Keep Our Dad Home: Help Us Fight Our Immigration Case

Hi everyone, I’m creating this fundraiser for a family dear to my heart that is unable to publicly speak out against this tragedy due to safety reasons. Please take a moment to read the story from one of the family members and consider donating. We are grateful for any amount of support you can give! All donations go directly to the family to be used for legal representation and court fees. -Chenda

Last Wednesday, I was checking my dad’s location and unexpectedly found him in a new location. After searching the new location, I learned that he was in immigration court. My phone calls to him went unanswered and so I called his workplace. They had notified me that there was an ICE raid where my dad and 6 other men were taken, none of the families were contacted, and they had no way to reach them. In shock and panic, I left work, gathered my immediate family members, and started looking for help anywhere we could. We contacted countless lawyers, researched what we could do, and even drove to the location that I saw him at. While they didn’t allow us to talk to him, they had told us that he would be able to call us later.

As we waited anxiously for his call, our family was finally able to get a hold of a lawyer. With legal support, we have a chance to bring our dad home. Unfortunately, the financial cost of having an attorney has been a huge burden on our family. As a person who has always been taught to work hard and be self-sufficient, it pains me to have to ask for help. But we just want our dad back home with us.

He’s always been the person our family can count on, always offering to help us in any way he can, and never asking for anything in return. From a young age, he was forced to work in order to survive. He came to the U.S. for a better life, to provide our family with more opportunities. My dad is the type to get up early to work and stay late, even missing some big milestones in my siblings and my own life in order to work. As much as it sucked in the moment, we all knew he was only working so hard for our family’s well being. That’s partly the reason why he risked his life still working at a place he knew could report him to ICE because not working was never an option for him.

So much has changed in the past few days with him gone. He’s usually the one making us all laugh and since he was taken our home has become a place of uncertainty and stillness. Our mom doesn’t sleep, my littlest brother has been on edge, and I haven’t been able to focus on anything else. My dad’s birthday was two days before he was taken. We planned to celebrate his birthday with the beautiful weather and his favorites at a barbeque the following weekend but little did we know. My dad and I have a unique relationship, we’ve never been really emotional people, and have always been described as twins. He’s always felt like a friend and a dad. We often would get dinner late together since he would work late and I would be busy with my studies. We would just eat together and talk about anything. Our quality time together isn’t anything outside of the ordinary but we never needed anything more than just us for precious moments together.

We desperately want our dad back, it doesn’t feel like home without him and we can’t stand that he is apart from us. As much as we hate to ask for help, anything helps and we would be very appreciative.

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Additional Details for GoFundMe Guidelines:

I'm creating this fundraiser for my close friend and her family, The Reyes Family. Due to safety concerns to keep her and her family's identity safe, my friend is unable to hold his fundraiser under her name or become a beneficiary publicly. I plan to immediately transfer (through Venmo) all of the funds raised from here to my close friend as she is managing the legal fees for her dad's case.