Cynthia and Francisco Olivera supported President Trump, in part because they liked his mass deportation plans. Francisco Olivera, a US citizen, voted for him in the last election, despite the fact that his wife was born in Canada and has no legal status in the United States. And yet it came as a surprise to both of them when Cynthia Olivera (variously spelled as Olvera) went to her green card interview in California on June 13 expecting to finalize her application—and instead ended up detained by ICE agents and sent into deportation proceedings. She tells 10 News she's been held in four different facilities—she's currently in El Paso, Texas—and is "desperate" for the Canadian government to get involved in order to expedite the process of getting her to Canada.
She also tells the outlet she's devastated at this turn of events, and her husband says he wants his vote back. "The US is my country," says Cynthia Olivera. "That's where I met my husband. That's where I went to high school, junior high, elementary. That's where I had my kids," says the 45-year-old, who claims her parents brought her across the border illegally when she was 10. When she was about 19, she says border agents discovered she had no legal status and ordered her removed, but she was able to re-enter the US via the southern border a few months later with no questions asked. Canada is so far saying it can't do anything to intervene, and the Trump administration says in a statement to Newsweek that Olivera is an "illegal alien" who illegally entered the US after having been previously deported.