Trump-Era Deportations Begin With a Married Mom of Two Who's Lived in the U.S. for Decades

At least seven protesters were arrested in Phoenix, Arizona on Wednesday night after Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, a 35-year-old mother of two American teenagers, was arrested and set for deportation in accordance with Donald Trump’s executive order expanding the definition of “criminal alien.”

The New York Times reports that Rayos, who was convicted in 2008 of using a false social security number to obtain employment—common for otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants—was allowed to stay in the U.S. after a judge issued a deportation order against her in 2013 because the Obama administration prioritized deportations of people with gang ties, who were deemed a threat to public safety, or who’d committed serious felony offenses or a series of misdemeanor crimes. Under Trump’s recent executive order, however, all undocumented immigrants convicted of or believed to have committed a criminal offense—like crossing the border illegally—are up for deportation, and the ICE has stopped granting requests for prosecutorial discretion.

Rayos has not lived in Mexico since she was 14 years old, and attended scheduled meetings with the ICE every 6 months. “We all knew something could be different this time with the new administration,” Carlos Garcia, director of the immigrant advocacy group Puente Arizona, told the Los Angeles Times. “She went in with the lawyer and didn’t come out. That was pretty much all there was.”