From Calle Alisos in Ensenada, Mexico, the city’s marina can be seen glistening in the thin sunlight that illuminates a towering Carnival cruise ship.
It’s a view that Ramon Ruiz Ortiz can easily see from his roof, but it’s not one he often relishes.
For Ruiz, it’s hard to embrace Ensenada, a coastal tourist town, when the home he longs for is in Moreno Valley.
It’s been more than five months since Ruiz, 36, was deported. He was sent back to Mexico in May, just hours after he went to San Bernardino’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office to interview for a green card that would have granted him permanent residency.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, said he was denied permanent residency because he had been caught attempting to cross the border illegally nearly two decades ago. Immigration officials also said Ruiz had applied for the green card using a fake name. Ruiz says that’s not true, that he used his real name.
Ruiz’s case is one that Southern California immigration advocates signaled as a shift in enforcement. He was an undocumented immigrant with no criminal record who was deported when his application to adjust his legal status was denied. Previously, people who did not qualify were just denied, not deported.
Riverside Attorney Hadley Bajramovic, who represents the Mexican Consulate in San Bernardino, said that before President Donald Trump was elected, “This would not have happened.”
Bajramovic is Ruiz’s attorney and has looked into legal avenues to bring him back from Mexico.
While he waits, Ruiz is trying to adjust to life in Ensenada where he lives with two brothers. He hopes that maybe somehow he could permanently reunite with his family in the United States.
He left his wife Norma Perez, 42, his daughter Luisa Ruiz, 16, his youngest son Sebastian, 5, and his stepson Erik Silva, back in Moreno Valley.
“It’s something very difficult,” said Ruiz, who was born in the Mexican state of Jalisco. “Being separated from my children, my wife, it’s very hard. It was a drastic change.”
“All the plans we had made … .The future was a lot different from what we are living right now.”
Without their father, the Ruiz family functions differently now.
They no longer live in their Moreno Valley mobile home. Perez sold it because she couldn’t afford rent on her own. Ruiz was the main provider. They now share a home with an uncle.
They see each other a few times a month when Perez drives to Ensenada after work on Saturdays. They spend the night there but drive back home Sunday afternoon. That’s the tough part, Ruiz said, seeing them leave and not having an answer when his youngest asks him, “When are you coming back to Moreno Valley?”
Ruiz now sells used clothes at a nearby swap meet Thursday through Sunday. He makes about $65 a week, a lot less than what he earned at Greatwide Distribution Logistics in Ontario, where he worked for 14 years.
He’s seeing a therapist and taking high school classes at night to help cope with depression and anxiety that began after being deported.
To Ruiz, it’s just not fair.
He thinks back to his deportation. He said he was not allowed to make a phone call to speak with his wife or attorney. He didn’t see a judge. Ruiz said an immigration official didn’t explain documents presented to him, which were in English. He said he doesn’t fully understand how to read or write in English.
“The way they did it was just very unjust,” he said. “They didn’t give me an opportunity to do anything.”
Ruiz’s application to register for permanent residency was denied because he was deported or removed from the U.S. at or near San Ysidro back in 1999, according to a U.S. document.
On top of that, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, said Ruiz attempted to fraudulently obtain lawful permanent residence under an assumed name.
Ruiz and Bajramovic say that’s not true. Ruiz admitted that in 1999 he did give an alias when he was removed from the border, but when he returned to the U.S. he used his real name.
Additionally, the document detailing why Ruiz’s application to register for permanent residence was denied, refers to him as Ramon Ruiz Ortiz, his real name, he and his family said. Bajramovic provided scanned copies of identification documents, including Ruiz’s Mexican passport and birth certificate along with his U.S. Social Security card and Riverside County wedding certificate.
Bajramovic’s office has filed Freedom of Information Act requests to get records of Ruiz’s 1999 apprehension from Customs and Border Protection and to access details from ICE of his recent deportation.
Bajramovic is waiting for those records to see what steps she can take. She also has met with the ICE agent who handled Ruiz’s removal.
Bajramovic said the agent said he likely would have not deported him had he known he had U.S. citizen children and a wife who is a legal permanent resident.
“The officer later told me that if he knew of all of the positive equities in Ramon’s case … he would have put him in a supervision plan and would not have deported him,” Bajramovic said.
To Ruiz’s mother, Margarita Ortiz, 66, this is heartbreaking.
She lives in Moreno Valley and visits her son in Mexico whenever possible. Ortiz remembers coming in one day during a visit and seeing her son and granddaughter embracing and crying before she was heading back home to Moreno Valley.
“I ask myself why did this happen to him?” she said. “He doesn’t deserve this.”
“What I hope now is for the people in power in the United States to see this case and forgive him, if he committed an error, and take him back to his family,” she said.