ORLANDO, Fla. – For 96 days he was held inside detention centers in Florida and Texas after his April arrest in a Central Florida traffic stop.
Jose Luis lost nearly 30 pounds and grew increasingly depressed amid his long stints at some of the nation’s most notoriously difficult facilities. Finally the 60-year-old undocumented immigrant abandoned what he came to believe was a futile fight to stay in the U.S., and agreed to be deported to Uruguay, his birthplace.
Now, settled in Brazil and waiting for his wife to join him, Jose Luis worries for his four children who have chosen to remain in the U.S. But he doesn’t second-guess his own decision to violate the terms of the tourist visas that brought him to the U.S. from Brazil four years ago, though he never could have predicted how life would turn out…