo, 42, and her husband, Victor
Chavez, 39, have run a tire shop in Jupiter, four miles from Trump's golf
club. Both unauthorized immigrants from Guatemala with final orders of
removal, they felt the change in immigration enforcement firsthand in March,
when ICE officers detained Chavez and affixed a GPS monitor to Carrillo's
ankle.
At her family's Tikal Tires shop, Carrillo said she wouldn't think of
working at Trump's golf club. "I would never accept money from him when he
is causing my people to be poor and to work for low wages and is deporting
them," she said.
When Carrillo, who received a final order of deportation in 2006, showed up
at an ICE office in Miramar, Florida, in March, she was hoping the agency
would renew the stay of deportation first issued to her in 2014. Instead,
the officers told her to return the next day with her husband and their
U.S.-born son, Jimmy Chavez, 13. Like many immigrants in her situation, she
decided to do the right thing and show up, hoping that her continued
cooperation with authorities would be met with mercy. It wasn't.
Agents separated Carrillo and Chavez, while Jimmy was told to wait outside.
Even though Chavez's work permit and stay of deportation were renewed in
December 2016 and were good for two years, the immigration agents told him
they was no longer valid "because the law has changed," Carrillo said. (An
ICE spokesperson said he had no way to confirm the account.)
Chavez was arrested and taken to Broward Transitional Center, a for-profit
detention center in Pompano Beach, Florida, where he has been detained
since.
The policy that allowed the couple to stay and work in the United States was
completely discretionary, and their luck turned as a result of changed
immigration enforcement policies that "virtually eliminated the practice of
using discretion to close cases," according to a Migration Policy Institute
report on the first six months of Trump's immigration policies.
While the Obama administration carried out a substantial number of
deportations in the former president's first few years in office, it
narrowed the focus of its enforcement efforts in 2014, setting out
priorities that included individuals who threatened national security and
public safety, people with felonies or significant misdemeanors, recent
arrivals, and those who had final orders of removal issued after December
2013. The Trump administration's policy also identifies priority categories
for deportation, but it has cast a wide net that includes those charged with
a criminal offense but not yet convicted, those who have committed acts that
constitute a crime but have not been charged, and anyone subject to a final
order of removal.
Gonzalez, the restaurant manager in Palm Beach, was ordered deported in
2002, according to ICE. He has been trying to get legal status since
marrying his American wife in 2006. DHS granted Gonzalez supervised release
a few years ago, which meant he had to check in with ICE officials every
year, he said.
He was due to check in with ICE officers in early July. His attorney,
Richard Hujber, feared that changes to immigration enforcement put Gonzalez
at risk of deportation, so the lawyer created an online petition calling on
DHS to exercise prosecutorial discretion to postpone Gonzalez's deportation.
This month, after Hujber took the case public in the local community, the
immigration agency gave Gonzalez a three-month extension to complete the
adjudication of certain waivers necessary for his attempt to obtain legal
status, the immigrant said.
"Honestly, I'm so thankful to ICE. They've been giving me a chance to take
care of it. They've been so great about it," Gonzalez said, sitting in a
quiet courtyard near his restaurant last week. "They understand my
situation." Customers occasionally interrupted our conversation. "I've been
reading about you. Everything OK?" one woman asked after giving him a hug.
"I'm so sorry about all this trouble. You going to be OK now?"
"Yes, I'm going to be OK," Gonzalez responded, smiling.
9735: When Carillo checked in with ICE on March 8, the agency fitted her
with a GPS monitor. "It's ugly. I can't go anywhere. I can't leave Florida,
and they're checking me all the time because I have the GPS on," she says.
July 25, 2017. Jupiter, Florida.
Carrillo wears a GPS ankle monitor issued by ICE in Jupiter, Florida, on
July 25, 2017.
Photo: Maryam Saleh
Matias Muy Carrillo is not so upbeat about her family's future.
Her husband, Chavez, entered the United States illegally 24 years ago,
hoping to escape the violence of Guatemala's civil war. His father was
killed when Chavez was a toddler, and his family continued to face threats,
Carrillo said. When Chavez was 17, he was caught up in an immigration raid
at a chicken slaughterhouse he worked at in Ohio, according to his attorney,
Hector Diaz. Because he was a minor, the agents decided not to detain him.
