Waukegan boy and his mom await decision on asylum

An 8-year-old boy and his mother from Honduras made their case Wednesday to an immigration judge to avoid deportation and remain in the United States.

Iker Velasquez and his mother, Evelyn Velasquez, arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2014 and petitioned for asylum for fear of being politically persecuted in their home country.

Their case made headlines across Spanish media in 2015 when a video of then-3-year-old Iker Velasquez asking an immigration judge to “give him his papers” went viral.

Later that year, an immigration judge allowed the family to stay in the country while their asylum cases made their way through the courts. They’ve lived in Waukegan since arriving in the United States.

Wednesday’s hearing before Immigration Judge Kaarina Salovaara went on for nearly four hours with both Evelyn Velasquez and her ex-husband testifying under oath about the threats their family received from street gangs in Honduras for their political work.

Salovaara adjourned the hearing at 5 p.m. and set a continuance for March 10. Until then, both Evelyn and Iker Velasquez are able to stay in the country.

“All I want to say is that I want freedom,” Iker Velasquez said at a news conference outside the courthouse before the hearing.

Tyler LaRiviere/For the Sun-Times

During her testimony, Evelyn Velasquez said a violent street gang started threatening to kill her and her ex-husband in 2013, both of whom previously worked as election judges in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.

“They told me not to work in politics anymore,” she said.

That same gang ended up murdering a political activist who lived three houses down from Velasquez in December 2013.

The gang upped their threats after the murder, Velasquez said.

“They left letters at our doorstep, they would call our house, telling us they knew who we were and who took care of my son,” she said.

Then in April 2014, Velasquez said members of the same gang came looking for her at a job at a beauty salon. “My coworkers agreed to hide me, but I heard them say they would kill me just like they killed” my neighbor, she said.

Soon after, Evelyn Velasquez and Iker made the 1,900-mile trek to the U.S. to seek asylum.

“I was afraid they’d come and kill my son,” she said.

Tyler LaRiviere/For the Sun-Times

A dozen supporters joined Evelyn and Iker Velasquez at the hearing, including three of Iker’s teachers and Thomas Ward, an anthropologist at the University of Southern California and an expert on transnational gangs. Ward submitted an affidavit in support of the family’s asylum application.

“They are so resilient. I hope this can finally bring an end to their suffering,” said Pastor Julie Contreras of Our Lady of Suyapa Sanctuary in Waukegan, where Evelyn Velasquez and her two sons reside.

“It’s sad they’ve had to go through so much to find peace,” she said. “Iker should be in school right now.”

There were more than 325,000 pending asylum cases at the beginning of 2019.

Carlos Ballesteros is a corps member of Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster Sun-Times coverage of Chicago’s South Side and West Side.