R has been my client since 2009. He's Mexican, has been here since 1991, has a family, has worked for the same landscaping company for 19 years, helps his neighbors. He's the kind of guy, who asks the cashier at the store how her/his day is going and genuinely wants to know.
We lost his case four years ago, he has had a deportation order since. Every year, he has gone to check in with ICE and has asked to stay another year - and because he really has nothing bad and a lot of good things to show for himself, they have said yes.
When R called me last week about a notice to go to an "interview" with ICE today, he and I both knew we had arrived at the end of the line. We'd heard the stories in the past months of how this scenario plays out: "Dad/Mom of four deported after 30 years in the United States."
Because I always do, I asked him about any recent changes in his life or his family's. Reluctantly, he said that his son's preschool had just had him evaluated. "But he's just a 4-year old trouble maker," R told me. "What kind of evaluation?" I asked. "Something about autism."
I hate that he could hear my voice brighten, could tell over the phone that my tone had gone from somber to outright excited. "Autism? Why didn't tell me that sooner?" -like you would chastise a girlfriend for forgetting to tell you about a promising date. "I need every detail."
As it turns out, R's son is being evaluated for autism, and was just diagnosed with "severe developmental delay." The intensity of my enthusiasm about the timing of R's son's diagnoses was matched only by R's desire to avoid confronting this tragic development in his family.
"I guess my family is pretty messed up now," R said, describing his son's delays; his wife's depression over this; his own feeling of impotence. I told R what I tell many clients: "You're turning the bad in your life into something good for you." It sounded hollow even to me.
R rallied and got lots of evidence about his son. At ICE today, the officer was ready to take R into custody. But he let R go home and gave him a check-in in a month, during which the evidence about his son will hopefully let us reopen R's case, and then keep him here in the US.
R thanked me. "Don't thank me, thank your son," I said, immediately wishing I hadn't, because it meant "The only reason you're not detained and boarding a plane to a country you haven't seen in 27 years is that your son is struggling and may struggle for the rest of his life."
In "normal human life" context, that's a terrible thing to say. In the world of immigration law, it's what we call "perfect timing."
