When Alex Gonzalez and Yan Hidalgo first heard about President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration, they said they weren’t worried.
Speaking through a translator, Gonzalez told reporters that the men came to the U.S. from Cuba looking for asylum and were told by officials, ‘Welcome to the United States. You are safe.’
"We did everything the right way,” Gonzalez said through a translator. “We received all our documents. We received their permission to be here. We haven't broken any laws."
But when Gonzalez and Hidalgo showed up to a scheduled immigration hearing in Syracuse in October, they were arrested by ICE agents, handcuffed, chained, and taken to a detention facility in Batavia. The couple said they were separated from each other for months.
Federal immigration judges ruled the men should be deported to Ecuador, where neither man has lived before.
Gonzalez and Hidalgo are employees at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, and after an outcry from their unions, lawmakers, and community members, the men were able to get a bond hearing and come home.
Through tears, Hidalgo described that homecoming.
“I didn't think I was ever going to see my sister or my nephews,” he said through a translator. “I didn’t think it was going to be possible.”
Ali Cottrell, president of CSEA Local 615 at Upstate, said community support is crucial.
"They're part of us. They're part of our family,” Cottrell said. “They're part of our community. And everything that they have achieved so far, is because they followed the rules, and they lived that American dream."
The men are back home and scheduled to go back to work at Upstate this week. While Gonzalez said there aren’t enough hours in the day to thank everyone who supported them, he asks everyone to keep fighting for them as their legal battle continues to fight the deportation order to Ecuador.
