Laws Shmaws & my trip to the ER

Last week Jose had court for his immigration case.  It could have gone two ways. Either the judge was going to grant yet another extension or he was going to deny it and have us enter a plea.  Thankfully he granted the extension based on the petition the other attorney submitted.  Jose has a "conviction" from six years ago, even though it's not a conviction under Illinois law it sure hells is under immigration law and would bar him from returning to the U.S. for life.  So we are trying to vacate that conviction.

Today we went to Illinois criminal court to try and get the judge to look at our case and get the ball rolling to vacate the case.  There ar laws in place that allow for this...I don't know what they are, what matters is that the attorneys do, anyway we stood in front of the judge this morning to make our case.  Mr. Little B, John & myself.  We were confident, we were within the bounds of the law, nothing fishy going on, we were asking that is within Illinois law, the law was on our side and the judge totally shot us down.  John made our case, our family is being torn apart, the consequence is hugely disporportionate to the conviction and his response was "You can appeal the decision but I'm not gonna do it".  John argued, and by argued I mean ARGUED, we were within legal right of the law. I haven't gotten the transcript yet but the judge said something a kin to he was not there follow the law. John argued some more saying something like "hellllooo we're in court, what else are we supposed to be doing?". I'll update this post with the real quotes once I get the transcripts.  We were dismissed. "You can say what you want but you will not change my mind" said the judge.  Honestly, I thought John was going to be held in contempt.  As a matter of fact, he was prepared with someone to get him out if he were to have gotten himself arrested in court.  What do we do now? I'm not sure, but when John and Mr. Little B were talking they were mustering up another plan.  Hopefully this one will have positive results.

For the last several days I've had this tightening pain in my chest.  Today I was sent to the ER by my doctors office to get checked out.  Thankfully everything checked out ok. The whole time while I was half naked in a hospital gown I kept thinking how Jose should be there with me. The tears just flowed as the nurse asked me if I had problems at home, why I was stressed, if everything is ok. I told her Jose was being deported, she said "that's stressful" and that was that.  All the tests came back good and I was free to go. The sick part was that I hoped something was wrong with me, maybe it would help Jose come home.

4 months and counting

It's been 4 months since Jose was arrested.  He had court on the first of the month, it was continued to next month.  We are still praying for  miracle.  He was actually brought into court this time so I brought Cairo with me so they could see each other.  The attorney spoke to someone who allowed us to see him in the "visiting room", which is no different than a prison visiting room, complete with phones to talk through and glass dividers.

When we walked in, Jose was there waiting for us.  When Cairo saw him he stood stunned, not knowing what to do with himself.  He refused to speak and at one point refused to even look at Jose.  His nervousness kicked in and started tearing at his already practically bleeding nails.  This is a new habit he's developed in the last few weeks. Both my mom and my sister-in-law were there, we were all crying our eyes out.  It had been 4 months since Cairo and Jose had seen each other.  Finally Cairo felt comfortable enough to talk to his father, at that point we couldn't get him off the phone.  It was a bitter sweet moment.  Then the time came to be in the court room and Cairo behaved like a little gentleman but the look on his face when he saw his father handcuffed hurt me to the core.  Why did they have to hand cuff him? He has no history of violence not to mention all the armed officers he'd run into, if he dare make a break for it.  It all just seemed so exaggerated.  Plus we couldn't even hug him, give him a kiss on the cheek...he was less then 6 feet away from us and Cairo was not allowed to hug his daddy.

Throughout hearing they kept making googly eyes at each other, smiled  and blew each other kisses.  Then it was time to say good-bye....in that cold, spirit killing visiting room.  Jose would be driven back, 6 hrs to the detention center and we would be on the train back home with out him.