Latest news with #Ruano
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
As Milwaukee leaders come to her support, MPS aide may not have to leave US immediately
As members of the Milwaukee Common Council stood in the council chambers for 14 minutes on June 3 — one for each year Yessenia Ruano has lived in the United States — news broke that her imminent departure from the country could be delayed as her visa application for trafficking victims is processed. The news was the latest twist in Ruano's public effort to fight her deportation. The Milwaukee Public Schools teaching aide was ordered on May 30 by U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement to return to her home country of El Salvador. Before her self-deportation order was delayed, her flight was scheduled for the evening of June 3. Ruano, who has a pending visa application for human trafficking victims, previously said that if ICE ordered it, she'd leave the country with her daughters, who are both U.S citizens. The 14 council members who stood together flanking a photo of Ruano asked that she be able to stay in the country while her T-Visa is being processed. "It's about due process,' said council President José G. Pérez, who organized the action along with Alds. JoCasta Zamarripa and Marina Dimitrijevic. Pérez said he hoped the unanimous show of solidarity would demonstrate to Milwaukee's immigrant community that the council doesn't believe Ruano's treatment is fair. Zamarripa called Ruano the "kind of person that makes Milwaukee a better place." "She is one of millions of people who are suffering at the hands of a broken immigration system and whose American dream is now turning into a nightmare," Zamarripa said. Dimitrijevic said Ruano's case is one of many nationwide, and she hopes the council's action would point to the larger issue. "This city was built on the backs of immigrants, and that's why we stood in solidarity today, and we're not going to back down," Dimitrijevic said. The council action came one day after U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement expressing 'deep concern' over Ruano's deportation order despite her pending visa application. Calling Ruano a 'pillar in our Milwaukee community,' Moore wrote that deporting her 'will not make our country safer.' Ruano had a plane ticket out of the Chicago O'Hare airport for the evening of June 3. She was packing suitcases in the morning when she learned she may have at least a bit more time in the U.S. Ruano and her attorney, Marc Christopher, requested a 'stay,' or a pause, on her deportation after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on May 30 said she had to self-deport and return to her home country of El Salvador. The request for a stay has been received and is being considered by ICE, Ruano said. Her understanding is that she can remain in the U.S. while the request is being processed. But it was not clear how long it would take to be processed. A big caveat is that ICE is not prevented from carrying out the deportation while the request is being processed, Christopher said. Also, it was not immediately clear how much longer Ruano could stay in the U.S. if the request for a stay were granted. 'Ms. Ruano and her legal advocates remain hopeful that ICE will take into account the humanitarian gravity of her case,' Christopher said in a statement. ICE officers had said they would not wait for Ruano's open application for a trafficking victims' visa to be processed by a different immigration agency. Processing times for those visas can be two years or more. 'All we ask is that she be allowed to stay – at least until her T visa is decided – so she is not sent back into the very danger she fled,' Christopher said. Alison Dirr of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this story. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: MPS aide Yessenia Ruano learns she may get more time in US
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Yahoo
Fourteen years in America. A one-way ticket to El Salvador.
MILWAUKEE — When Yessenia Ruano walks through the door of her home after work, her husband, Miguel, is in the kitchen, shredding chicken with two forks, and her twin daughters are in the living room, playing on an iPad. The sound of 'Primer Impacto' fills the background. Ruano opens the fridge to keep the dinner prep going. On the top shelf, there are more than 150 corn tortillas lying flat in their plastic bags. On the bar counter, near unopened mail and trinkets, is a pack of zinnia seeds waiting for the last frost to pass before Yessenia and the girls plant them in the patio across the driveway. This doesn't look like the home of a family on the verge of being uprooted, until Ruano and her husband — one rolling chicken into tortillas over hot oil, the other tending to a pile of dishes on the sink — start talking about the questions suddenly pressing on their everyday lives. In February, during a check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agent told Ruano that the government would accelerate plans to deport her. Save for a change in her immigration status, the agent said, she should report back to ICE in two months with a plane ticket back to El Salvador set for 50 days out. It's April now; her next appointment with ICE is coming up in just a few weeks. 'She said I should buy just one plane ticket,' Ruano, 38, tells her husband, recalling a conversation with a colleague at the local public school where she works. Her colleague reasoned that if Ruano bought a fare for everyone in the family and her deportation was averted, they'd be throwing a lot of money in the trash. 