A Mexican immigrant who had illegally resided in the United States for over a decade has taken refuge inside a church in Tucson, Arizona, where he and his family attempt to resist a deportation order against him.
Regarding Daniel Neyoy Ruiz, a 36 -year-old immigrant from Los Mochis, in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, has a pending citation to present himself for a voluntary deportation which was supposed to happen on Tuesday, May 13, according to news agency Reuters.
However, Neyoy, who has made a family in the U.S. and has a 13-year-old son, went to a church in Tucson, the leaders of which were involved with a movement to provide asylum to Latin American refugees escaping from the wars in Central America in the decade of the 1980s.
As Fox News Latino reported on Wednesday, Neyoy, a 36-year-old maintenance supervisor for an apartment complex in Tucson, illegally entered the United States in 2000.
In 2011, an official of Arizona's Department of Public Safety delivered Neyoy to immigration agents after he was arrested because the exhaust of his car was giving out too much smoke. After a series of lost legal immigration cases, the Mexican was asked to leave the country.
This is not the first time an undocumented immigrant takes shelter in a church in the United States. In 2007, Mexican activist Elvira Arellano attracted international attention and was named person of the year by Time magazine after she took refuge within the walls of the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago for a year, reported The Chicago Tribune recently.
As it happened in the case of the Mexican activist, there is no law preventing immigration agents from entering the church and capturing Neyoy Ruiz; however, the religious building is considered a public sanctuary for immigrants.
Meanwhile, the Mexican's lawyer, Margo Cowan, has presented an administrative request to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to close the case, reported the CBS.
Neyoy's future will be decided in the upcoming days, however, his lawyer awaits the ICE's ruling to be positive since he, along with thousands of immigrants in the country, has no serious penal antecedents.