SAN FRANCISCO — Several dozen people rallied outside the Phillip Burton Federal Building here Oct. 30 before a court hearing on the status of maintenance worker Miguel Lopez from Livermore. Lopez was deported to Mexico June 7 just hours before a judge issued a restraining order barring his expulsion from the U.S.
Protesters held a huge banner that read, “Bring home Miguel Lopez,” and were greeted by Lopez’s wife, Rosa, and other family members and teachers from the Livermore High School, where his son Julian is a student. Teachers Laura Bertoli Brown and Betsy Wilson had been instrumental in organizing a June 4 rally for Miguel Lopez while he was held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.
When Lopez’s supporters found out the court session would be a closed-circuit event, they went to the building’s cafeteria to watch on their phones. Rosa Lopez held up her phone with her husband on a video call from Mexico City, so he could thank them before the hearing began.
“I talk to Miguel several times a day,” Rosa Lopez told this Militant correspondent. “When I get discouraged, I call him and he tells me to be positive.” She said she is about to apply for public assistance for the first time, with legal expenses mounting and without her husband’s income from his maintenance job at a local winery.
U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson had issued an order restraining the federal government from deporting Lopez. She wrote that Lopez “was detained as he was actively complying with orders to check in with ICE, a requirement that he complied with for the last seventeen years. He had been attempting to gain immigration status for almost twenty years. … Plaintiff had been working and paying taxes.”
At the Oct. 30 hearing, the government’s attorney said it hadn’t decided whether to challenge the stay of removal. Another hearing is set for January.
A GoFundMe page has raised more than $64,000 to defray the legal expenses of the campaign to bring Lopez home. The link is https://www.gofundme.com/f/bring-miguel-back-to-his-loved-ones.