http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/ICE-Detains-Northern-Virginia-Pastor-435897973.html
NBC Northern Virginia Bureau Chief Julie Carey reports:
“Faith groups around the Commonwealth are mobilizing to support a Northern Virginia pastor who may soon be deported.
Pastor Juan Gutierrez typically leads a small service of about 10 to 20 members at his home every Saturday in Dumfries, Virginia. But on Saturday, that number is expected to grow for a day-long vigil in support of his family.
Gutierrez went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office for his usual check-in in late June, when he was suddenly taken into custody.
“I say why? He do everything like the rules say,” Gutierrez’s wife Aurelia Sicha said. “I was really sure surprised. I started to cry.”
Gutierrez came to the U.S. from Peru in 2002 with a visa to play music. Sicha, who is a U.S. citizen, became pregnant and he stayed to help care for their family.
ICE is now enforcing an order of removal Gutierrez received in 2012.
“I understand my husband broke the rules of this country because he’s here without the visa, but he’s a good man. Never he do [anything] wrong. He’s a pastor. He’s a preacher. The word of God,” Sicha said.
An ICE official confirmed to News4 that Gutierrez does not have a criminal record, writing in a statement, “As DHS Secretary Kelly and Acting ICE Director Homan have stated repeatedly, ICE prioritizes the arrest and removal of national security and public safety threats; however, no class or category of alien in the United States is exempt from arrest or removal.”
The couple has a son in the U.S. Air Force and a 13-year-old daughter.”
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See Julie’s video report, which also appeared on NBC 4 locally at the link.
I have pointed out that Kelly’s once sterling reputation will end up in the trash bin unless he starts showing some backbone and standing up to the arbitrary and wasteful enforcement program espoused by the Trump White Nationalists and some (but not all) of his own agents. Good law enforcement is not just an exercise in keeping the line agents happy, any more than leading a successful military operation is just about keeping the troops happy. It’s about using limited resources wisely, humanely, and with some rational purpose in mind to achieve some legitimate strategic goal. Arbitrarily enforcing a broken and unworkable law does none of the foregoing. So far, Kelly has come up disturbingly short on almost all accounts.
PWS
07-21-17