'I've always thought we should buy four tickets,' Miguel tells her, hunched over the sink. A few months ago, Ruano went on a ladies' retreat with her church for two nights and left him and their two children to fend for themselves. The girls cried and cried and barely slept. Their dog, a fluffy, white Bichon Frisé who was named Snowflake before the family adopted him, and is now named Copito — short for snowflake in Spanish — barely ate. Ruano agrees that the family should stay together, but most days, she's convinced they'll never use any of the plane tickets in question. Ruano, for 14 years, has clung onto hope that the immigration powers that be will eventually see that she belongs in the United States. She has checked in with ICE 17 times, worn a GPS monitor. She's also built the life she shares with her husband and their Milwaukee-born daughters, a job at a local school and volunteer work at her local Catholic parish. Through it all, she has searched for ways to create roots in the United States. Recently, she petitioned for a visa created for human trafficking victims, based on her experience of forced labor when she first entered the country. That petition is stuck in the growing backlog at the agency that handles visa applications, one that has accelerated since the start of the Trump administration. 'Of course, practically speaking, they can do whatever they want,' Ruano says. 'If they're a little human, then I can prove I belong here. If they just care about detaining people to meet a certain quota and deport them — if I'm just another number — then I can already hear them saying, 'Ma'am, I don't care about your case. We're so sorry, but we're going to send you back to your country.'' Ruano is among the millions of immigrants living in the United States who are facing deportation as the Trump administration ramps up the removal of people with no permanent immigration status. That includes immigrants who, like Ruano, have been in the country for more than a decade and have no criminal record, and whose ties to the country include young children — some of them U.S. citizens — and also careers and community. Ruano's precarious situation isn't entirely the product of Trump-era policies. Like millions of immigrants living in the United States, she entered the country at the southern border, lured by the promise of safety and stability. Like thousands of others, she asked for asylum and was allowed to stay as she waited for a resolution on her petition, as long as she followed the law. Even after her petition was unsuccessful, the U.S. government allowed her to remain in the country provided that she checked in regularly with immigration officials. Under the United States' broken immigration system, one in which laws that haven't been updated in decades no longer align with the reality of immigration patterns, the country's reliance on the immigrant labor force or even the government's ability to enforce such laws, immigrants like Ruano have always lived at the discretion — at the whim — of whoever is in power, from the president down to the ICE officer who is looking at their case that day. When President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January, that dynamic changed again, fueled by an agenda that seems to be taking shape day by day. Ruano remains in this limbo, bracing for her life to be upended while fighting for a different outcome. She follows the countless news stories about people who are in ICE detention, or who have been swiftly deported back to their home countries. Hundreds of thousands more are living just like her, navigating the shifting sands of American immigration policy. Ruano's day usually starts early, and by 6:15 a.m., her daughters Paola and Eli, 9, are in the dining room, ready for their mom to brush their hair. Back in El Salvador, Ruano didn't think she would ever have children. The world seemed dangerous and broken, and life was expensive. 'With the cost of living, I always thought, how?' she said one morning while brushing Eli's hair and finishing it with a braid. Ruano and her husband went to high school together in El Salvador and reconnected again in Milwaukee at the frozen pizza manufacturing plant where they both worked. Eventually, they started dreaming of growing their family. Soon there were four of them. Juggling two babies was hard, but they both landed steady work and were able to buy the duplex they live in, an older home they've improved slowly. Here, they are watching Eli and Paola thrive. Eli loves art. She loves to take clay-like dirt from the backyard and shape it. In their living room, Ruano points to a little bowl made of coiled clay, brown and crumbly and beautiful. A bucket holds dozens of small figurines made with air-dry clay, detailed and complex. Paola is much more interested in building with Legos, and Ruano says proudly that she is ahead of her peers in math. Barely older than her sister, Paola has also taken on a caretaking role in the family that Ruano says came to her naturally. Ruano's daughters have been learning the violin and the viola. They've been debating whether to keep going with the string instruments or move on to another extracurricular activity. 'All of those special skills and talents, we can't really tend to them in my country,' Ruano said. 