- Utah attorney Carlos Trujillo is blasting immigration officials for refusing a client's appointment because her U.S. citizen husband is from Venezuela.
- Officials cited a proclamation restricting entry of people from Venezuela, but the woman who's the focus of the immigration petition is from Colombia.
- Trujillo sees the turn of events as another example of questionable handling of immigration cases.
SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah immigration attorney is crying foul after immigration officials refused to proceed with a client's scheduled appointment for a green card because her husband, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is originally from Venezuela.
"They're completely disregarding that this person is a citizen just because of where he was born," said Carlos Trujillo, an attorney based in South Jordan.
Trujillo, his Colombian client and the woman's husband, the naturalized U.S. citizen, went Thursday to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Salt Lake City for her appointment when they learned immigration officials would not see them. She currently has conditional legal permanent resident status, which typically lasts two years, and seeks permanent residency.
"They sent us home, and they said that's the guidance that we have, that we will not proceed with these types of cases either, and you will have to wait for further instructions," he said.
The woman isn't facing deportation, but for Trujillo, the turn of events serves as another example of the questionable handling of some immigrants and some immigration cases in the country under the administration of President Donald Trump. Trump has prioritized the detention and deportation of immigrants in the country illegally.
"This couple has been married for four years now. They have gone through everything. There's no criminal records. It is simply discrimination because as a petitioner, he was born in a different country that now is on a list," Trujillo said.
U.S. immigration officials, when contacted, asked for the woman's identity but otherwise didn't comment on the situation. Trujillo said his client and her husband, who live in Salt Lake County, don't want to be publicly identified, given the charged climate surrounding the immigration issue.
During the appointment, the immigration officials referenced a June 4 proclamation by Trump restricting the entry of people from Venezuela and several other countries. Trujillo, though, stressed that his client's husband is a U.S. citizen, even if he's originally from Venezuela, and, perhaps more germane, his wife is from Colombia, which isn't on the list of restricted countries in the proclamation.
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Voces de Utah
Looking for more news from Utah's Latino community? Visit our Voces de Utah section for more stories, events and features.Trujillo maintains that Thursday's actions of the immigration officials are illegal, and he's mulling a lawsuit. Meantime, immigration officials extended his client's conditional legal permanent resident status until the situation is resolved. "But the public needs to know the illegality of this administration when it comes to legal migration and when it comes to the treatment of a U.S. citizen," he said.
The husband has been in the country for nearly 20 years.
"He cannot understand why he's being treated differently just because he was born in a different place when he is a U.S. citizen," Trujillo said. The woman is distraught "because she has done everything by the book."
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