New York.- Aliya is barely 6 years old, and although her life had been full of joy and much love in the home she shared with her “daddy”, Julio Patricio Gómez, on the morning of October 14, being so small, the things for her and the Ecuadorian family, turned upside down.
‘La Migra’ arrived at his home in Staten Island, and after informing the construction worker that there was a deportation order issued against him, issued since 2010, they arrested him and took him to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center Detention Center, in Pennsylvania, where there are currently more than 900 immigrants deprived of their liberty.
Despair, sadness, anguish, and immense pain at being separated from her “daddy” have seized the little girl, who in her most recent visit to her father, together with her aunt, before Christmas, in the midst of of his innocence he wanted to stay in the Detention Center. Aliya did not want to be away from the Ecuadorian, who is a single father and the sole caregiver of her girl since she was only 1 year old.
Aliya, born in the United States, is very sad and with her childish little words she only asks the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) to be moved and release her father soon. She wants to play with Patricio again; she wants everything to go back to the way it was before October and to have her “daddy” back.
“I feel sad because I can’t see my dad. We went to Chuck E. Cheese together, soccer together, and we went to Legoland together. I always wanted to go to Legoland before and he took me. Release my daddy so he can be with me,” said the little girl, who is currently under the care of other relatives. “I love you daddy,” added the little girl in a couple of drawings that she has made for her father, with images from the movie Frozen and the wish that this situation has a happy ending.
Rosa Gómez, Aliya’s father’s older sister, in tears, narrated that the life of the family, originally from Azogues Ecuador, has become a nightmare since ICE took Patricio, and they implored the Immigration authorities that they think about the damage that the arrest of an exemplary father is doing to the little girl and the rest of the Gómez family.
“We are living in a very ugly moment. We can’t be okay with Patricio in custody. There is not a single second of tranquility. It is very painful and it breaks our hearts to hear the girl saying: ‘I love my daddy, I love my daddy,’” the sad aunt narrated. “I tell all the lords (authorities) to get my brother out of there. My brother is not a bad person, he is a good worker, a good citizen. He is someone who has been paying taxes forever. I ask you to help us because we are all suffering”.
Gómez’s sister added that the arrest of the father of the family has also affected his 68-year-old mother, who is suffering a lot.
