Mixed-status family leaves Missouri for Mexico after ICE arrest

The arrest of Alejandro Pérez turned a mixed-status marriage into a forced choice: stay in the United States without a husband and father, or leave Missouri and rebuild life in Mexico as a family. Janie Pérez chose the second path, taking their daughters, Luna and Lexie, out of Missouri after Alejandro was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on October 23, 2025.

From the Mexican state of Querétaro, Janie said she still remembers the morning her husband was taken while driving to work. She heard the arrest happen over an open phone line, a detail that captures how quickly immigration enforcement can split a household into before and after. The family’s move turned one legal action into a total reset: a mother, a father, and two young children now trying to preserve family unity by living outside the country where the children were raised.

Their case reflects a choice faced by many mixed-status families across the United States. About 1.1 million U.S. citizens are married to an undocumented person, and nearly 4.2 million unauthorized immigrants are married to a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. For those families, deportation is not just removal from the country; it can mean deciding whether marriage will be lived through separation, or whether children will be uprooted and taken abroad.

The law offers some limited pathways, but they are narrow and often punishingly complex. Marriage alone does not erase unlawful presence problems, and many immigrants must rely on the provisional unlawful presence waiver process, known as Form I-601A, before leaving the United States for an immigrant visa interview abroad. That process can help certain eligible relatives of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents apply for a waiver before departure, but it does not eliminate the risk, delay or uncertainty that comes with enforcement and consular processing.

The stakes are part of a broader enforcement history. DHS recorded 432,228 removals in fiscal year 2013, one of the high points of modern deportation enforcement, and later years still saw removals in the hundreds of thousands. At the same time, the immigrant population in the United States reached slightly more than 50.2 million in 2024, or 14.8% of the population, according to the Migration Policy Institute. That scale means the consequences of deportation extend far beyond individual cases like the Pérez family’s.

For Janie Pérez, the issue is immediate and personal. The decision to stay together meant leaving Missouri, crossing into Mexico and starting over in Querétaro with Luna and Lexie. It is the human cost of an immigration system that can force spouses and children to choose between life in the United States and keeping their family intact.