This year she was deported to Tijuana, she lives the pandemic far from her family and in the uncertainty of knowing if her son, an Army lieutenant, will be sent abroad.
Rocío Rebollar Gómez, mother of a US Army intelligence lieutenant who was deported this year to Tijuana, Mexico, is saddened to spend Mother's Day – the first day in decades – away from her children and grandchildren.
"For the first time in almost 32 years I will be away from them," he tells La Opinion.
The 51-year-old woman thinks that since she was expelled from California, her life began to face various adversities that were aggravated by the pandemic.
He said that since he left, contact with his children has been scarce and the health emergency has made it even more difficult to see each other.
In a new environment
After living in San Diego County for 31 years, the California mother of two received 2020 with her deportation on January 2.
"I have felt a little depressed, due to the situation and my surroundings," she talks.
A couple of blocks from where he lives, "my half brother was assaulted a week ago, to take away 500 pesos (about $ 21) … A month ago he suffered another robbery, with a pistol and do not think that at night, at 5 in the afternoon when I returned from work, "said the woman.
In a neighborhood like that, on the outskirts of the city and with Tijuana as the municipality with the most deaths and COVID-19 infections in Mexico, Mrs. Rocío says that she has little desire to leave the home of her half-brothers.
Family visits have also not been so frequent.
Since her deportation, her daughter, Karla McKissick, was able to go see her for her birthday in February, but due to occupations in San Diego, lack of passports for her children and then the arrival of the coronavirus, the following visits were suspended.
"We have seen each other on video calls a few times but it is not the same as having my children and my grandchildren close and being able to hug them," he says.
In uncertainty
In April, when COVID-19 began to register with greater insistence in Tijuana, Doña Rocío learned from Karla that her military son was probably going to be sent to the front and "outright I felt my heart break," he says.
Second Intelligence Lt. Gibram Cruz, 31, cannot travel from California to Tijuana to see his mother unless it is with express permission from the high command due to the nature of his position in the Army.
Nor can he communicate or give details to his mother if he is mobilized.
"The only thing I knew was that he could be sent to another place and from there it seems like the Middle East, but I don't know anything else and I can't communicate with him (because of his work)," said the mother.
That situation was precisely what both Lieutenant and Senator Kamala Harris tried to avoid by asking the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office to consider Lieutenant Cruz's position when Doña Rocío was going to be deported.
But ICE did the opposite. On the day that Ms. Rocío was deported, Rocío Rebollar's lieutenant and attorney went to deliver the mother to the ICE in a voluntary act that they hoped would have some merit.
ICE told them to go and ask for a pardon from a building less than half a mile away, but when they left, ICE agents took Rocío Rebollar down to the basement to a parking lot where a car was already waiting for her and they put her up to deport her.
At the time, the lieutenant told reporters that he was disappointed in the US government and deeply betrayed by ICE.
Since then, mother and son have lost contact.
In Tijuana, some organizations promised to help Doña Rocío, but she says that until this weekend, nothing had come up.
Her lawyer, Tessa Cabrera, began collecting 5,000 signatures in support of the immigrant pardon petition case, which in more than three decades had no criminal record.
She had been deported twice in the 1980s and 1990s when immigration authorities raided places where she worked.
A French production team is currently making a documentary about Doña Rocío and two other migrants deported to Tijuana, but the project was stopped due to the pandemic by COVID-19.
"Let's see what this Mother's Day brings us," says the small San Diego businesswoman. He says he has faith that everything that has happened in 2020 with his life "is for the better, for a good result."
To sign the petition in favor of Mrs. Rocío Rebollar, you can visit: bit.ly/3ceIwdb
