Wendy Miranda-Fernandez, a twenty-three-year-old Durham resident taken into custody in March by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was still detained in a Louisiana facility as of Tuesday morning, according to an ICE detainee locator. She had been scheduled to be deported Friday, but after a community outcry, her deportation seems to have been delayed.
Miranda-Fernandez, who attended Riverside High School, had been planning to marry her fiancé of more than a year when she was taken into custody during an ICE check-in on March 22. She came to the United States in 2008 when she was fourteen, after witnessing a murder outside of her home in El Salvador. As an unaccompanied minor, she was allowed into the country. But in 2014, the Board of Immigration Appeals denied her application for asylum. She was issued a final removal order in August 2016, according to ICE spokesman Bryan Cox.
Miranda-Fernandez’s attorney, Nardine Guirguis, says her client was issued several stays of her removal, and her most recent stay was unexpired when she sought a renewal on March 22. Cox, however, says the stay expired March 10, and thus she was eligible for deportation.
Guirguis has filed a motion to reopen Miranda-Fernandez’s case, along with a new asylum application and a request for an emergency stay. Guirguis says Miranda-Fernandez could be killed if she returns to El Salvador. According to Alerta Migratoria NC, the murder she witnessed took place after her brother refused to join the criminal outfit known as MS-13.
This article appeared in print with the headline “+NO ASYLUM .”