'It's like they're trying to rip away my dreams, and also those of my two girls.' Eli and Paola are U.S. citizens. Their lives would be significantly different in El Salvador, where economic opportunity, gender-based violence and more could alter the course of their lives. Their father, Miguel, has no legal immigration status. The 19th is not publishing his last name to protect his privacy and employment. Both times Ruano has appeared before ICE this year, agents have alluded to her daughters. During her February appointment, the agent said Ruano should buy plane tickets for her girls as well because she 'would hate to see the family separated,' Ruano recalls. During her April appointment, Ruano's lawyer at the time recalled that the agent scanned Ruano's plane ticket and asked why she hadn't bought plane tickets for the girls. Ruano has spent time talking to each daughter about the different possibilities ahead for their family, including a new life in El Salvador. 'I tried to focus on the positive things, things I liked as a girl,' Ruano said. Ruano explained that the school day in El Salvador would be shorter — the country has one of the shortest school weeks in the world. There would be more time for play. 'I told them that they'd see mango trees, orange trees,' Ruano said. 'Things we don't have here.' They'd still get to sleep next to each other, as they do in Milwaukee. Ruano has a trove of files documenting her immigration journey in the United States, but one piece of paper worn thin from years of use tracks every check-in she's had with ICE since she entered the United States from Mexico in 2011. At the time, Ruano petitioned for the only form of relief she was told she was eligible for, a form of asylum called 'withholding of removal,' which requires immigrants to prove that there is at least a 51 percent likelihood of suffering persecution in their home country. When her case finally came up for review a decade later, a judge told Ruano that her petition would be denied and said Ruano could withdraw it to avoid having the denial on her record. During the hearing, the judge told Ruano through her then-lawyer that the U.S. government wasn't actively deporting people like her, who had no criminal record. She could explore other avenues for legal status. By 2024, she was running out of alternatives and time. ICE placed her in a monitoring program called Alternatives to Detention, or ATD, and told that her deadline to file for a different path to legal status was near. ICE advertises the ATD program as having been designed for immigrants who were 'thoroughly vetted' and deemed not a risk to public safety. To enroll someone in the program, ICE officers consider their ties to the community and status as a caregiver or provider. Ruano checked all of the boxes. Ruano's participation in the program left a mark: she has a band of pale skin around her wrist, where ICE secured a GPS device. The device tracked her location, had facial-recognition software for regular check-ins with ICE, and had messaging capabilities between the agency and Ruano; 'Please call your officer' was a regular prompt. Ruano could swap the batteries to make sure the wrist monitor was powered at all times. Sometimes the backup battery wouldn't work, so she was left to plug the monitor — still attached to her wrist — directly into a wall outlet. When it became loose and couldn't read her pulse, it would blare loudly. 'I would be in the classroom with kids, trying to fix it,' Ruano said. At home, Ruano pored over the internet and eventually found a firm in Chicago that helped her file for a T visa as a victim of human trafficking. The application was almost complete when Ruano was asked to report to ICE for a check-in on Valentine's Day. Ruano's lawyer at the time told her that she feared there was a better-than-90 percent chance she would be detained. Ruano felt that the time she was promised to finish her application had been suddenly taken away. She spent most of the week of the appointment working furiously to make sure her T visa application was in the hands of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, that her personal documents were in order, that there was a care plan for the girls beyond Miguel. She did all of that while juggling calls with reporters and advocates from Voces De La Frontera, the local immigrant advocacy group supporting her. She watched herself get to the brink of an emotional breakdown. The voice inside her head begged for surrender: 'I'm done. I can't keep going. I'll go back to my country and start over, from zero. The fight is over.' It's a shift from her default, a hope and belief that things will work out. 'It's been 14 years and I've suffered a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety. Every week before one of my hearings with a judge or a check in with ICE, those are nights of no sleep,' Ruano said. 'I'll wake up at one in the morning needing to vomit.' She's had 17 appointments over that time span, and 17 sleepless weeks. Unlike many immigrants without authorization to permanently live in the country, Ruano has not and does not live in the shadows. The U.S. government knows exactly who she is, where she lives, where she works. Ruano said she was not — and is not —willing to defy a deportation order. 'It wouldn't be worth it,' she said. 'I would rather go back to my country, whatever may happen there. Because when I think about living in the shadows, not being able to use my real name, never being at peace … I don't want to live in hiding, waiting for the day they knock on my door.' At the bilingual public school where she teaches, in Milwaukee's heavily Hispanic South Side, the chaos of Ruano's immigration limbo dials down. 'I feel like I'm in my own world,' Ruano said. 'My problems stay back home.' When she walks into a classroom full of kindergarteners, she tells herself, 'Vamos a echarle ganas a este dia.' Let's do this. It's an easy place for her mind to wander to the version of the future she has dreamed for herself. She's an assistant teacher supporting the youngest learners with the most challenging needs. 