A respected indigenous Guatemalan community leader in Lake Worth Beach self-deported Monday morning after a months-long battle to stay in the U.S.
After tearful goodbyes with her family, friends and community members, Olga Perez boarded an 11 a.m. flight to Guatemala City — and a country she has not been to in 30 years — from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport. Her four children, who are U.S. citizens, stayed behind.
Perez came to Florida as a teenager to escape anti-Indigenous violence in Guatemala’s highlands. She’s a respected community leader in Palm Beach County, assisting agencies like the sheriff’s office with Mam language interpreter services.
Immigration authorities sent her to an Arizona detention center last November. After six months in detention, Perez was released on her own recognizance pending voluntary deportation. The judge allowed her to leave detention while her case was pending. She made her temporary return to Florida last month.
Lindsay McElroy, a fellow organizer with the Guatemala-Mayan Center and long-time friend of Perez, said that on her return to the Central American nation she would be staying in a convent with the Catholic Sisters of the Salesian Order as she searched for housing.
McElroy said that Perez’s four children were flying to Guatemala to meet her in a few weeks, and planned to stay with her for the summer as she adjusts to her new life.
“ I think all the kids are figuring it out, what their next steps are, too, without their mom here,” McElroy said.
Olga’s husband, also an undocumented Guatemalan and the children’s father, was deported earlier this year after himself being arrested last year and detained in Georgia.
Leaving her children was Perez’s biggest heartbreak, said McElroy. Her eldest daughter Lisa will take over the family landscaping business, and the rest of her children are searching for work or finishing school in Florida.
For her colleagues from the center, Perez had one final plea. “Please take care of my children. Please watch out for them,” Perez said at the airport.
She hasn’t seen Guatemala in 30 years. But her voluntary departure allows her to potentially file for things like a tourist visa in the future and come back to the U.S.
Neither detention nor deportation could stop her advocacy. In Arizona, she interpreted for Mam-speaking women in her detention facility. In Guatemala, she plans to find a job as a Mam language interpreter.
“I'm not defeated. This won't defeat me,” Perez said at the airport.
