A Chicago couple separated by Midway Blitz is determined to reunite

Alexander Villeda has spent the past three and a half months in an immigration detention center in Michigan, thousands of miles away from his new bride, Alexa Ramírez, who was deported back to Mexico.

Since their arrest last October, Villeda has been holding out hope that he might be released on bond. That would give him enough time to pack up his life in Chicago and reunite with his wife in Mexico — rather than be deported to his native El Salvador.

But last week, a judge ordered Villeda’s removal from the United States. That’s despite his name being included in a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration that alleged immigration agents had been arresting people without warrants or probable cause — in violation of a settlement agreement that restricts the ability of federal agents to make such arrests in Illinois and nearby states. That case has been moving slowly through the courts.

“God blessed me with a beautiful wife,” Villeda says in Spanish. “All I did was work honestly to build a future for myself and my [family], but the United States government treats us like criminals.”

Villeda and Ramírez didn’t have legal status in the United States, but they also didn't have criminal records. WBEZ is using a variation of Ramírez and Villeda’s full names to protect their safety.

The newlyweds were abruptly separated last fall by federal immigration officials during Operation Midway Blitz, just eight days after they got married. They were arrested outside the popular Swap-O-Rama market in the Back of the Yards neighborhood and taken to the immigration processing facility in suburban Broadview. Ramírez says there was little food or water there, and she was unable to shower. She signed a form to voluntarily self-deport and was sent back to Mexico. Villeda was transferred to the Calhoun County Correctional Center in Battle Creek, Michigan.

The separation has been tough.

“Three months have already passed since this whole situation started, and it hasn't been easy,” Ramírez says in Spanish. “Everything just seems to be stagnant.”

They hoped the stress would be over soon and they could be back together. Instead, Villeda will remain in detention until he’s likely flown back to El Salvador sometime in the next 30 days.

“If [the judge had] told me, ‘We'll give you three months to leave the country, but you can take the things you earned with your own hard work,’ that would have been ideal,” Villeda says.

Villeda’s removal was granted as a voluntary departure, his attorney Margeret O'Donoghue explains. She says voluntary departure is like a deportation, but it means Villeda won’t have an order of deportation on his record. That could make it easier for him to qualify for certain U.S. visa programs in the future.

Last year, when O'Donoghue confirmed that Villeda’s case was part of the federal lawsuit, she saw an opportunity to try to fight his removal. But ever since the case landed in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, she says, "It’s moving too slow."

“It just didn't work out timing wise,” she says. “Not that the attorneys aren't doing everything they can. But I do see a difference in this Trump administration with the courts.”

She and other attorneys say many people who were arrested in violation of the consent decree have been deported without any resolution to their cases, and that includes people with children and dependents in the United States who could face greater hardships without their relatives.

Planning for a future together

Back in Mexico, in the rural mountains of the Sierra Mixteca region of Oaxaca, Ramírez is impatiently waiting for Villeda to be released. She worries about everything they still need to figure out before finally starting their married life together.

The process to petition Villeda as a legal permanent resident in Mexico could take as long as five months, she says, adding that she can’t get that started until Villeda has an exact departure date.

“I feel terrible knowing that he's locked up for so long, deprived of his freedom,” she says.

Regardless of the timeline, she is making plans to travel to El Salvador once he leaves the United States so she can be there when he arrives.

She is ready to put this painful experience behind them.

Meanwhile, Villeda says now that he knows he’ll be removed, he’s counting the days until he sees his wife.

“Being free would allow me to take action and start making my way to her,” Villeda says. He adds that although he lived in an urban area in El Salvador and has never worked the land or done the type of subsistence farming that Ramírez family has relied on for decades, he is looking forward to a new start in rural Mexico.

“It would be a new challenge for me, and I am ready,” he says. “I had to learn many skills when I was in the U.S. — jobs that I’d never done. I worked in construction, restaurants, transportation and now I am ready to learn how to farm the land.”