'I'm always thinking about getting my teaching license,' Ruano said, 'so I can have my own classroom.' Milwaukee has for years struggled with a shortage of teachers, falling victim to the nationwide teacher shortage. The district's superintendent announced recently that the next school year would start with 80 vacant teaching positions, and that's with a recent decision to thin the district's central office by moving more than a fifth of its administrative staffers with teaching certifications into classroom positions. In El Salvador, Ruano graduated from high school and worked her way through college to become an upper-grade teacher. She looked for work in education and wound up cleaning houses instead, joining other teachers with training but no place in the workforce. 'You just end up having to do other work,' Ruano said. 'I got here and saw that there's so much opportunity. Here, they need teachers.' Ruano's workday begins outside the school, where her job is to welcome kids getting dropped off by their parents. On a frigid April day — she does this same job on frigid January days, too, just with extra gear — most of the interactions are quick hellos and good mornings. One little boy in a Minecraft backpack is refusing to walk in. He's sad, and he's asking for his mom. Ruano leans down to chat with him for a minute, a hand on his shoulder, a warm smile beaming. Eventually, he decides to go inside. Ruano's job at this public school has anchored her firmly in this community. As part of Ruano's public plea to immigration officials, teachers and parents from her school have written letters about the value she brings to her community. One parent wrote that their child had been upset for days, worried about the fate of his favorite teacher. Ruano read one of these letters during a news conference before she walked into her February check-in, surrounded by TV cameras and supporters from Voces de La Frontera. Within 48 hours, they collected 2,800 signatures in an online petition supporting Ruano. When Ruano walked out of the courthouse that day, she went to the school to drop off her girls. Students filled the hallways and stairwells, erupting in cheers, relieved that she had not been detained. 'What was really sweet was that she led them in singing our school song. They're usually quiet and shy when we sing it during our school assemblies. That day they were not,' said Brenda Martinez, who helped found the school and acts as its principal. Martinez has been worried about Ruano's case and said the school can't afford to lose her. 'She has a lot of patience to work with the littlest learners. That's who she is,' Martinez said. 'To lose her is like losing a member of our family.' One of the most remarkable aspects of Ruano's journey, she'll say herself, is her own outlook in the face of so much upheaval. 'La esperanza no se me quita,' Ruano said. For the most part, she can't shake the hope that someday, things will inevitably work out. When she reached a point of desperation earlier in the year, she said the thought that pulled her out was a Bible verse she'd memorized. 'I could hear Joshua 1:9 in my head: 'Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.'' Ruano and her family are devout Catholics and also involved with a local Evangelical church. Faith runs through their lives, though the urgency with which Ruano prays lately is new. During a recent Spanish-language Mass at the parish the family attends, — the large hall filled quickly to capacity — the Rev. Javier Bustos opened the service with a prayer that asked God for 'justice for the nation's immigrants.' Bustos said in an interview that since the start of the Trump administration, fear has become palpable in his community, and Ruano's family is just one of the many whom he prays for. In many ways, Ruano's journey to the United States is not unique. She watched violence escalate in El Salvador, and grieved when her brother was kidnapped and later murdered. Her fear for her safety, combined with economic uncertainty, made a future in her home country look grim. Her first attempt to enter the United States resulted in her immediate removal. She tried again less than a year later, paying a group of coyotes to guide her way into the country safely. Once in the United States, Ruano said, she became trapped in a filthy home and forced to work for her captors. She was eventually released after they extorted more money from her family back home. This forms the basis for her claim for a T visa, which requires her cooperation with law enforcement. Bustos, Ruano's priest, said in an interview that every immigrant's story is different, but that losing closely-knit members of this church community feels the same: 'Like losing an arm, or a limb.' Ruano is an active member of the church's prayer group and volunteers during Mass. This Sunday, she was tasked with a Bible reading in front of the several hundred gathered, including her husband and daughters, who smiled watching her walk up to the lectern. Later, she attended a training for members hoping to work with young children, focused on keeping them safe. Ruano is part of a group of members who has committed nearly every Saturday for the next two years to walking a group of children through an intense curriculum in the Catholic faith, up to their First Communion. Ruano already started the rigorous curriculum with her group of students. She hopes to be around to watch them reach the rite of passage. There's a single Salvadoran restaurant in Milwaukee. Its owner, Concepcion Arias, says business has changed since Trump was elected. Fewer customers are coming through the doors, and even some of the regulars are asking for their meals to go. 