cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43460008

Abdellatif Hafraoui sits at a small dining table in the Bayonne apartment he shares with his wife, Sandra, sipping his morning coffee — a ritual unchanged over their 15 years of marriage.

Since August, however, that routine has been shadowed by months in ICE detention and the black ankle monitor now strapped around his leg.

The arrest forced Sandra to reconsider assumptions she had long held about immigration enforcement. “To think we were MAGA!,” Sandra proclaimed. The couple even attended a Trump rally in Las Vegas in 2020.

Sandra voted for Trump three times, believing enforcement would focus on people with criminal records — not individuals like her husband.

Asked what she would say to him now, she paused. “You said you were going after the worst of the worst, but instead you ruined our life,” she said.

  • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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    3 hours ago

    generally speaking, people do file the proper paperwork if it doesn’t put them at immediate risk of expulsion back to whatever they were fleeing in the first place (which is the most common outcome of applying for legal residency after “illegally” “crossing” the “border”). once you file the paperwork the usual turnaround time to get legal residency or citizenship is 10-15 years.