If there was ever an example of the fundamental lie that is the Trump administration’s deportation policy, it’s Olga Perez.
At 47, Perez has spent the past 20 years helping the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, the Children’s Services Council, schools, courts and other community groups work with people who speak an indigenous Mayan language. Now, she is facing being sent back to Guatemala in a program that was supposed to target “the worst of the worst.”
Worst of the worst? Far from it. America needs more immigrants like Perez.
What should be celebrated is instead being demeaned and devalued by a political ― and quite frankly, racist ― numbers game. The Trump administration has promised to create the largest mass deportation in U.S. history that would target undocumented immigrants who have committed serious and violent crimes within the U.S.
In her time in Palm Beach County, awaiting a painfully slow asylum process, Perez volunteered to interpret and translate Mam, one of over 22 Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. What began as volunteering has become a recognized and crucial service. She has helped many indigenous Guatemalan immigrants navigate childcare, education, healthcare and legal services. She played a key role in the case of Virgilio Aguilar Mendez, a 19-year-old Guatemalan farmworker who was cleared of criminal charges in the heart-attack death of a Florida officer.
An immigrant with Perez’ record doesn’t deserve deportation. She should be freed, allowed to continue her work and remain here to raise her four children. Deporting her would leave her children without their parents as Perez’ husband, a landscaper who also didn’t fit the “worst-of-the-worst” criteria, was picked up on a job site in Lake Worth Beach and is now being detained by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Gives new meaning to “family values.”
Mass deportations unpopular with many Americans
Truth is ICE isn’t doing that great of a job in rounding up undocumented immigrants with violent criminal pasts. More than half of the people deported by the summer of 2025 had no criminal conviction, according to a Washington Post analysis. As of February 2026, roughly 73% of the individuals in ICE detention have no criminal convictions. A recent review by the CATO Institute reveals that only 5% of those detainees have a violent criminal conviction. The CATO Institute isn’t exactly your tree-huggin’, wide-WOKE kind of think tank. They do, however, recognize bad public policy.
Apparently, so do a growing number of sheriffs here in Florida.
“While Congress sits on their hands and does nothing about this, we are on the ground floor with this day in and day out — looking in the eyes of these folks that, yes, came here inappropriately. But some came here inappropriately only to do better for themselves and their family,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said during this week’s State Immigration Enforcement Council meeting.
Judd is the embodiment of law and order in Florida. A conservative who’s tight with Gov. Ron DeSantis, Judd chairs the council Republican leaders in Florida created last year to fashion hardline immigration policy. But he’s obviously seen enough, and now he and several of his colleagues in local law enforcement want the Trump administration to end mass deportations of undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed crimes ― like Olga Perez and so many others.
Last November, Perez had the misfortune of riding in her husband’s landscaping truck along I-95 when a Florida Highway Patrol officer pulled the truck over. The officer asked all the occupants in the car for IDs and after Perez and her cousin gave him their Guatemalan identifications, the two were arrested. She is now in ICE custody in Arizona.
Perez and too many people like her are paying the price for our nation’s unwillingness to address its immigration problems and develop a true pathway to citizenship. The current zeal of mass deportations clearly isn’t working.
It’s one thing to believe and support secure borders. It’s quite another to think it’s okay that individuals can be rounded up based on skin color and culture, incarcerated and shipped out of the country.
Perez and America deserve better than that.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Olga Perez embodies the lie of Trump’s mass deportations
Reporting by Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