'People don't want to be out and about,' she said. But Ruano and her family are here on a Sunday after church, one of their regular spots for a meal after Mass. Paola orders a plate of fries with ketchup, while Eli goes for traditional pupusas. On the cover of the menu is a picture of a beach in El Salvador. 'That's where my uncle lives,' Ruano says. The girls glance at the small photo of the sunny tropical landscape. When Ruano was a teenager, she moved to this coastal town to work at her uncle's hotel, a job that helped her pay for school. The girls agree the beach looks beautiful, but then Paola chimes in: 'I'm really scared I'm going to die on a plane.' She's thinking about the prospect of ever traveling to El Salvador, a place she only knows through her parents' stories. Little moments like this one remind all four that the threat of removal hangs heavily over their lives. When lunch is over, the family heads back home, and then Miguel goes out to meet with a contractor. Their home's roof is overdue for a replacement — one of dozens of to dos that are suddenly urgent. Miguel is worried about leaving their home in less than good shape if Yessenia is removed to El Salvador. Under the Biden administration, a pending T visa application would typically halt removal proceedings, but that guarantee no longer exists under the Trump administration. At the end of the Biden administration, the wait time for USCIS to confirm it had received a visa application averaged about four weeks. On the day of Ruano's February check in with ICE, the Trump administration fired 50 employees from USCIS. Within a few weeks, immigration lawyers were reporting that the wait time for visa application receipts had started to grow. When Ruano called USCIS to check on her case in early April, an agent said the average wait time was 10 weeks. When she checked in with USCIS in early May, they told her the wait had grown to four months. Her lawyer, Marc Christopher, who has spent years working on immigration cases in the Milwaukee area, said he's not sure why ICE hasn't fast-tracked her deportation, but that in a multi-tiered system where so much is up to discretion, it's not clear who will have the final say on her case. She is due back for another appointment with ICE at the end of May. In an interview Tuesday, Ruano said she remains hopeful. She's also started to sell household items they no longer use on Facebook Marketplace, a small step toward resignation. She hasn't bought flights for her husband or daughters and hopes she won't have to. The zinnia seeds are now one-inch sprouts. Ruano's daughters will turn 10 in early June. This year, they're most looking forward to celebrating their birthday at school, with cupcakes in class, surrounded by their friends, their mom nearby. Ruano's flight is scheduled to leave the United States the next day. The post Fourteen years in America. A one-way ticket to El Salvador. appeared first on The 19th. News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday. Subscribe to our free, daily newsletter.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Corporate box owners in Mexico are still uncertain about their properties for the 2026 World Cup
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A corporate box owner at the iconic Azteca stadium filed a complaint with Mexico's consumer protection agency Tuesday seeking clarity over his use of the seating for the 2026 World Cup. The stadium, recently renamed Banorte ahead of next year's tournament, has been closed for renovations since May of last year. FIFA wants full control of the World Cup stadiums from 30 days before the first match until seven days after the last. It's unclear what that means for the owners of the luxury seating. 'The consumer wants to know if his rights to use his box during the World Cup are going to be upheld,' said Angel Diego, a lawyer representing one of the luxury box owners who asked to remain anonymous. 'We are inviting the company that owns the stadium to express clearly what their intentions are.' The history of how the boxes were purchased makes things complicated. To help finance the construction of the stadium in the 1960s, Mexican businessman Emilio Azcárraga Milmo sold luxury boxes to private investors for 115,000 pesos, or about $9,000 at the time, giving the owners' rights to use them for 99 years. That included access to soccer matches, concerts and other events, including the 1970 and 1986 World Cups in Mexico. But for the 2026 World Cup, the stadium owners are asking the luxury box owners to relinquish their access. 'There is only one solution and that is that they respect our contract. The World Cup is 408 days ahead. We have plenty of time to work this out,' said Roberto Ruano, a spokesman for the association of 134 box owners. 'It is not a request; we have the right to use them.' The 83,000-seat stadium will host five games during the 2026 World Cup, including the tournament opener. The owners of the stadium, a company related to Televisa, Mexico's largest television network, have released images of work done on the pitch and the lower seats, but the corporate boxes apparently haven't been touched. Ruano, whose father bought the title for a luxury box, said the box owners have been talking with stadium officials for about a year but haven't reached a resolution. 'For the moment we are not going to do anything because we are still in amicable discussions with the stadium and we do not want to break them,' Ruano added. 'The doors are open, the dialog has not been interrupted." Last week, stadium officials said that a solution to the conflict was close, but didn't provide more specifics. Ruano says that some box owners outside of his association have agreed to release their seats for the 2026 tournament in exchange for upgrades and other benefits, including tickets, but he doesn't want that. 'My box belongs to me, we have a designated space already and that is what we want,' Ruano said. 'We are going to give them more time to try to fix this before doing something else.' ___ AP soccer:
