A day that ended with the deportation of two Moorpark residents and their seventh-grade daughter started with hope.
On March 23, Alicia Luna Flores and her husband, Juan Alberto Baquera Santoyo, were told their ankle monitors would finally be removed. They had been ordered to wear them on and off since they crossed the Mexico border eight years ago at San Ysidro and applied for asylum with their then 5-year-old daughter, Melanie.
They settled in Moorpark. Luna cleaned houses. Baquera worked as a day laborer, sometimes in construction or painting houses.
Melanie went to Mesa Verde Middle School and dreamed of one day becoming a professional soccer player. Her 3-year-old brother, Aaron, attended a Moorpark preschool.
In a story told in a June FaceTime call from her mother-in-law’s home in the state of Michoacan in western Mexico, Luna relived the day that changed her family’s life and sent shockwaves through the Moorpark Unified School District. It started with the ankle monitors.
Luna and Baquera drove to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Camarillo early the morning of March 23 convinced the devices they called shackles would finally be gone.
“We did not worry,” she said, noting a lawyer had assured them “everything was fine.”
Instead, they were told at the ICE office nothing was fine. They were being deported. They would be taken to Tijuana that day.
“They just told me that our asylum had been terminated,” Luna said in Spanish. “They told us it had not been approved, and we now had a deportation order.”
Luna said they weren’t given specific reasons except for a reference to a missed court date. She said she didn’t know about the court appointment.
In an emailed statement, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Luna had illegally crossed the border several times dating back some 18 years and including some instances just days apart.
She agreed to leave the country voluntarily and then re-entered on multiple occasions, the spokesperson said. In 2012, she was removed from the country after being detained near the border city of Naco in southern Arizona.
The spokesperson urged unauthorized immigrants to voluntarily leave, citing a federal program that provides people who self-deport with $2,600 and a free flight.
“If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return,” the spokesperson said.
Luna acknowledged the earlier border-crossings, noting that some of the trips were motivated by family, including a visit to see her father-in-law who was sick. She said she and her husband settled in Moorpark because they wanted to raise their family in a safe place.
“We left for the security,” she said of departing Mexico.
‘I was afraid’
At the ICE office in Camarillo, Luna and Baquera were told their daughter, who crossed the border with them in 2018, would also be deported. She needed to come to the office to join her parents.
“In that moment, I was afraid,” Luna said. “I didn’t know what to do, so I had to call my sister to ask if she could bring her to us.”
Melanie was at home, getting ready for the bus that would take her to school. When her aunt told her she was being deported with her parents, she texted the news to her best friend.
She told her friend she had 20 minutes to pack up everything.
The friend rushed to the Mesa Verde Middle School office, and in tears, told school leaders what was happening.
“That’s how it was brought to our attention. It was an emotional moment,” said Moorpark Unified School District Superintendent Kelli Hays, noting the incident happened off school grounds, making it impossible for the district to even attempt to intervene. “There wasn’t really anything we could do.”
Luna’s sister brought Melanie to the ICE field office. The girl seemed in shock.
“She arrived crying, asking what was happening,” her mother said. “Through my mind, many questions were racing. Where will we live? What will happen?”
It happens often
It’s a poignant story but not an unusual one, said Vanessa Frank, an immigration attorney not involved in the Moorpark family’s case. People come to the border and ask for asylum often.
Because they’re allowed in the country, they think they were granted asylum when in reality they are beginning a long legal journey.
Asylum comes when an immigration judge grants the protection in a hearing. It has become rare under a Trump administration that prides itself on tightening immigration enforcement, Frank said.
“If they lose, they most likely have no other defense and will be deported,” she said.
Only the clothes on his back
Aaron, who is 3, was born in the United States and was not part of the deportation. He had been taken to a Moorpark Unified School District preschool that day by his grandmother. Luna was supposed to pick him up but she was being detained at the ICE office.
Relatives came to the school to take the boy to their home, Hays said. They said he only had the clothes on his back. Everything else was at his parents’ home. School leaders provided information about legal and financial resources. They gave the boy two jackets to wear. They gave toys and books, too.
Moorpark had been hit by immigration arrests before but the family’s deportation was the first known case involving school district students, Hays said. It hit students and staff hard.
News of the deportation passed quickly throughout the city. People stepped forward to help the boy.
“Everyone really came together to provide resources,” Hays said. “That is testament to the human spirit.”
Agonizing separation
After two hours at the Camarillo ICE office, Luna, her husband and their daughter were taken by car on the long drive to San Ysidro and the Mexican border. They carried three suitcases packed with clothes. They were brought to the Mexican consulate in Tijuana and then to a facility that serves as a shelter for people who have been deported.
“It was a big room that was divided into little rooms, but they only let you stay a night or two,” Luna said.
Friends gave them temporary housing. Their time in Tijuana was hard. They left the home to find food. People who said they were police officers took them into a patrol vehicle, Luna said. They demanded payment.
“They took all my husband’s money, everything we had,” she said, crying as she told the story.
They stayed in Tijuana for two weeks, waiting for 3-year-old Aaron to be sent from Moorpark. The separation had been difficult.
“He asked where the three of us were every day,” Luna said. He asked “if we had left him forever.”
After they were reunited, the family went to the state of Yucatan and then Michoacan. They plan to move to Mexico City in hopes of finding jobs and rebuilding their lives.
Worried about safety
Melanie completed her seventh-grade studies from Mexico in an online independent study program offered by the Moorpark Unified School District. She will probably need to enroll in school in Mexico later this summer. Luna worries the classes will be different, and the school will charge fees for books, supplies and uniforms.
“What I’m most worried about is safety,” she said. “We’ve hardly left the house. We leave just to get food and come back because we know that here it’s dangerous.”
They haven’t found jobs. They have little money. Luna thinks it is possible her family could one day legally return to the United States but said it could take many years. She relies on hope and faith.
“We don’t really have any other option but to have faith,” she said. “God is a God of opportunities, and I believe that in some future he will give us the option of returning.”
During the video call, Luna said she wanted to tell her family’s story in hopes it may help other people in similar straits. She reflected on life in Moorpark. They struggled at times with money. But they could go where they wanted. They had shelter, work and safety. It was a good life.
It was all gone in one day. “Everything,” Luna said.
Asked if the journey feels real, she answered in a tired voice.
“Yes,” she said.
Tom Kisken covers healthcare and other news for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tom.kisken@vcstar.com.
Ernesto Centeno Araujo covers breaking news for the Ventura County Star. He can be reached at ecentenoaraujo@vcstar.com, 805-437-0224 or @ecentenoaraujo on Instagram and X.
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This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: ‘Where will we live?’ Moorpark family looks for hope after deportation
Reporting by Tom Kisken and Ernesto Centeno Araujo, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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By Tom Kisken and Ernesto Centeno Araujo, Ventura County Star | USA TODAY Network
