Deportation splits up family; wife sent back to Guatemala | News, Sports, Jobs

ABOVE: Glenda and Bruce Hady pose with their children, ages 8 and 2, for their 2025 church directory photo at St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Fairmont. Glenda was recently removed from the country and her family by ICE agents and deported back to Guatemala.

FAIRMONT– The recent holiday season was a little lonelier for local Bruce Hady and his children, ages 2.5 and 8, as his wife, and their mother, Glenda, was recently deported back to her home country of Guatemala. This came quickly after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Nov. 14, 2025.

Glenda, seeking asylum, crossed the border and came into the country in 2021. She brought with her a daughter who was 3.5 at the time. Bruce said she had connections in Minnesota and came here straight away and began working at Fairmont Foods, which is how she met Bruce, an operations manager there. Most recently, Glenda was working at the Swift foods plant in St. James, which she started at in June, though the family was residing in Fairmont.

Bruce explained what happened that led to Glenda’s detainment. He said that about three years ago, she had a deportation hearing but was denied her asylum plea. They were able to appeal it. In the meantime, Bruce and Glenda got married in February of 2023 and Glenda gave birth to their son.

Then, the second hearing happened in February of 2025 and after that they received a letter that she was denied again.

Their attorney, Katherine Santamaria, an associate attorney at Wilson Law Group in Minneapolis, primarily practices immigration law.

Santamaria said that there is a right to seek asylum in the United States, regardless of manner of entry. However, manner of entry impacts whether an individual can adjust their status, or apply for a green card, inside the Unites States, or if they would be required to depart the United States to do consular processing (apply for a green card abroad).

“Once people enter illegally, that’s where things get really complicated. Asylum is very hard to win. Asylum cases have less than a 10 percent chance of winning. Especially now in the current administration where there’s so much happening in immigration court, making it more difficult for people to win asylum,” Santamaria said.

In November, the Hadys received a letter saying the couple needed to undergo an I-130, or family petition interview, to determine the validity of their marriage interview at an immigration center in Minneapolis. While expected to last about two hours, Bruce said they were each asked about four basic questions, including where and when they were born, what their parent’s’ names were and when they got married.

After the questions were done, Bruce said a woman typed some information and gave them a verbal confirmation that everything was approved.

“Then she looked up at the door and nodded and three ICE agents came in,” Bruce said. “They called us up there to be able to take her and not come down and get her.”

Santamaria said, “in her case, the reason she was taken into ICE custody is because she attended her family petition interview, with the removal order already in her record.

In previous administrations, we’ve seen people attend their family petition interviews with no problems, but now we are seeing people with old removal orders or other issues in their history who are unfortunately being detained at their interviews at USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services).”

She added that USCIS has turned into a type of enforcement agency whereas previously it was just an agency that made decisions on immigration benefits.

Bruce has not seen Glenda since she was removed on Nov. 14, but he has been able to communicate with her. At first he said she spent a few hours at a facility in the Twin Cities and then had another court hearing.

Then Glenda was transferred to the Kandiyohi County Jail in Willmar. Bruce said they were planning to do a video chat on Sunday, Nov. 16 but Glenda never called. That night, when he finally heard from her, he learned she was in Louisiana. On Monday, Nov. 17, she left Louisiana and was taken to Guatemala.

“She was in cuffs and shackles the whole time,” Bruce said.

“In the end, she lost her asylum case, so the immigration judge ordered her removed from the United States because she had no other legal basis to remain in the United States,” Santamaria explained.

When asked why the fact that the Hadys had since gotten married and welcomed a child together wasn’t considered, Santamaria said, “When someone enters the United States unlawfully, there isn’t a way for them to adjust inside the United States through a family petition, or in this case an I-130 interview.”

In the future, Santamaria said Glenda can do consular processing through the United Sstates Embassy to return as a green card holder. However, now that she’s back in Guatemala, Glenda cannot return to the United States for 10 years.

Santamaria explained that with immigration law, there’s three different bars from returning to unlawful presence. Because Glenda entered unlawfully and remained for more than 365 days without authorization, once someone leaves, or is removed, a bar is triggered from returning to the United States for 10 years. There’s another bar of five years if someone has stayed for more than six months but less than one year without authorization.

Bruce is frustrated with the length of the ban and how they got to this point.

“From the (first) time she was denied to the second time, which was an appeal period, that didn’t count against her. But after she was denied the second time (in February), from when they took her in November, that time accumulated and added up to over a year,” Bruce explained. “Her second denial was in February, they could have taken her in March or April and she would have had a five year ban… I’m upset that they let it go long enough for her to be banned that long.”

Santamaria noted that once Glenda was detained by ICE, she was quickly removed.

“Once someone is in ICE custody, you’re really up against time before they’re removed. Currently, with so many people being detained, ICE is trying to get rid of people as soon as possible to open up even more space in their detention centers,” she said.

She added, “We are seeing rapid removals. Sometimes even people who should not be removed are being removed from the United States.”

Now, Bruce is left here with two children. He said Glenda would like for her 8-year-old, a second grader, to go to Guatemala. However, once she goes back, she too will be unable to return to the United States for several years and Bruce wants her to finish school.

“When we were on the way home from the cities that day, she said, ‘I want to be with mommy, but I don’t want to go to Guatemala,’” Bruce said.

He added that he’s surprised how much she remembers, having left the country at only 3.5 years old.

Bruce said, despite working with Santamaria, they’re very limited with their options, which she agreed with. However he hopes to visit Glenda in a bigger city in Guatemala at some point in the future.

Fortunately, they’re still able to communicate by phone and he’s not entirely alone as he said, of the friends, family and co-workers he’s told, people have been supportive. Still, he hopes that something changes in the next 10 years and that her ban can be lessened.

“It’s unfortunate that there’s always been this rhetoric of telling people that they should do it the right way and that they should fix their situation and then you see these cases where that is exactly what people are attempting to do is go through the legal route of fixing their immigration status and they’re unfortunately detained and removed from the United States and as in Glenda’s case, penalized this way for doing exactly as they’ve been told to do it the right way,” Santamaria said.

She shared that her firm is also working on cases in Worthington and Owatonna.

“There’s 12 attorneys and amongst us, we have some folks down there,” she said of the area.

Bruce acknowledged that there are other people in southern Minnesota, many of whom are also spouses or parents, that are on edge that something like this could happen to them, too.

“She’s a good person. Glenda is a beautiful and loving mother and her kids and I miss her very much. This has been very difficult for all of us,” Bruce said.