Associated Press
29-04-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Corporate box owners in Mexico are still uncertain about their properties for the 2026 World Cup
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A corporate box owner at the iconic Azteca stadium filed a complaint with Mexico's consumer protection agency Tuesday seeking clarity over his use of the seating for the 2026 World Cup. The stadium, recently renamed Banorte ahead of next year's tournament, has been closed for renovations since May of last year. FIFA wants full control of the World Cup stadiums from 30 days before the first match until seven days after the last. It's unclear what that means for the owners of the luxury seating. 'The consumer wants to know if his rights to use his box during the World Cup are going to be upheld,' said Angel Diego, a lawyer representing one of the luxury box owners who asked to remain anonymous. 'We are inviting the company that owns the stadium to express clearly what their intentions are.' The history of how the boxes were purchased makes things complicated. To help finance the construction of the stadium in the 1960s, Mexican businessman Emilio Azcárraga Milmo sold luxury boxes to private investors for 115,000 pesos, or about $9,000 at the time, giving the owners' rights to use them for 99 years. That included access to soccer matches, concerts and other events, including the 1970 and 1986 World Cups in Mexico. But for the 2026 World Cup, the stadium owners are asking the luxury box owners to relinquish their access. 'There is only one solution and that is that they respect our contract. The World Cup is 408 days ahead. We have plenty of time to work this out,' said Roberto Ruano, a spokesman for the association of 134 box owners. 'It is not a request; we have the right to use them.' The 83,000-seat stadium will host five games during the 2026 World Cup, including the tournament opener. The owners of the stadium, a company related to Televisa, Mexico's largest television network, have released images of work done on the pitch and the lower seats, but the corporate boxes apparently haven't been touched. Ruano, whose father bought the title for a luxury box, said the box owners have been talking with stadium officials for about a year but haven't reached a resolution. 'For the moment we are not going to do anything because we are still in amicable discussions with the stadium and we do not want to break them,' Ruano added. 'The doors are open, the dialog has not been interrupted.' Last week, stadium officials said that a solution to the conflict was close, but didn't provide more specifics. Ruano says that some box owners outside of his association have agreed to release their seats for the 2026 tournament in exchange for upgrades and other benefits, including tickets, but he doesn't want that. 'My box belongs to me, we have a designated space already and that is what we want,' Ruano said. 'We are going to give them more time to try to fix this before doing something else.' ___ AP soccer:
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
It was heartening to read about Milwaukee teacher's aide avoiding deportation
It was heartening to hear about the teacher's aide, Yessenia Ruano, getting more time for her T visa to be considered. Otherwise, it seemed like some monster rule giver was about to deport her and her twin daughters after being our United States neighbor for 14 years. Who are these fire-breathing demonic monsters who ruin folk's lives? I swear, had it not been for a front page picture and lead article, Ruano and her dear ones would be yet another victim of rules that need tweaking. Opinion: Worst atrocities of the past began with mass deportations. Is history repeating? More: Backlash to Musk isn't imagined. When they slash Medicaid it will be worse. | Opinion The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a 'whisperer,' keeping the monster from doing more harm. Someone in the Trump administration must read the Journal Sentinel articles, and I hope it has an effect. Frank Mulvey, Milwaukee Here are some tips to get your views shared with your friends, family, neighbors and across our state: Please include your name, street address and daytime phone. Generally, we limit letters to 200 words. Cite sources of where you found information or the article that prompted your letter. Be civil and constructive, especially when criticizing. Avoid ad hominem attacks, take issue with a position, not a person. We cannot acknowledge receipt of submissions. We don't publish poetry, anonymous or open letters. Each writer is limited to one published letter every two months. All letters are subject to editing. Write: Letters to the editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 330 E. Kilbourn Avenue, Suite 500, Milwaukee, WI, 53202. Fax: (414)-223-5444. E-mail: jsedit@ or submit using the form that can be found on the on the bottom of this page. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Front page story helped Milwaukee woman avoid ICE deportation | Letters
