A longtime Naples resident who was detained by immigration agents last month will be deported to his native Guatemala Thursday. That’s according to his wife, who says she will continue to press for his freedom, and eventual admittance back to the states.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Otto Morales-Caballeros last month as part of President Donald Trump’s stiffened enforcement of immigration law. The deportation order dated back to 2010, according to immigration authorities.
Morales-Caballeros’ wife, Sandra Scribner Merlim, says he has been moved at least four times to various detention facilities and is now in Lousiana, where he awaits deportation on a flight to Guatemala Thursday.
“This should not be happening here in the greatest melting pot in the world, in such a heartwarming state as Maine. My heart is breaking, not just for my husband, but for all the families currently losing loved ones to these awful ICE raids. These are raids on the American way,” she says.
Morales-Caballeros fled Guatemala to the U.S. more than 20 years ago — when he was a teenager, according to his wife — at a time when civil war was raging and drug cartels were on the rise in his homeland. He eventually settled in Naples, worked for a Saco lobster shipping company, paid taxes and, in 2015, married Merlim.
In 2013, Merlim adds, Morales-Caballeros signed a confession admitting participation in a scheme to provide a false social security number. He cooperated with authorities on that issue, she says, but it appears to have played a role in his expected dportation. His key mistake, his spouse says, was to not seek asylum when he first arrived.
“Most of them don’t — they’re afraid. And especially him, being a kid, he’s going to go with whatever advice he’s given, and his advice was, stay low, work under the table, don’t get in any trouble and stay in obscurity, like most of them do,” she says.
Merlim says if her husband is deported, her next moves will be to try to visit him in Guatemala and to seek waivers to allow him to be legally readmitted to the U.S. If that fails, seeking asylum in Canada may be her husband’s next option.
She adds, however, that she believes the fight to get her husband back to the U.S., legally, is winnable.