Chavez, who spoke a Mayan dialect and no English or Spanish at the time,
moved to Rhode Island for a different job and says he never got notice of
the immigration proceedings against him, according to his lawyer. The
proceedings went on in Chavez's absence, and an immigration judge issued a
final order of removal against him in 1996, ICE told The Intercept in a
statement. (He received a second order of removal 10 years later after using
false identification, according to ICE.)
The couple met in Massachusetts shortly after Carrillo made the journey
across the southern border into Arizona in 2002. They got married and had a
child and, when Jimmy was 1 1/2 years old, they moved to Jupiter. At that
time, the town of 64,000 people was experiencing a boom in Guatemalan
immigrants looking for jobs in construction, according to a 2007 film called
"Jupiter or Bust: The El Sol Solution."
Carrillo and Chavez lived in the shadows for many years while Jimmy attended
Jupiter public schools. In 2014, they turned themselves in, Diaz said,
reassured by the fact that they did not fall into any of the Obama
administration's priority categories for removal. They were entered into a
supervised release program that required them to check in with ICE annually,
the lawyer said, and they have been able to get work permits ever since.
The same program that brought the family out of the shadows ultimately led
to Chavez's detention when the policy was changed under Trump, and the
check-ins became roundups.
In Chavez's absence, Carrillo has become the family's sole breadwinner,
taking on laborious tasks while she works in the front office of their tire
shop, where the walls are covered with colorful tapestries from Guatemala.
"I only did the front office. I took the orders and spoke to people that
came in. I did not do the heavy work," she told The Intercept, speaking
through an interpreter. "The tires are very heavy. It's a man's work because
you have to have strength to lift up the tires."
Jimmy, who helps his parents out at the shop when he's not in school, wants
to become a biotechnical engineer, but he said his father's absence has made
getting through school more difficult.
"It's been hard because I haven't had that person to be around me and help
me out in certain things that I need," he said. "Take, for example, my
homework sometimes. He would be there to try to teach me how he learned it
and how he memorized so many things. Now that he isn't here, it's kind of
hard now doing my summer packet because I don't have his advice."
9687: Jimmy Chavez, 13, speaks to a customer by phone at his parents' tire
shop, where he has helped out for years. July 25, 2017. Jupiter, Florida.
Jimmy Chavez, 13, speaks to a customer by phone at his parents' tire shop
in Jupiter, Florida on July 25, 2017.
Photo: Maryam Saleh
Carrillo said her family went public with their story because they want to
bring attention to the plight of other detained immigrants who are unable to
speak for themselves.
"It's God. He makes me strong and he gives me strength and I want people to
know that there are people that are unjust," she said. "It's inhumane, but
there is a God who is just, and he will get justice for us."
An online petition calling on the Department of Homeland Security to halt
Chavez's threatened deportation has more than 1,000 signatures.
"There's a lot of support in the community," said Jill Hanson, a board
member of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. "Her church has been very
supportive, and people just couldn't believe - people hoped that Trump
didn't mean half of what he said."
The family supports a local soccer league, gives discounts to customers who
can't afford to pay full price for new tires, and is involved with El Sol, a
neighborhood resource center that connects day laborers with employers and
helps new immigrants adjust to life in the United States, Carrillo said.
El Sol was established in 2006, as Washington lawmakers struggled to pass
immigration reform and Jupiter dealt with an influx of immigrants living in
the country without legal permission who struggled to assimilate - but whose
labor was necessary to the town's success. The center "is a great
achievement for a small town that had the political courage and community
support to find a solution to a difficult problem," said the narrator of the
2007 film.
Cliff Ross, El Sol's gardening coordinator, has known Carrillo and Jimmy
since he joined the organization one and a half years ago. They invited him
to Jimmy's birthday party, Ross said, and Carrillo took good care of him
when he took his car in for a tire change.
Ross, a landscaper, manages the gardening plots El Sol rents out to local
residents. Carrillo plants one of those plots. All the gardeners must share
10 percent of their crops with El Sol's kitchen as a condition of the lease,
but Carrillo stands out because of her generosity, Ross said. "They share
everything they grow," he said.
The Chavez family is a role model to other immigrants in Jupiter, said
Andres Lopez, El Sol's communications coordinator. "That's something to
aspire to: to be established, to have your own business, to be able to give
back," Lopez said. "This family has remained committed to El Sol despite not
needing us."
Top photo: Matias Muy Carrillo works at the tire shop in Jupiter, Fla., on
July 25, 2017.
