HARTFORD — Fourteen years after he came to this country escaping religious persecution, Joel Colindres, for the second time, is days away from being deported to Guatemala without ever having his asylum case heard.
Colindres, 33, was accompanied Thursday by his wife, Samantha, and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal to his last check-in before his scheduled Wednesday departure. Blumenthal has been advocating for the New Fairfield family for months.
In the complicated case, his attorney, Erin O’Neill- Baker said they have an approved petition by his wife to sponsor him for citizenship.
She said they have a pending waiver to excuse and pardon his removal order and they have taken an appeal with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to try to get his asylum case heard. An emergency stay is also pending with the 5th Circuit in Louisiana.
Colindres turned himself into officials in Texas in 2004 seeking asylum after family members had been killed in Guatemala over their evangelical preaching. Three more family members were killed in 2017 and he fears for his life if sent back.
Blumenthal said the order telling Colindres to appear in court more than a decade ago, was in the wrong name and sent to the wrong address. It never reached him, but it triggered the deportation order, he said.
About 100 supporters from 13 advocacy groups rallied on his behalf Thursday outside the agency that checks the GPS ankle bracelet immigrants under deportation orders are required to wear.
The senator later walked with Charla Nice and Colindres family members to Immigration and Custom Enforcement offices in the U.S. District Court building around the corner to deliver the 26,000 signatures collected on a petition asking ICE to let Joel Colindres stay.
Nice, of Connecticut Shoreline Indivisible, was one of the main organizers of the petition and has worked closely with immigrant groups.
Colindres, the father of a 6-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, both American citizens, wore his “lucky shirt” Thursday to the check-in.
He wife said it is the same one he wore on their first date 13 years ago and on Aug. 17, 2017, when the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals granted a temporary administrative stay at the last minute as the family sat in the airport.
Samantha Colindres said she won’t put her children through that trauma again at the airport if they are in the same position on Wednesday.
“Every check-in he goes to every Thursday is high anxiety for me. I make him text me when he gets here. I make him text me when he goes out because you never know what is going to happen,” Samantha Colindres said.
She is hoping that they hear good news before a visit to the airport, “but as much faith as we have, I don’t know if we would get another miracle like that.”
Paul Corsak, Samantha’s father, from Brookfield, said it is hard for him to believe that “this is the same country I left the comfort and safety of my home in Connecticut to help fight a war in Vietnam for the freedom of others.”
Samantha Colindres said this is the fourth public event and the third rally they have had in the past month. “It shouldn’t be that many events for them to get the message that what they are doing is wrong,” she said of ICE. She said sending her husband to Guatemala is “certain death.”
Julie Corsak, Samantha’s mother, said “in five, ten or 15 years if you were to ask me to whom I would want our only daughter to marry, Paul and I would again agree it would definitely be our Joel — a man who loves with all his heart and soul, his God, his country and his family. Let’s keep goodness here in the USA, because Joel is goodness.”
Blumenthal said “deporting Joel Colindres would betray American values and American justice. ... All he is seeking now is an opportunity to present his case.”
The senator said one branch of Homeland Security has approved his Colindres’ wife’s petition to sponsor his citizenship, but another branch of the same department is telling him it will deport him.
“That is not only tragic, but a travesty of American justice,” Blumenthal said.
“We are begging the court to let him stay while his case is pending,” O’Neill-Baker said.
mary.oleary@hearstmediact.com; 203-641-2577