Alejandra Juarez,38, left, says goodbye to her children, Pamela and Estela at the Orlando International Airport on Friday, Aug. 3, 2018 in Orlando, Fla. Juarez, the wife of a former Marine is preparing to self-dep...

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - The 16-year-old American daughter of a former Marine held back tears as long as she could Friday before her family was split in two. After being notified of her deportation date by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and with few options left, Alejandra recently wrote a letter to President Donald Trump pleading with him to let her stay in the US. Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla., who was at the airport, said he told Juarez, 39, that he was sorry that she had to be deported under Trump' s "zero tolerance" immigration policy. Alejandra and Temo Juarez, a naturalized citizen who runs a roofing business, quietly raised Pamela and their 8-year-old daughter Estela in the central Florida town of Davenport until a 2013 traffic stop exposed her legal status. ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. government deported a Mexican woman on Friday who had lived in the country illegally for nearly two decades despite efforts by lawmakers to keep her in Florida with her husband, a Marine Corps veteran, and her two American children. “You’re not making me suffer more, you’re making a veteran suffer, and you always say you love veterans.”

Juarez has been in the country for two decades. Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, was criticized by immigrant groups for deporting scores of non-citizen U.S. military veterans and for deporting immigrants whose only crime was re-entering the country after an earlier removal order. The family’s plan is to split up, with the younger daughter joining their mother in Mexico and the older daughter staying with their father, who has said in reports that he doesn’t blame President Trump for his wife’s departure.
The wife of a former US Marine and Iraq War veteran whose family publicly pleaded for President Donald Trump to intervene is deported to Mexico.