Judge postpones Perez kids’ hearing again, families wait

Perez kids’ – In Palm Beach County, Florida, 13-year-old Cynthia Perez and her siblings—US citizens—prepare to testify by video in their mother Olga Perez’s final immigration hearing. After months with both parents detained, the children are met with another delay: the hear

When the sun finally rose over Lake Worth Beach, Florida, Cynthia Perez barely ate her waffles and strawberries. At the kitchen table, the 13-year-old kept looking toward the day that was supposed to end in an answer.

“I’m nervous,” she told Mariana Blanco, brushing her long brown hair as Blanco sat close and tried to steady her.

It was a March morning with a deadline built into it. The Perez children—US citizens—were missing school and work to testify via video in their mother Olga Perez’s final immigration hearing. where a judge would decide whether Olga would come home or be deported to Guatemala. Cynthia’s siblings—15-year-old Romeo Jr. 18-year-old Jessica. and 21-year-old Eliza—had been living with the same pressure for months. even as they tried to keep routines going for each other.

Both parents had been detained since last fall. Their father, Romeo Sr., was held first at “Alligator Alcatraz” and then transferred to a detention center in Georgia. Their mother was taken to a federal facility in Arizona. With their parents gone. the kids leaned on Blanco and each other. threading school assignments. jobs. and meals through a kind of constant alarm.

Cynthia told Blanco she wasn’t sure what she would say if asked, “If your mom gets deported, what are you gonna do?” She took a bite and answered quietly: “I’m not ready for a new life in a whole different country.”

Even that question carried a weight that was hard for a child to hold—whether to stay in the US and finish school, or to uproot themselves and go with their parents abroad. The family had to imagine a future that might not let them stay together.

The hearing was only one step, but it was a step the kids had been chasing. They had already prepared for this moment before. Jessica testified last week. Eliza testified too. Romeo Jr. was preparing to give his own statement. coached by a colleague who urged him to think about his goals: “I want to be a doctor; how am I gonna be a doctor in Guatemala?”.

The day’s emotions were not hypothetical. They were shaped by what happened after the arrests—and by what the children learned about detention through what their parents said when they could call.

Eliza recalled her father describing the conditions at Alligator Alcatraz as “really cold,” with no sweaters or blankets and only “one thin blanket, like a napkin.” Jessica added that their father said they were “crowded in one room.”

And their mother’s situation was even harder for the family to picture with any certainty. Olga has diabetes, she had been hospitalized, and guards handcuffed her to her bed, Jessica said—while a guard told her, “Everybody knows you’re a criminal.”

The uncertainty around Olga’s hearing has also meant uncertainty about whether the children themselves are going to be able to keep living as one family. Blanco described it as unbearable—“the unbearable uncertainty will be over. One way or the other, their mom will get out of detention.”

But the Perez children learned, as they sat waiting, that “over” can be postponed.

Earlier in their story, their family’s world changed before they understood how quickly it could happen. Last fall, their father was detained on his way to work. Jessica described how their family had relied on an app that let each member track the others’ whereabouts—an effort to keep tabs on something they feared. When Romeo Sr.’s location icon moved farther than expected. toward Miami and then “terrifyingly. toward the Everglades. ” the family said they “didn’t really have a plan. ” only that they had to keep his landscaping company going.

Weeks later, before sunrise on a day during Thanksgiving break, Olga woke Cynthia. Olga was about to head out with Eliza and Romeo Jr. to mow lawns. Cynthia asked to stay home, tired. Then Jessica nudged her out.

They drove to their aunt’s nearby house—an aunt who is sick with cancer. whose name they asked not be printed. The girls arrived to find Eliza and Romeo Jr. already crying. Eliza later said it happened because the Florida Highway Patrol pulled over their family truck and Olga was taken into federal custody.

That was the first time the children felt how fast the family’s ground could disappear. Jessica had a panic attack. She said her mom usually calmed her, and in the absence of that voice she fell to the floor.

That night, the siblings didn’t stay together. They stopped at the aunt’s home just long enough to fetch clothes, toothbrushes, and essentials. Cynthia grabbed Pusheen, a cat plushie her dad had given her. Then the siblings left the bunkroom they all shared—decorated with Eliza’s manga and K-pop collections—and headed back to the aunt’s. They didn’t know how long.

Even afterward, the days were still defined by what was missing. Eliza dropped out of college where she planned to study computer science after her parents were detained; she took over the family landscaping business and to help pay rent.

Romeo Jr. became the stoic one, dreaming about becoming a surgeon. Jessica, described as bubbly and creative, was considering military service after high school.

