Donald Trump’s administration is trying to deport the loved ones of victims who died in the Baltimore bridge collapse in 2024, including the mother of a 7-year-old girl whose father was among six construction workers killed in the disaster.
This month, two years after a container ship collided with the city’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, Zoila Guerra Sandoval received a letter from immigration authorities notifying her that she has been placed in deportation proceedings.
Four days after the Department of Homeland Security denied her the same protections that Joe Biden’s administration told her to apply for in the aftermath, Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiated removal proceedings against her, her attorney Rachel Girod told The Independent.
“We will absolutely be fighting back against deportation,” she said. “If DHS is going to come at Zoila with every bit of cruelty and indecency they can muster, they better believe that we will fight back for every last one of her rights and we will rally Marylanders to her support along the way.”
The latest push to deport families of the collapse, first reported by NPR, joins the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to deport millions of people from the country, including thousands of immigrants seeking relief through legal channels.
The body of Jose Mynor López, who is the father of Guerro Sandoval’s 7-year-old U.S. citizen daughter, was the last to be found in the wreckage. The men who died in the collapse were originally from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.
In the aftermath, Biden administration officials approached dozens of family members and loved ones of those who died and encouraged them to file for immigration protections, according to NPR, citing a former Biden official with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
“She stepped out of the shadows to entrust that they would follow through on the promises that they made to her,” Girod told the outlet. “With the promise that, ‘In you giving us this information, we’re going to give you a work permit.’ And instead, what they gave her is a hearing in front of an immigration judge with a deportation charge against her.”
Girod represents several clients with relationships to victims of the bridge collapse. About 30 people were considered eligible for immigration relief during the Biden administration, according to lawyers working on the cases speaking to NPR.
Though some applications appear to have been successful, the Trump administration’s aggressive mass deportation efforts — and the transformation of USCIS into a law enforcement arm — has made the legal immigration process especially precarious.
Unlike federal courts, immigration courts and the judges who run them operate under the control of the Department of Justice and, ultimately, the president.
In more than 70 immigration courts around the country, immigration judges determine whether immigrants can be deported or granted a form of legal status like asylum.
But after Trump took office, the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review told judges to grant motions from government lawyers to immediately dismiss immigrants’ cases, making them immediately vulnerable for arrest once they leave the courtroom.
Officers are also arresting immigrants at their court-mandated check-ins at ICE and appointments at USCIS offices. Advocates argue the government’s ability to track immigrants through the legal process has also made them easy targets for arrest and removal.
Guerra Sandoval, who has lived in the U.S. for two decades and does not have a criminal record, is scheduled to appear in immigration court in July.
While going through that process, she will have the opportunity to seek other relief from deportation, including special protections for parents of children under 21.
“The Baltimore Field Office might have forgotten who their neighbors are, but we will remind them,” Girod told The Independent.
The Independent has requested comment from Homeland Security.
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