LSU nursing grad hopes to return to Louisiana after deportation to Honduras
NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) reports:
“After an emotional 24 hours following her deportation to Honduras, 21-year-old Vilma Palacios said she was wrongly arrested and sent back to her home country. However, she still hopes to pursue her dream of being a nurse in Louisiana.
Palacios said she was notified Saturday afternoon, Dec. 27, that she would be sent on a deportation flight from Louisiana to Honduras the next morning. That was also supposed to be the day when her family from the New Orleans metro area would visit her at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, Louisiana.
Instead of saying her final goodbyes, Palacios and other detainees were shackled, loaded on a plane and flown more than 1,000 miles to Honduras.
“Not being able to say goodbye to my family has been very difficult. I actually had a mental breakdown,” Palacios said.
She is now staying with her grandmother and aunt in a home in the department of Yoro, which is about a six-hour drive from the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa.
Palacios said returning to where she was born was a shock. Her parents left her hometown for the United States when she was just 7 years old after her uncle was murdered in their neighborhood, and gang violence started skyrocketing.
“Even though this is the country I was born in, I am at a complete loss here,” she said. “I already see this as my new reality but it’s something that’s hard to fully adapt to and really understand.”
For six months, Palacios had been in ICE custody, hoping for an immigration judge to grant her bail or for her removal order to be dismissed.
Back in June, Palacios said she was renewing her tag in South Louisiana when a Louisiana state trooper ran her identification. She said the trooper found an issue with her immigration status and told her that immigration agents had been alerted.
She said that when the immigration officers arrived, she asked for a reason for the arrest and to see a warrant. She said the agents did not show her any documentation but told her that her immigration case — which Palacios believed was administratively closed — had been put back on the court docket and that she had missed her hearing.
Palacios was then put into ICE custody, awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge. That finally happened on Dec. 15 when an immigration judge ruled she was ineligible for bond and gave her two options: agree to voluntary deportation or be forcibly removed to Honduras.
In a statement, ICE New Orleans said Palacios has been in the U.S. illegally for the past 15 years and that “her family declined to find a way for her to obtain legal status.”
Palacios disputes the agency’s account.
She said she has an asylum case that was filed in 2011, about a year after her family crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas and initially settled in California. Over the next 14 years, she waited patiently for progress in her effort to remain in the United States legally.
In the meantime, Palacios filed for multiple work permits, excelled at Belle Chasse High and earned her degree from LSU’s nursing school, with a job lined up at Touro Hospital in New Orleans before ICE arrested her.
byes
“We did try. We looked at other means to get a status, but things weren’t moving along,” she said.
Since Palacios signed off on a voluntary removal, she might have to wait 10 years before she is allowed back into the United States. That means it could be years before she sees the family and friends she left behind in Louisiana.
“Knowing that it could be a very long time -- I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just a lot,” she said.
The young nurse graduate said she will look into temporary visas that would allow her to return to Louisiana even before her 10-year hiatus. Those visas still need approval from immigration officials, but she might have better luck since she chose to be removed instead of being forcibly deported.
In the meantime, Palacios said she wants to find a permanent way to return her life to normal.
“My life is there (in New Orleans). It’s the place I call home, and I still call it home. And I want to use my degree, the one that I worked really hard on. Because that’s been my dream since I was a little girl,” she said.”
My comments:
This story speaks for itself about the atrocities Demented Donnie has unleashed on our once civilized society.
I would much rather have Ms. Palacios, an earnest, hard working nursing student, living in this country than a certain Eastern European porn actress who lied on her visa application and was granted an Einstein visa; one who cannot read or speak fluent English and is living a life of ill gotten luxury thanks to her convicted felon husband’s grifting off of low IQ voters who are dumb enough to fall for his lies.
“After an emotional 24 hours following her deportation to Honduras, 21-year-old Vilma Palacios said she was wrongly arrested and sent back to her home country. However, she still hopes to pursue her dream of being a nurse in Louisiana.
Palacios said she was notified Saturday afternoon, Dec. 27, that she would be sent on a deportation flight from Louisiana to Honduras the next morning. That was also supposed to be the day when her family from the New Orleans metro area would visit her at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, Louisiana.
Instead of saying her final goodbyes, Palacios and other detainees were shackled, loaded on a plane and flown more than 1,000 miles to Honduras.
“Not being able to say goodbye to my family has been very difficult. I actually had a mental breakdown,” Palacios said.
She is now staying with her grandmother and aunt in a home in the department of Yoro, which is about a six-hour drive from the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa.
Palacios said returning to where she was born was a shock. Her parents left her hometown for the United States when she was just 7 years old after her uncle was murdered in their neighborhood, and gang violence started skyrocketing.
“Even though this is the country I was born in, I am at a complete loss here,” she said. “I already see this as my new reality but it’s something that’s hard to fully adapt to and really understand.”
For six months, Palacios had been in ICE custody, hoping for an immigration judge to grant her bail or for her removal order to be dismissed.
Back in June, Palacios said she was renewing her tag in South Louisiana when a Louisiana state trooper ran her identification. She said the trooper found an issue with her immigration status and told her that immigration agents had been alerted.
She said that when the immigration officers arrived, she asked for a reason for the arrest and to see a warrant. She said the agents did not show her any documentation but told her that her immigration case — which Palacios believed was administratively closed — had been put back on the court docket and that she had missed her hearing.
Palacios was then put into ICE custody, awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge. That finally happened on Dec. 15 when an immigration judge ruled she was ineligible for bond and gave her two options: agree to voluntary deportation or be forcibly removed to Honduras.
In a statement, ICE New Orleans said Palacios has been in the U.S. illegally for the past 15 years and that “her family declined to find a way for her to obtain legal status.”
Palacios disputes the agency’s account.
She said she has an asylum case that was filed in 2011, about a year after her family crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas and initially settled in California. Over the next 14 years, she waited patiently for progress in her effort to remain in the United States legally.
In the meantime, Palacios filed for multiple work permits, excelled at Belle Chasse High and earned her degree from LSU’s nursing school, with a job lined up at Touro Hospital in New Orleans before ICE arrested her.
byes
“We did try. We looked at other means to get a status, but things weren’t moving along,” she said.
Since Palacios signed off on a voluntary removal, she might have to wait 10 years before she is allowed back into the United States. That means it could be years before she sees the family and friends she left behind in Louisiana.
“Knowing that it could be a very long time -- I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just a lot,” she said.
The young nurse graduate said she will look into temporary visas that would allow her to return to Louisiana even before her 10-year hiatus. Those visas still need approval from immigration officials, but she might have better luck since she chose to be removed instead of being forcibly deported.
In the meantime, Palacios said she wants to find a permanent way to return her life to normal.
“My life is there (in New Orleans). It’s the place I call home, and I still call it home. And I want to use my degree, the one that I worked really hard on. Because that’s been my dream since I was a little girl,” she said.”
My comments:
This story speaks for itself about the atrocities Demented Donnie has unleashed on our once civilized society.
I would much rather have Ms. Palacios, an earnest, hard working nursing student, living in this country than a certain Eastern European porn actress who lied on her visa application and was granted an Einstein visa; one who cannot read or speak fluent English and is living a life of ill gotten luxury thanks to her convicted felon husband’s grifting off of low IQ voters who are dumb enough to fall for his lies.
