Grandmother, ‘backbone’ of veteran’s family, sent back to Mexico

The grandmother of a Mira Mesa military veteran’s family was sent back to Mexico on Friday, more than two weeks after she was picked up by immigration agents outside her house in unmarked SUVs on Valentine’s Day.

Clarissa Arredondo, 43, is an unauthorized immigrant, as is her daughter, Adriana Aparicio.

Aparicio’s husband is a Navy veteran working as a contractor in Afghanistan. The couple has two daughters, 2 and 3, and Arredondo helped take care of them.

“We get together all the time,” Aparicio said. “We can just be hanging out at her house, singing and dancing with the girls. They love doing that with her. She does their manicures and pedicures. She just spoils them.”

Aparicio, 27, said officials told her family that her mom was an enforcement priority.

“They consider my mom as a criminal for lying on paperwork to get welfare,” Aparicio said, adding that officials said that happened more than a decade ago.

Arredondo’s case is one of many popping up around the nation as President Donald Trump sets out to redirect immigration enforcement priorities from his predecessor’s choice to focus on unauthorized immigrants who committed violent crimes.

Trump’s administration is casting a much wider net, preparing to expand a border wall with Mexico and staffing up for more enforcement and more removals.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement was not able to answer questions before publication about why Arredondo was targeted. The San Diego Union-Tribune could not locate records of a conviction or violation.

Aparicio had no recollection of her mother using welfare or getting in trouble for doing so. She remembered her mom working three jobs, cleaning hotels, houses and apartments to make ends meet.

“I had a happy childhood,” Aparicio said. “She made sure of that.”

When Aparicio was about a month old, Arredondo crossed into the U.S. from Mexico with Aparicio and Aparicio’s father. Arredondo was 16 years old.

“She was a child trying to make a way for her own child,” Aparicio said.

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Arredondo left Aparicio’s father over alcoholism and raised their three children, Aparicio said. Her two brothers are U.S.-born.

“She’d take us to work sometimes when she didn’t have anyone to watch us,” Aparicio recalled. “She’s never given up.”

Aparicio’s husband, Bennie Hill, has worked as a contractor in Afghanistan since he ended his seven-year service with the Navy.

His mother, Lt. Col. Marie Pauley, is on active duty in the Army and has been deployed around the world. She said she appreciates Arredondo’s role as the other grandmother in her grandchildren’s lives.

“Me being far away, she eases my heart,” Pauley said via telephone, speaking in her own personal capacity and not on behalf of the Army. “I haven’t been the good grandmother that can be there all the time. I’m trying to live through her.

“She’s just incredibly loving,” Pauley added. “I wish I could be that loving. I’m such a military lady. I’m a little tough, a little harder. She’s such a great balance of life.”

Pauley called Arredondo the “backbone” of the family.

“She’s not a criminal,” Pauley said. “That’s where I’m at. I just feel that she’s definitely not in that category, and I think we got it wrong.”

She used to be at ease knowing Arredondo was there to help with the granddaughters, she said. Now, both she and her son are struggling to deal with the stress of the situation from far away.

“There’s all this worry and stress that he doesn’t need,” Pauley said. “He needs to focus on the job that he’s doing for the United States government.”

Pauley said she’s even considering retiring sooner than planned so that she can come back to help her daughter-in-law in San Diego.

Some, like former San Diego Assemblyman and Marine veteran Nathan Fletcher, worried that President Donald Trump’s executive orders would end a protocol that prevented parents, spouses and children of active military and veterans from being deported as long as they have no criminal history.

Arredondo would not have qualified because she is an in-law.

Aparicio is enrolled in former President Barack Obama’s deferred action for childhood arrivals program or DACA and has applied for the military and veteran family protection, known as Parole in Place.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly released a guidance memo for implementing Trump’s order that said such parole should be used “sparingly.”

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“The practice of granting parole to certain aliens in pre-designated categories in order to create immigration programs not established by Congress has contributed to a border security crisis, undermined the integrity of the immigration laws and the parole process, and created an incentive for additional illegal immigration,” Kelly’s memo said.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, has since clarified that the policy for military families still exists.

After receiving protection through the Parole in Place program, some military family members may be eligible for green cards, said Maria Chavez, a local immigration attorney.

“What Parole in Place does is, it only fixes the fact that the person entered the U.S. without inspection,” Chavez said by telephone. “That’s the only thing it fixes. If the person went in and out a whole lot or committed crimes, the Parole in Place won’t necessarily fix that.”

For Aparicio, until and unless she gets a green card, the idea of being separated from her mother is daunting, something her U.S. citizen brothers don’t have to deal with.

“They can see her,” Aparicio said. “I’m worried because I don’t know how much time will pass until I can giver her a hug.”

Aparicio is studying to be a nurse, and her next session starts in two weeks. With both her husband and mother far away, she said it’s going to be hard to manage.

“My two most important people have been snatched out of my life,” Aparicio said.

kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate