When Miriam Martinez-Lemus arrived in the United States in 1992 after traveling hundreds of miles from Guatemala to cross the U.S. border in Arizona, she cleaned houses to earn money to hire an immigration lawyer.
Today, Martinez-Lemus, 53, is still fighting to stay in the United States. At 3 p.m. on Monday, she is booked to fly back to Guatemala, a country she fled following death threats and violence in a time of violent political unrest.
On Monday morning, Martinez-Lemus and her lawyers will request a stay of deportation at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office on Main Street in Hartford. Martinez-Lemus’ supporters will rally outside the office at 7:30 a.m.
Since 2012, Martinez-Lemus has been checking in with ICE and has been granted stays of removal preventing her deportation and allowing her to stay with her family, her husband Raphael Benavides said.
“Besides the fact that she’s a human being, she’s a mother, she’s a wife. We’re a family,” he said. “That’s what we’ve created. We wanted our children to grow up in a healthy environment.”
With Benavides translating, Martinez-Lemus said she came to the United States from Monjas, a rural community 50 miles southeast of Guatemala City. She crossed the U.S. border at Nogales, Ariz., in 1992.
Soon afterward, she moved to Stamford, where she has lived since with Benavides, and their two daughters — Brianna, 12, and Alison, 10, both of whom are U.S. citizens.
Martinez-Lemus said Brianna was diagnosed two years ago with juvenile Type 1 diabetes, a condition that requires her to receive constant care and supervision.
“Mom is the backbone of this whole operation,” Benavides said.
Benavides works about an hour from Stamford in New York and said Miriam stays close to home in case Brianna’s sugar plummets and she has to go home from school. Brianna has had seizures because of her condition and her parents keep a watchful eye on her health, even throughout the night. Many of those duties fall to Martinez-Lemus, as Benavides is the sole breadwinner for the family.
“Her condition is to be monitored always,” Benavides said.
According to activists rallying around the family, Martinez-Lemus has struggled with her immigration status since she arrived in the United States.
Catalina Horak, the executive director of the Stamford-based organization Building One Community, said Martinez-Lemus applied for affirmative asylum when she arrived in the United States, but her claim was denied.
Horak said in a press release that Martinez-Lemus pursued several other avenues for legal immigration status, including applying for a green card. She was told it would take 10 years due to a system backlog, Horak said.
Since 2012, Benavides said his wife has been reporting to ICE for yearly check-ins and each year she has filed for stays of removal that would prevent her deportation. Every year they have been granted, but Benavides said that his wife’s latest application, made in August, was denied.
“It was scary. It was beyond horrendous to put that thought in our minds and then passing that information to your children that that’s something that might happen was horrific,” he said. “We appreciate all the efforts from the people standing by our family and we know that Miriam is not going anywhere.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal urged the Trump administration to allow Martinez-Lemus to remain with her family and care for her daughter.
“We’re going to be mobilizing public support to rally around this family, as we have successfully with others in the past and hopefully stop this heartless and completely irrational deportation,” he told The Courant Sunday.
Martinez-Lemus is being represented by attorney Glenn Formica of Formica Williams, and local groups such as Building One Community and Shoreline Indivisible are advocating for the family.
“We ask people of faith to pray for Miriam and her family,” Horak said. “The United States is a country of heroes and good guys. We are kind, compassionate and we are not cruel. The decisions of our government should reflect who we are.”
