Detained immigrants deported to home countries

The eight men arrested on Witherspoon Street last month after a federal immigration investigation have been deported from an Elizabeth, N.J., detention facility.

Seven were sent back to their home country of Guatemala and one to Mexico, an associate working on their behalf said.

The associate, Maria Juega, the local chair of the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund, has been actively involved with the eight men and their families since the arrests.

She said the men's families remaining in the community are "not doing well" since their deportation.

The mother of Johnny Lopez, 19, who was sent back to Mexico, is feeling the effects of life without her son since his deportation.

"They are never going to understand the pain a mother feels about her son," said the woman, who asked not to be named and spoke in Spanish.

The men were arrested after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency officers were let into an apartment during their search for an illegal immigrant.

The officers were legally allowed to check the immigration status of the other men in the apartment after those residents provided false paperwork, said ICE Assistant Director for Public Relations Manny Van in an earlier interview.

"As ICE officers, we cannot turn away from the law," Van said. "We would not have to be there and take them in if they did not violate law."

Several of the Hispanic men, served with deportation notices, were ordered to leave the country. The rest chose voluntary departure because it alleviates the long process of waiting in detention through lengthy hearings, Juega said.

A local Hispanic congregation helped raised funds for airline tickets out of the country for the men who left voluntarily, she added.

She also said the men must wait 10 years to return to the U.S. legally.