CESAR LEGAL FUND

First I would like to thank each and every one of you for reading our story:

Cesar’s partner was born and raised in South Bend Washington. She moved to Grays Harbor in 2008. Cesar came to Renton, Washington in 2013 after his life and the life of his family was threatened by members of a violent drug cartel in Mexico. Cesar’s father told him he needed to leave and never come back, and that is just what he did, in 2015 he moved to Aberdeen, Washington.

Cesar and his partner met in 2017, he was a single dad and she was a single mom. They knew they were meant to be family from the beginning. The family enjoys traveling to pumpkin patches, parks, beaches and the arcade and they love to spend weekends on the family farm in South Bend. Cesar won the pole walk for South Bends “Come and Play Labor Day” event last year and works hard in the logging industry. He worked 5 to 6 days a week, 12 hours a day and  enjoyed playing baseball and being with his family on Sundays.

    Now here comes the sad part, on January 1st their neighbor got angry at them for walking up the stairs too loudly, they got very upset and started yelling at Cesar and his family, when Cesar asked them not to speak that way in front of his family and to come outside to discuss the matter his neighbor pulled a gun on him. The police and the city prosecutor refused to ask the neighbor to stop threatening Cesar. Later in January that same angry neighbor rear ended Cesar’s vehicle, it seems over the neighbor’s  impatience with Cesar waiting for someone in front of him to turn. Again, the police wanted to charge Cesar instead of the neighbor for the accident. When Cesar showed up for the hearing on his accident, he was arrested by ICE. His partner writes, “Our lives changed, (on that day in March) I watched my best friend/ partner be arrested by immigration! OUR WORST FEAR”.

    “His daughter and my son depend on him and love him so much! The three of them have an incredible bond! Cesar is the only father my son knows! This is very heartbreaking to all of us. Cesar hopes to one day coach a little league team, his children are his entire world, They need him and he needs them”.

    “I have had no choice (since Cesar has been in detention) but to work 45-62 hours per week just to be able to keep up with everything going on! Along with visiting Cesar 2 hours away 2-3 days a week depending on my work schedule! My son knows when it is the weekends we get to go see daddy, and he wakes up every day asking if it is the weekend so he can see him”.

    “Here is where help is needed. We have been blessed with the opportunity to have a lawyer that has faith in Cesar’s case. ( This lawyer has been very helpful in other Pacific County Immigrant support cases.)  But the problem is, we do not at all have the funds to be able to afford a lawyer….I am struggling to be able to make ends meet being a newly single mom again since all of this has happened. We were hoping that Cesar  would be able to ask for a Bond and be able to come home while he waits for court and decisions. But it seems as the new laws are passing, he has to wait in the detention center for 6 months before he is even eligible to ask for a bond hearing”.  

    “Whether it is $1, $5, $10... even just to share our story and say a prayer for us! We appreciate it all! This is one of the most difficult  times in our lives and I can’t imagine the children without their father.”