Idaho (ABC4) — Cenobio Feliciano-Galeana came to the U.S. illegally when he was 18 years old. 18 years since he’s found a life, a wife, and now four children. But after seeing the deportations taking place across the country, he has decided to self-deport back to his home country of Mexico.

Ashlee, Cenobio’s wife, says she and the family are coming with him. At the end of the year, she plans move with her four children to a country they have never known, just to keep the family together.

Since they began their relationship, Ashlee says she and her family have been trying to get Cenobio through the process to gain status in the U.S., with no luck. Several lawyers and thousands of dollars later, she says not even being married to a U.S. citizen helps Cenobio’s cause. She details, “If I had a penny for every time somebody has said that, I’d have the money to pay for those lawyers.”

She says the lawyers initially told them they had a fifty-fifty chance. After the Trump administration was sworn in, she says she was told they had no chance. Their options were to stay and risk it or have Cenobio self-deport and try again in 10 years. Ashlee explains, “We have a six-year-old down to a nine-month-old baby. Ten years without a father? That is huge.”

For her, moving with him is her only option. Staying wasn’t something she was willing to do. She says, “Wait for one day them to come into my home and take my husband away like a criminal and have my kids have to see that. And I decided that was not a choice I was willing to live with.”

Ashlee says Cenobio never committed a crime. His name doesn’t bring anything up in the Utah court system. His only crime was being caught at the border twice and crossing illegally.
That itself is a crime; one that Ashlee acknowledges but doesn’t believe it means he should never get a chance.

She says, “He was born on the wrong side of a line. He came here because he was starving. You know, what would you do if he were truly went days without eating, starving? Where would your desperation lead you?”

So now, Ashlee and the kids pack up their things for a country they don’t know, wondering if they can ever come home again as a complete family. She hopes stories like hers inspires change so that a path to having status in the U.S. is attainable for people like her husband.