Despite allegedly living in the U.S. for over 20 years, De La Cruz was charged with entering the country without inspection and not having valid documents of his identity.
De La Cruz was arrested in June after an officer found marijuana in the vehicle he was traveling in through rural Washington County. He was later transferred to ICE custody after the agency issued a detainer for his arrest when he would not answer questions about his citizenship status.
De La Cruz spent months in ICE detention in Washington County, Linn County and McCook, Neb. He's now trekking from an unknown location on the Mexican side of the border to Mexico City, where he expects to meet his fiancé, Brianna Alberding, and his grandparents.
Alberding’s sister, Kayla, said she was disturbed by some of the responses to the news of De La Cruz’s detainment that she read on social media.
“You see the comments from the hateful people, people that don’t know the story at all,” she said. “They just automatically think he’s a criminal and a bad person, and that’s far from the truth. I honestly think it’s disgusting the way people are.”
Alberding added that she thinks immigration cases do not focus enough on individual circumstances.
“Everyone should be looked at individually versus as a whole group,” she said. “I feel like the system failed him. He literally just got ripped away and sent somewhere he does not have any memories of whatsoever. He speaks Spanish, but it’s like, Spanglish.”
Court documents said De La Cruz arrived in the country 15 years ago, but according to Alberding, that's just how far back the court could verify at the time. Family members claim De La Cruz had in fact been in the country since he was 2 years old.
He grew up in Mount Pleasant, graduated from the local high school and began working as a landscaper. Alberding said he and his fiancé, Alberding’s sister Brianna, had been together for roughly a year and were living in Muscatine at the time of his arrest.
“She [Brianna] is going to go down there with him,” Alberding said. “She is mad that she has to leave her family, but she loves Noel, so she’s going to go with him. She’s feeling a lot of emotions right now, I think, because she’s mad at the system.”
A GoFundMe page called “Help Noel & Brianna Start Their Life Together in Mexico” created by De La Cruz’s family has gathered nearly $11,000 in donations.
Escucha Mi Voz rallies community support
Local immigrants’ rights leaders with the group Escucha Mi Voz have drawn attention to De La Cruz’s detention as the weeks turned into months. “Free Noel Now!” is a common message at demonstrations.
Their efforts have included an audience with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders during an August immigration forum hosted in West Liberty. A few weeks prior, Sanders posted on social media calling Pascual Pedro’s deportation “unacceptable.”
The group has also hosted regular presences at a U.S. Department of Homeland Security office in Cedar Rapids to accompany people to their scheduled check-ins with immigration enforcement officials.
“This is the reality of Trump’s mass deportations: ICE is ripping a young man who grew up in our schools and works in our neighborhoods out of the only home he has ever known and dumping him in a country he can’t even remember,” said Alejandra Escobar, a lead organizer with Escucha Mi Voz, in a statement the group released when it became clear De La Cruz’s deportation was imminent. “That is not justice or public safety; it is state violence against hardworking families, and we condemn it completely.”
De La Cruz's deportation comes after he sued the Trump administration in September for denying him a bond hearing under a new policy subjecting people who entered the U.S. without authorization to mandatory detention. In his lawsuit, De La Cruz called the policy “draconian.”
A federal judge granted him a bond hearing before an immigration judge, and during the Nov. 19 meeting, the court issued a final order of deportation for De La Cruz. The federal court records filed after the judge granted him the hearing have been sealed.
