After decades fighting and waiting - and two years after he was deported to Mexico - Jorge Zaldivar has attained permanent legal status to remain in Denver with his family.
At a press conference Friday in front of the Lichter Immigration Law office in City Park West, he gathered with his family and supporters to make the announcement.
"I want to thank everyone, and the news is I am a legal permanent resident as of February 27th," he said in Spanish, as the small crowd cheered.
Zaldivar arrived in the U.S. as an undocumented migrant in the late '90s.
He made a life here, got married, started a family and kept his nose clean as he worked to provide for his kids. But a minor car crash about ten years ago drew attention from U.S. Homeland Security, and he was put on track to deportation.
His wife, Christina, became an armchair expert in immigration law as she worked to keep him close. But in 2020, the government succeeded in its bid against him, expelling Zaldivar from the country and effectively turning Christina into a single mom.
In the years leading up to his deportation, Zaldivar's family spent countless hours and dollars on his defense. Their strategy: to ask a judge for "cancelation of removal," which would give him permanent legal status.
His attorney, Mark Barr of Lichter Immigration, said it's extremely difficult to end deportation proceedings this way. A defendant must prove they possess good moral character, that they have no disqualifying criminal convictions, that they've been in the U.S. for more than 10 years and that their citizen family members would suffer in their absence.
That last one, about family members needing a defendant to stay, is the hardest part of this to prove, Barr said.
"Its supposed to be the rarest of the rare," he told us, "The amazing part to Jorge's case is he proved that."
Though the judge agreed Zaldivar was a person of good character and needed to be with his family, he wasn't home free. He struggled to prove he'd been in the country for ten years, in part because he'd "really lived in the shadows" for his first few years here, Barr said. Also, the "clock" on his time here was paused when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued him a court summons after the car crash.
The "clock" issue was a technicality that was challenged in a handful of cases that went to the Supreme Court, including one that Barr was involved in. Favorable rulings made it possible for Zaldivar to reopen his case and nail down that last requirement to stay. But ICE deported him before he had the chance, leaving Barr to work on his case while Zaldivar waited in Mexico for an update.
Then, last autumn, Christina got news she wasn't sure she'd ever hear. The government would allow Zaldivar to return and make his case one last time. After years of back and forth on his status, and so much money and tears spent in their fight, she and her kids were hesitant to celebrate. They sobbed, happy tears this time, as they reunited. But they still didn't know if he'd be here to stay.
Then, a week ago, the Zaldivars got another surprise call.
Barr was confident Zaldivar would get that cancelation of removal, but there was still room for error.
For one thing, Congress only allows 4,000 people to receive cancelation each year, and there's a multi-year-long line that he'd have to wait in before he'd become an official permanent U.S. resident. Anything could go wrong in that time, and so Barr submitted a motion asking a judge to let Zaldivar cut in line, arguing he should have begun waiting long ago.
The judge said no, Barr said, which meant that he'd have to wait at least until 2026 to be in the clear. It's why everyone was surprised when Zaldivar, out of the blue, got word he'd been given permanent status.
"He has been a green card holder since February 27th, and that is cause for celebration," Barr said. "How did that happen? I have no f****** clue. Am I gonna push it and question her decision? No. I'm gonna take my win."
Barr said the episode underscores how complicated and illogical our immigration system can be. It's one reason why there's a lot of uninformed debate about it.
"I think a large segment of the American population has an image of our immigration laws that they think exist, where if you work hard, there'll be a path fo you. A lot of immigration law is counterintuitive and it doesn't make a lot of sense, and because it's so political, it's so hard to get [reform] laws written," he told us. "It means I'll always have a job. In an ideal world, there should be no need from me. From day one, everyone agreed Jorge was a good guy whose family would suffer if he was deported. Instead, we had to have this decade-long odyssey, literally through the doors of the Supreme Court."
And though the Zaldivars celebrated their win, Christina made clear one small victory is not enough.
"Our fight may be over, but we have too many people in the community who are affected by these laws," she said at the press conference Friday. "They stole years from my children, they stole years and money from me and my husband, things that can't be replaced."
The only way to make up for their losses, she said: fix the system.
