PLANT CITY, Fla. -- Luis Blanco has called Plant City home for the past 20 years.
Now, he’s counting down the days until he must leave his family and job. He’s been scheduled for deportation by ICE on January 31st.
He’s the sole breadwinner for his family. Blanco has a wife, five children, with another on the way. His wife is in the United States because of DACA, but both are worried that could be taken away. All children are U.S. citizens.
“For me to leave would be hard. My family can’t come with me because there is nothing for them in Mexico. They’re going to suffer. They won’t live a good life over there,” says Blanco.
Waking up at 4 a.m. for his job in constriction, Luis says he’s been happy to have an opportunity to support his family and give them an American education. Two of his children have severe learning disabilities.
This wouldn’t be the first time Luis was deported.
In 1998, he received a deportation order and was sent back to Mexico.
But with the conditions being bad in his hometown, he couldn’t find work to support his family.
He came back to the U.S. in 1999 and was living in Florida ever since illegally.
“ICE didn’t enforce rules for so long, that’s the case in a lot of situations. Now, we're seeing many families torn apart,” says Immigration Attorney Daniela Hogue.
To make matters worse, Luis was stopped in South Carolina, where he traveled for work in the summer, for having tinted windows a few years ago.
ICE was notified but he was released under court order supervision.
That’s when Luis contacted Hogue. She was able to get him humanitarian status, since he was the only person working in his family.
That status was granted under the Obama administration but Hogue says once they renewed last year, it was pending until they received the news that it had been denied.
“The chances of coming back are pretty slim. If he is in fact detained and deported by the end of the month, there is no petition for him pending because he doesn’t have any family members that can do that,” says Hogue.
Luis has a 17-year-old daughter but the rules state that she must be at least 21 years old to petition for her father to come back to the U.S.
However, since he has a deportation order, Luis will have to wait 10 years before he can qualify for a waiver to come back.
10News reporter Shannon Valladolid is working on this story for our 6 p.m. show.
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