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“We want our vote back”: Trump-voting family panics after Canadian mom is taken by ICE
The family of a Canadian woman who backed Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation plans say they now feel abandoned after federal agents detained her in
wtfdetective.blog
The family of a Canadian woman who backed Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation plans say they now feel abandoned after federal agents detained her in California during her interview for permanent US residency – and immediately moved to remove her from the country.
“We feel totally blindsided,” her husband, US citizen and self-described Trump voter Francisco Olivera, told the California station KGTV. “I want my vote back.”
At 45, Cynthia Olivera, a mother of three US-born children, has become yet another example contradicting the Trump administration’s repeated claims that its tightened immigration enforcement since the president’s return to the Oval Office in January is aimed mainly at dangerous criminals.
Being undocumented in the US is usually a civil matter rather than a criminal one. Yet, even while insisting its focus is on violent offenders, the White House has continued maintaining that anyone lacking legal status in the country is a criminal subject to removal.
Olivera ended up caught in the weight of those immigration pledges after Trump spent his 2024 campaign vowing to ramp them up, earning the support of her husband, according to what he told KGTV. She said her parents brought her from Toronto to the US without permission when she was just 10.
By about 19, US border authorities in Buffalo discovered she had no legal status and issued an expedited removal order. Still, after being deported, she said she managed to return within months by driving into San Diego from Mexico.
“They didn’t ask me for my citizenship – they didn’t do nothing,” Olivera said to KGTV. “They just waved me in.”
She described spending the next quarter-century working in Los Angeles, paying taxes and supporting her family. KGTV’s investigative team reviewed state and federal court databases but found no criminal cases under her name.
Near the end of Joe Biden’s presidency in 2024, she received a permit allowing her to work legally in the country. She had also been pursuing a green card for years.
But instead of backing Biden’s chosen successor, Kamala Harris, her husband voted for Trump last November. He told KGTV that Trump’s vow to deport criminals on a massive scale spoke to both him and Cynthia, even though Trump had been convicted that May on felony business record falsification. Like many mixed-status families who believed they wouldn’t personally be affected, the Oliveras assumed her lack of legal residency would not put her at risk.
They discovered otherwise on 13 June, when she arrived for her green card interview in Chatsworth, California. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained her there, according to a change.org petition urging compassion for her situation.
She was transferred to an Ice detention center in El Paso, Texas, where she is now awaiting deportation.
Over a video call from the El Paso site, Olivera expressed that what has happened to her feels unjust.
“The US is my country,” she said to the station in an interview released on 3 July. “That’s where I met my husband. That’s where I went to high school, junior high, elementary [school]. That’s where I had my kids.”
The Trump administration showed no leniency, issuing a statement labelling Cynthia “an illegal alien from Canada”.
Olivera had been “previously deported and chose to ignore our law and again illegally entered the country”, the statement said, as reported by Newsweek. It reiterated that re-entering after deportation is a felony and said she would remain in Ice custody “pending removal to Canada”.
Canada’s government told KGTV it was aware of her detention but could not intervene because “every country or territory decides who can enter or exit through its borders”.
Francisco summed up his and his wife’s frustration bluntly: “My wife … up until [a couple of weeks] ago, was a strong believer in what was going to happen the next four years.”
Cynthia has told authorities she and her husband are prepared to pay for her flight to Canada, where she plans to stay with a cousin in Mississauga. There is still no clear timeline for when she may be allowed to travel.
Fighting back tears, she told KGTV: “The only crime I committed is to love this country and to work hard and to provide for my kids.”