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As mushroom worker faces deportation, wife and children left to fend for themselves

Hever Cuac Domingo, 23, an undocumented worker from Guatemala, was arrested after a traffic stop in Chester County and is now in York Prison. Here, From their Avondale apartment, his wife, Loida, and their daughters Jendy, 7 and Esli, 20 months, have a view of the mushroom farm where their life began to unravel.
Hever Cuac Domingo, 23, an undocumented worker from Guatemala, was arrested after a traffic stop in Chester County and is now in York Prison. Here, From their Avondale apartment, his wife, Loida, and their daughters Jendy, 7 and Esli, 20 months, have a view of the mushroom farm where their life began to unravel.Read moreED HILLE / Staff Photographer

From the apartment she shared with her husband and his two brothers, Loida Marival can look across the street to the Avondale mushroom farm where her life began to fall apart.

In April, her brother-in-law Imer Cuac Domingo, 22, was arrested in an immigration raid there that netted a dozen undocumented workers, and rattled a Chester County community that hadn't seen a large workplace raid in decades.

Two weeks later, on May 12, she was on an outing with her husband, Hever Cuac Domingo, 23, and their two young daughters when Pennsylvania State Police in Lancaster County pulled them over for no apparent reason, she said.

After Hever Domingo produced his only ID, a Guatemalan consular registration card, he was told to step out of the car. For the next two hours, he was held at the side of the road. Near midnight, he was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Marival is undocumented, too, but she was allowed to remain free to take care of her children. Jendy, 7, born in Guatemala, is a second grader in the Kennett Consolidated School District. Esli, born here 20 months ago, is a U.S. citizen. After police impounded the car, Marival made arrangements with a friend to pick them up at a nearby McDonald's. Police drove her there, she said, and bought Jendy a Happy Meal.

The Domingo brothers, both facing deportation to Guatemala, are locked up in York County Prison.

Theirs is a common story of deep poverty and dangerous streets in Central America, chain migration to the United States, a mixed-status family in which one or more members is a citizen, and the wrenching consequences of a tough new enforcement policy implemented by the Trump administration, in which any immigrant without papers is a priority for removal, even if he or she has no criminal record.

Left without a breadwinner, 26-year-old Marival earns what she can babysitting at her apartment. The only public assistance she receives, she said, is a food voucher for Esli through the federal Women, Infants and Children program.

As the Trump administration intensifies its crackdown on illegal immigration, more families are feeling the heat.

On Thursday, the ICE field office in Philadelphia, which covers Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Virginia, announced it had made 186 arrests between May 15 and Wednesday.

Rather than languish for weeks awaiting court action on his case, Imer, who entered Arizona through Mexico in 2011, decided to return voluntarily to his homeland. ICE agents are holding his airplane ticket, purchased for him with funds raised privately by La Communidad Hispaña, a local social service nonprofit. ICE has said it will send him back when travel documents can be arranged.

Hever, who came to America in 2013 on the same well-worn path as his brother, is represented by lawyers at the Avondale firm Sweet & Paciorek. He wants to fight his case. But he nearly lost that chance when authorities flew him to Texas on Monday in preparation for deportation. The filing of a last-minute petition for a stay of removal brought him back to York, where the case will be litigated.

A third Domingo brother, 18-year-old Nayro, came in 2015 on the same track through Mexico, lured like his brothers by the promise of a job in the mushroom industry. He is free for the moment and living with Marival.

A poster Nayro made for a motivational course he attends shows the life he left behind and the one he dreams about.  On the left are photographs  of San Marcos, Guatemala, and the two-room shack he lived in with his parents and five siblings. On the right, under the heading "Dreams of  Pleasure," are pictures clipped from magazines of a fancy sports car, beautiful palm trees, and lavish swimming pools.

Marival knows the reality to which she will return if Hever is deported and she and the children go with him. For now, she said, she is brushing aside those thoughts and focusing instead on all that she can do to get him out of prison.

Hever's supporters say they have flooded ICE with calls and emails asking officials to exercise prosecutorial discretion and not break up the family. They plan to gather for a candlelight vigil at 7 p.m. Friday at First Baptist Church of Kennett Square.

Longtime Kennett Square resident Juan Carlos Navarro, pastor of Hispanic ministries at Faith Baptist Church in nearby Wilmington, will lead the vigil. He said he expects a turnout of about 100, but "a climate of fear" since the mushroom farm raid could curtail attendance.

Navarro said he came to know Imer as "the reliable driver" of a minivan that picked up churchgoers three times a week and brought them to First Baptist. He came to know Hever as "a dedicated family man."

Hever's supporters plan to pray, sing, and throw a media spotlight on the case.

"We do not promote illegal immigration. We are compassionate with every human being," Navarro said. "But we want to call the attention of all people to the hardship that deportation creates."