But the roles didn’t erase the grief. Eliza said she felt the family getting quieter after the arrests. Cynthia described herself as “the annoying” one who used to joke and tease her siblings—then admitted, softly, that now she “just don’t want to do nothing.”

Blanco’s job became part parenting, part logistics, part stabilizer. She is director of operations at the Guatemalan-Maya Center in Lake Worth Beach, and she also helps coordinate support around the Perez children.

She spent part of the hearing day preparing them to talk to a judge, asking Cynthia what she would say if the worst outcome came.

Before any testimony, the center held prayer. Father Frank O’Loughlin, an elderly priest who founded the center decades ago, arrived with teacher Maria de la Guardia. De la Guardia held Cynthia’s face and told her: “Nothing you say or do will doom your mom.” Then she added the truth Cynthia didn’t want to hear: “But Cynthia. if she’s not. nothing you said or did will make the difference.”.

Cynthia tried not to cry.

When Father Frank asked them to pray, Cynthia sat on a couch next to Jessica and Romeo Jr. as they repeated prayers and rosary responses. They signed the cross and leaned forward to wait.

At 11:30 a.m., the hearing was due to start. The children entered a room by themselves with a laptop to talk with the judge. Cynthia squeezed a green stress toy. Minutes passed. Then Blanco came in with news.

The hearing was postponed again.

Another week.

Blanco told them the decision wasn’t happening today, and the children dropped their heads. The hearing had already been postponed four times. One time they had waited in front of the computer for hours before the judge notified them. Another delay meant another lost day—work and school missed for an outcome that still wasn’t allowed to arrive.

“It almost seems,” Blanco later said, describing how it can wear families down, “like they are trying to wear you out, so you say, ‘Screw this, I’m done with it.’”

The family had not just lost time. They had lost the illusion that time could be controlled.

On the same day they were transported to Olga’s hearing and then turned around and brought her back to detention, Blanco said the process felt like an intentional kind of exhaustion. The children described it with anger that sounded almost too big for their faces.

Jes­sica began to cry. Romeo Jr. said he loves his siblings but he loves his mom more, and he also told them he wouldn’t be there forever to take care of them if the delays dragged on.

Blanco called it “disrespectful.” She said the anxiety leading up to one of the biggest days of the children’s lives—and having to do that over and over again—was torture, and that “the lack of regard for people in the system is shocking.”

The day didn’t end with the judge’s delay. It ended with Olga calling from detention, crying, saying she couldn’t do it anymore. Cynthia and Eliza cried too. Blanco knelt on the floor beside them, hands on their knees, while Romeo Jr. squeezed his green stress toy. Jessica tried to rally them—promising, “One more week, I promise you, Mami!”—before they fist-bumped.

The hearing would be postponed again, a bad dream that wouldn’t end.

For the Perez kids, that isn’t abstract. It’s measured in skipped school, missed work, and the way an ordinary day—wake up, eat breakfast, leave for class—turns into something else every time the screen stays blank.

Even after months of preparing, they still had to keep planning for what might come next.

Cynthia said she wanted to be with her mom if Olga is deported—but she wasn’t sure she’d move to Guatemala. She told Blanco she wanted to be a veterinarian and that she believed the education would be different there. “It’s gonna be so different,” she said, describing how her grandmothers live in the mountains.

Jessica was also uncertain. Romeo Jr. said he wanted to stay in the United States for med school so he could become a surgeon.

Eliza. practical as always. said she was thinking she’d move to Guatemala. even as she tried to manage the heartbreak of dividing the family unit. “I love my siblings a lot. but I love my mom a lot more. ” she had said. adding. “I told them. ‘You guys need to have a plan; I won’t be here to take care of you.’”.

With Olga on the phone, they tried not to imagine the worst. Jessica joked to cheer Cynthia up, saw Cynthia crying, and hugged her. She put an arm around Eliza and grabbed Romeo Jr. too. The siblings huddled together and Jessica started singing. laughing a little through their tears as they tried to remind each other of what was still there.

Within a few months, their mother and father were expected to be ordered back to Guatemala, according to their family’s account.

On this March morning, though, the only certain thing was the waiting.

At the end of the day, Cynthia sat with the knowledge that she could prepare for a judge’s decision as many times as she was asked—but the decision could still be taken away, postponed again, leaving her and her siblings to keep living inside the pause.

ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement Olga Perez Cynthia Perez Romeo Perez Jessica Perez Eliza Perez Guatemala Florida Palm Beach County federal detention deportation hearing DHS video testimony Guatemalan-Maya Center