PHILADELPHIA — Last week, Karen Serrano Roberts, the Yeadon mother of five who has been stuck in an immigration nightmare for nearly two years, turned 32. Alone in Mexico.
It wasn't exactly a celebration.
"I woke up crying," she said the next day on a phone call. "It's not the same. You want to forget it's your birthday. You're lonely. Then I just pray, and then it's just like something lifts off of me. It's just the most amazing, radical thing."
That radical thing, she said, was the lifting of a depression that has come in waves over the past 20 months she has been separated from her husband, LaMar Roberts, and their five children, all U.S. citizens.
While she may have sounded in good spirits the day she spoke to a reporter, there have been times when she has felt a deep, dark depression. So dark that it scared her.
"There was a time, two months ago, when I just couldn't stop crying. I was crying for days, and it wouldn't stop."
But Karen's birthday isn't the only one on the minds of the Roberts family.
Karen is nearly seven months pregnant.
LaMar and the children have been able to visit her in Mexico from time to time. Now, the couple is expecting a baby girl by late May or early June.
The baby is one reason Karen said she has worked hard to fight off depression and stress.
"I have a baby coming and being depressed is not going to help me at all," she said.
LaMar and the children visited her earlier this month to celebrate the birthdays of their two oldest children.
Dulce is now 17 and Lamar Jr. is 16 after their February birthdays. The other three children are Nathan, 12; Jade, 9; and Essence, 6. The younger children will celebrate birthdays in April and May.
On Karen's birthday, with her family back in Yeadon, LaMar bought a cake from a grocery store and he and the children called her by FaceTime to sing "Happy Birthday" to her.
Karen said the children are excited about welcoming a baby sister, but LaMar is continually stressed. He is especially worried about now having two family members stranded in Mexico.
"We are nervous. We don't want her to have the baby there," he said.
But Karen said she is experiencing a peace she said she can only attribute to prayer and her faith in God:
"We are thinking of naming the baby Grace."
An ill-advised trip to Mexico
Karen Roberts was brought to the United States from Mexico when she was 4 without legal documents.
Last week's birthday on Feb. 22 was the second birthday she has spent in Mexico since she traveled there in July 2021 on the advice of a lawyer. Experts say it was an ill-advised trip. The lawyer, who had handled a tax case for her husband, said he could help Karen apply for a green card. She and LaMar were married 11 years ago, on Feb. 18, 2012.
That first lawyer told her to appear at the U.S. Consulate's office in Ciudad Juárez to apply for legal admission to the U.S.
Her new immigration lawyer, Thomas Griffin, however, said the nearly two-year family separation might not have happened had Karen first applied for and received an I-601A waiverfrom the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency for having been in the United States without documentation for most of her life.
Without the waiver, the law calls for her to wait 10 years before being able to return, Griffin told The Inquirer in an earlier story on her case.
With the waiver, she could have remained home in Yeadon and applied for her green card while staying in the United States.
A word from the White House
In another development, LaMar has received a letter from the White House, dated Jan. 25, 2023.
It said the White House staff "have reviewed your correspondence and forwarded it to the appropriate Federal agency for further action."
It is essentially a form letter signed by "the White House" and not by President Joe Biden.
LaMar wasn't excited about getting it, and he said it didn't really offer any hope.
All it means is the White House is turning his letter over to USCIS, the same immigration agency that LaMar and Karen have been appealing to through their new immigration lawyer since 2021.
"We haven't heard anything that's really helpful," he said.
And his work as a contractor is drying up. He is struggling to pay bills and he has to hustle to find work to make sure his five children eat and go to school every day.
He has set up a Go Fund Me page, "Help Bring My Wife Home," to help finance living expenses for his family here and expenses for his wife in Mexico.
"I have to provide for two households," he said.
In addition, his mother, Roselee Roberts, and cousin, Darlene Major, started a Change.org petition asking USCIS to acknowledge the "extreme hardship" on the family and expedite a waiver in Karen's case. It also calls for a reform in immigration laws.
As for Karen, she is drawing strength from a religious conviction she said is growing despite being separated from her family:
"I just pray and continue to have faith and trust in God. Trusting God, that's all I have right now."
