A California family, fearful of immigration raids, has decided to pick up their lives and leave the United States, the family told ABC News.
The family of five from Chula Vista, California, packed up and departed from the U.S. on Feb. 7 due to the recent raids across the country by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the family said.
One member of the family, 29-year-old Anna, said the family was barely leaving their apartment before making the call to return to Mexico.
“We were in constant fear and anxiety,” Anna told San Diego ABC News affiliate KGTV. “It got to a point where we couldn’t eat or sleep.”
Her family’s fears come amid President Donald Trump’s recent immigration crackdown, with thousands of deportations occurring across the country since his inauguration. According to a post on X by ICE, the agency arrested 8,276 people between Jan. 22 and Jan. 31 and have issued 6,577 “detainers lodged” — people arrested that according to ICE has probable cause for deportation.
“All illegal entry will immediately be halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said during his inaugural address.
Trump has also signed several executive orders impacting immigration, including declaring a national emergency at the southern border and ending birthright citizenship.
Anna told KGTV her parents immigrated from Mexico to San Diego in 1997 when she was a child. Originally, her father had received an E-2 visa from a restaurant, but when the establishment’s investors and shareholders dismantled the group, Anna said the family was unable to apply for a visa renewal. Thus, the visa expired, and they didn’t have a sponsorship. Nevertheless, the family decided to remain in the San Diego area.
Even though Anna is a “dreamer”, an undocumented immigrant who came to the U.S. as a child that provides some protection, and her sisters, ages 20 and 17, were born in the U.S. and are citizens, she said she is concerned about her parents caught in the middle of an ICE raid.
“My biggest fear was to hear that my dad got picked up in one of the ICE raids or that my mom got picked up because she was walking to the corner store,” Anna told KGTV.
Anna told the outlet that if her parents were tangled up with ICE in a potential raid, they would “not have a pathway to citizenship”
“The safest way at this point [is] to start the paperwork from outside the country,” Anna said.
Anna told ABC News she thought she would be able to have a pathway toward American citizenship by “following the paperwork and doing everything right,” but the new changes under the Trump administration have made it a much more difficult path.
“Leaving a country that has been my home country for the past 30 years felt surreal,” Anna told ABC News. “It felt like I had nowhere to turn.”
She said her “whole life was San Diego” and suddenly leaving felt like “the rug was pulled from under your feet,” especially when she and her family have been law-abiding citizens.
“We did enter this country legally, we did the procedures, my parents paid thousands of dollars in order to stay in the U.S.,” Anna said. “If the laws were realistic for people to actually have a pathway toward citizenship, we wouldn’t have to go through this.”
The family is currently at a friend’s home near Ensenada, Mexico, but is slowly trying to make their way to Mexico City, despite low funds and no employment, according to Anna.
When asked what the future for her family will look like, Anna said, “It’s like looking in soapy water,” she told KGTV. “There’s something there, but you don’t know how you will be able to achieve that.”
The family said it has kept their full identity hidden for safety concerns.
The post ‘Constant fear and anxiety’: Family says it left US over ICE raid fears appeared first on ABC News.
