Hector Reyes parked his truck in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez, his phone lighting up with photos and videos of his son, Daniel, receiving his high school diploma.
The ceremony was happening only 1 mile away in El Paso, Texas. But Reyes had been deported in 2017 and barred for 20 years from entering the United States for having crossed the border illegally twice.
His wife and two children, all American citizens, have made a life in El Paso, while Reyes lives eight blocks from the border. He recalled looking up at the sky on the night of the graduation in May, waiting to see the fireworks that would mark the end of his son’s high school years.
“This life,” he said, “I don’t wish it to nobody.”
Families like Reyes’ have been closely watching a new Biden administration policy that seeks to provide a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens. Though the initial program was not open to people living outside the country, the families said it was a first sign that there was an openness to reconsidering their plight. The deported spouses understood it to be a long shot, but perhaps their only chance of overcoming lifetime or decades-long bans from coming to the United States.
But the new program was swiftly met with strong Republican opposition, and was put on hold by a federal judge in Texas after 16 states sued to block it. With former President Donald Trump threatening mass deportations if he regains the presidency in November, the families could not only lose their bid for consideration but also see many more joining their ranks.
Some of the most common reasons for deportations and entry bans include entering the United States without authorization, returning after a deportation, overstaying a visa, working without permission or committing a crime, said Jorge Loweree, managing director of programs at the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group for immigrants.
In interviews, the couples described the at times extraordinary efforts they had taken to maintain their relationships, and the wrenching decisions they had faced over whether to follow the deported spouse overseas or remain in the United States for better-paying jobs, educational opportunities and improved safety and security.
“We should be talking about family unity, not family unity for some people,” said Tran Dang, founder and director of the Rhizome Center for Migrants, a legal clinic that provides services to deported people and their families.
A broad array of stakeholders, from business leaders to immigrant advocates, has been calling for an overhaul of immigration laws for decades, long before the border surges of recent years. But an increasingly polarized Congress has failed to reach a consensus, leaving the country with an antiquated, dysfunctional system.
The number of migrants crossing illegally has plunged in recent months, after a change in asylum policy introduced by the Biden administration in June. But the border remains a core issue for Republicans on the campaign trail.
“Until we solve the crisis at our southern border, we can’t do anything else,” said John Thomas, a Republican strategist and managing partner at Nestpoint Associates. “We can clean up the rest of the system afterward.”
There is no reliable data for how many American citizens have spouses who have been deported, but immigrant advocates estimate that they number in the tens of thousands.
For most couples in this situation, straddling the border is not an option. Many of the American partners have to decide whether to move abroad permanently or live far away from their spouses. Inevitably, some relationships don’t survive the challenge and have ended in divorce.
When Dr. Regina Cano married Juan Manuel Cano de la Cruz in 2011, their plan was to live near her family in Cincinnati while she finished her residency in family medicine.
But after Cano de la Cruz, a Mexican citizen who was living in the United States illegally, applied for his green card in 2013 at the U.S. consulate in Juárez, an officer not only denied his application but also permanently barred him from entering the United States. The reason, Cano de la Cruz said, was that he had sent money to his father and brother, which was viewed as funding illegal immigration, as they had later crossed the southern border illegally.
“I didn’t know that it was against the law,” he said of sending the money. “It frustrated me for years.”
For the Canos, their solution has been to live together in Guadalajara, where they now have two sons, a 7-year-old and a 6-month-old.
“My husband told me to stay and make money,” Regina Cano recalled. “I was separated from him for two years, and I didn’t want to live like that anymore.”
Now, Cano and her sons fly to Ohio several times a year so the children can squeeze in visits with their American grandparents and cousins, and she can earn extra money covering shifts for other doctors on maternity leave or vacation.
As with many families, the hardest decisions for these couples often center on what will be best for their children.
At first, Laura Araujo thought the most practical choice was to move to the Mexican city of Toluca with her three children after her husband’s green card application was denied in 2017. (He had twice crossed the border illegally.) Araujo and her husband, Alberto Araujo Rodríguez, ended up raising those children in Mexico for five years, and had two more.
“We weren’t necessarily immigrating for a better life,” she said of the move. “We were immigrating to be together.”
In 2022, the couple decided it was best for the children’s education for Araujo and the children to move back to Maryland.
“I came back to the house we used to live in together and his ghost was everywhere,” Araujo said. “At the end of the day, I sit there by myself. I don’t have my husband.”
Araujo Rodríguez now has a Canadian work permit and works at a dairy farm in Newfoundland to better support his family.
“I hope that these sad tears one day turn into happy ones,” Araujo Rodríguez said about a recent trip the family took to visit him in Canada. “It breaks my heart when I see my children like that. They need their father.”
Cassandra Holguin, whose fiancé had entered the country illegally and was deported to Mexico recently, is still trying to come to terms with what happened and how they will raise their son, Milo, who turns 2 this week.
In May, nearly one month after her fiance, Francisco Javier Gamiño Jaramilo, was deported, Holguin took Milo to Guanajuato so he could see his father. On their last night before returning to Texas, Gamiño Jaramilo begged her to stay.
“Please don’t leave me,” he told her in Spanish. “I don’t want to be here alone. I won’t make it.”
Holguin worried for her fiance’s well-being, so she decided to leave Milo behind with him temporarily while she returned to Texas to take care of her three older children. She cried for the next two weeks, she said, and has lost 43 pounds from not eating.
“It feels like I’m living a dream every single day,” she said.
In Juárez, Reyes faces at least 13 more years before he can reenter the United States. His children will be in their 30s by then.
“He’s a good citizen,” said Reyes’ wife, Sandra Reyes. “We had good money, we had our own house, we had cars. We didn’t ask for one dime from the government.”
“Even like that, it wasn’t enough,” she added.
