UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
MINNEAPOLIS — A Czech-born couple and their son living in Minnesota are being deported after 15 years because the son’s leukemia is in remission.
Andrew and Blanka Danecek and their two sons were admitted to the United States in 1990 on what is called humanitarian parole for medical treatment. The eldest son was killed in an accidental fall from a bridge and the second son’s illness is in remission.
Today, the family will leave the United States for the Czech Republic, where they have not lived since the 1980s.
“I’m so scared,” Mrs. Danecek told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “I don’t know what to do.”
An immigration law passed in 1996 has made it more difficult for judges to side with people like the Daneceks. In ordering them deported, local immigration Judge Joseph Dierkes said that it was “an unpleasant case” but he was bound by legal precedents and statutes.
The office of Sen. Norm Coleman, Minnesota Republican, said it will try to expedite a process to get the couple readmitted to the United States once they are deported.
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