SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — The Department of Homeland Security is defending the arrest of a mother of three who was taken into custody at her recent green card interview for being in the country illegally.
Cynthia Olivera, 45, “chose to ignore our law and again illegally entered the country,” DHS said in a post on X Monday.
The Department of Homeland Security said that Olivera entered the country illegally in 1999 after getting a "final order of removal" earlier that year and being deported to Canada.
“Reentering the [country] after being deported is a FELONY,” the post said.
Team 10 reported on Olivera’s arrest last week and spoke to her again on Monday from the El Paso, Texas, detention center where she’s currently being held.
“Some of us are, I think, going crazy,” she said in a phone interview.
Olivera, who says her parents brought her to California from Toronto when she was 10 years old, supported President Trump’s promise to launch the largest deportation program in U.S. history during last year’s election.
“Yeah, I was a Trump supporter. There are things that I and my husband did not like under the previous administration.”
Olivera, who has no criminal record, said she was caught off guard when ICE arrested her last month at her green card interview in Chatsworth, Calif.
The mother believed she was finally going to obtain legal status. She got her work permit and Social Security card under the Biden administration and had applied for a waiver to mitigate the 1999 removal order.
Olivera said she never thought ICE would deport her and fully supported Trump’s plan to go after violent offenders who were in the U.S. illegally like Jose Ibarra, who was convicted of killing 22-year-old Laken Riley.
“I supported him based on violent criminals, like violent criminals like the gentleman that killed that young lady. Yes, 100% I did agree with that.”
Her husband Francisco Olvera, a U.S. citizen, told Team 10 he voted for Trump, which is now a decision he regrets.
“I want my vote back.”
Team 10 has searched federal and state databases and has found no criminal charges under Olivera’s name.
She said she’s desperate to be reunited with her 15-year-old daughter Bella, who will now have to go to Canada to see her mom.
“I wake up thinking about her and I go to sleep thinking about her.”
Detained with doctors, lawyers
Olivera, who also has two adult sons, said she’s being kept in a unit with 72 other women who have no criminal records.
“There are doctors. There are lawyers. There are nurses. There are electrical engineers. There are housewives. There are housewives that all they wanted to do is just give their family a better life.”
Olivera said she drove across the San Diego border in 1999 with her husband and claims an officer waived the couple in.
“I didn't come in illegally,” she said.
She admits that earlier in 1999, before entering San Diego, she had been deported to Canada after she tried to go through the Buffalo border crossing.
Pregnant at the time, she confessed to officers in secondary screening that she had been living in the U.S. illegally and was turned away when she told them she planned to have her son in California.
Her husband provided Team 10 with his wife’s 1999 deportation paperwork, which says she was getting a five-year ban, not a final removal order like the DHS post claimed Monday.
Calls food in detention 'disgusting'
Back in detention, Olivera told Team 10 she was struggling to eat the food provided.
“They gave meat and it was like meatballs, but it wasn’t like cooked and it was like green and I tried it, just to try it just to see, and it was just disgusting. I had to spit it out. I didn’t eat it and it looked nasty.”
She said despite repeatedly offering to pay for her own deportation flight, she hasn’t been allowed to book a ticket.
This week, she said flyers encouraging detainees to self-deport voluntarily were posted.
“They just put out a flyer saying for voluntary deportation and that they're going to give you $1,000 when you leave. That's a lie. That's a lie,” she said.
Despite her looming deportation, Olivera said the U.S. will always be home.
“I love this country,” she said.
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have not responded to Team 10’s multiple requests for comment on this story.
