Crime & Safety
Faced with Deportation, Salvadoran Woman, Family, Seek Sanctuary at Gwinnett Church
Claudia Mariela Jurado said she fears for her family's safety if they are deported back to El Salvador.
A pregnant Salvadoran woman and her two children seeking sanctuary at a Gwinnett County church said she is scared for her life if she is deported back to El Salvador, as authorities have ordered.
Claudia Mariela Jurado and her two children have been living inside the Our Lady of the American Catholic Mission in Lilburn, according to media reports.
They have been at the church since Friday after immigration officials ordered her deported for entering the U.S. illegally. She said she left El Salvador to get away from gangs and she doesn’t want to go back, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
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After learning her request for asylum was denied last week, the woman reportedly cut off an ankle monitor that was affixed when she entered the country and then went to the church for shelter, the Gwinnett Daily Post reported.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement called the anklet removal “absconding,” and ordered her to report to be deported on Friday, according to media reports.
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Jurado told the Post she would be a target if she returned to El Salvador from gangs who had been extorting money from her family, which forced them to leave. “I decided to stay [in the U.S.] for my kids,” Jurado told the Post through an interpreter. “I feel safe now. I don’t want any benefits from the U.S. I just want to be able to stay.”
WSB-TV reported the immigration authorities said as a matter of policy they will not enter the church to apprehend the woman.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta said in a statement Tuesday that the church will continue to assist Jurado and her family, but that it is “not a long-term solution,” the AJC reported.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that Jurado was “afforded full due process in compliance with federal law and ICE policy,” and ordered her to be deported after hearing her asylum case in April.
Jurado is three months pregnant, the Post reported.
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