Camilo and Pablo Dunoyer came to America as small children with their parents.
My only memories are in this country, there's nothing out there in Columbia for me.
I do feel like I'm American, I've assimilated into this country completely.
I mean I've lived here all my life.
In the late 90s their father Roberto was a government employee
working for Columbia's Finance Minister.
And a local guerilla tied to the FARC was extorting him.
They wanted him to funnel money to them from the treasury.
The FARC finances it's operations through kidnapping, ransom, extortion and drug trafficking.
When he refused to help steal money from the government, the group threatened his family.
The local police said they couldn’t protect them,
so the Dunoyers fled to America on a travel visa.
The family has been here ever since.
They own a house.
Roberto and his wife Consuela both work at American companies and pay their taxes.
Their oldest son Pablo is a college student majoring in engineering,
and Camilo is a senior in high school where he was elected prom king.
Neither have memory of their birth country.
But changes in federal immigration policy mean that this family
will likely be forced to leave America
before the end of the year.
If I were to be sent back there I wouldn't be able to communicate
I wouldn't be able to live normally, everything, every opportunity will be taken away
it's not the same there, it's a third world country over there.
And the possibility of even being murdered over there is a high chance.
When they arrived, the Dunoyers applied for asylum.
After a multi-year legal battle, they were denied
on the ground that Dunoyer’s political views weren’t the primary factor
in his decision to flee Colombia.
And then through a personal connection
the Dunoyers were introduced to San Diego Congressman Duncan L. Hunter.
He was moved by their story and agreed to use a special privilege, called a “private bill,”
that allows a Congress member to request deferred deportation in specific cases.
Congress members have filed such private bills on behalf of more than 1,900 immigrants since 1983.
Hunter used the power 13 times in his 28-year Congressional career.
After he retired, the congressman’s son, Duncan D. Hunter, was elected to the same seat
and he has continued filing paperwork every year to keep the family in the U.S.
Hunter, like his father, is a conservative republican and hardline restrictionist.
Seal off the border first, you have to build a wall, you gotta do E-Verify
so we know we're only hiring American citizens.
He’s on the record opposing birthright citizenship
and co-sponsored a bill that would reduce the number of refugees and unskilled immigrants
allowed in the United States.
I would not increase the number of refugees right now at all
or, period, the number of immigrants coming into the country legally right now.
Sorry that people come from bad places and not every place is America.
That's not my fault.
But Hunter believes that members of congress
should have the discretionary power to grant certain families, like the Dunoyers, political asylum.
It's a power that Donald Trump reined in with an executive order signed last January
that limited ICE’s discretion to defer deportations,
even in special asylum cases championed by members of congress.
ICE has to show discretion in cases like these and discernment.
But discernment is exactly what the Trump administration hoped eliminate
with its executive order and Homeland security memo announcing new zero tolerance policies.
I have put in place a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry on our southwest border.
How do you explain an apparent contradiction in using your powers as a congressman
to shepherd this particular family through
but on the other hand supported policies that do make it more difficult for asylum seekers.
I don't see any problem with that whatsoever, there's no contradiction
I'm elected to use my judgement on these things
and I think it's the same as, we help lots of veterans
a lot of guys fall through the cracks and I'm the only one that can help them
and I use my judgement and the staff uses their judgement here
to determine which of those cases merit the time and effort to do that.
And this was one of those cases.
To this day, the Dunoyer family receives threatening letters from the FARC
which are forwarded by a relative in Colombia.
You need to know that our organization is not played, reads one letter,
we will begin to crush and dismember one by one the members of your family;
this in order for you to pay what you have agreed with us.
As a 17 year old reading that someone wants to basically dismember your family
and that their goal is to ruin your lives and just make your life a living hell
it's just, it's terrible, it's awful, there's no way to express it.
ICE is aware of this threat, they've seen these letters and despite all this
they still want to send us back.
And now Congressman Hunter can no longer protect the family from deportation
thanks to Trump's zero tolerance policies.
According to the Dunoyers,
an ICE agent told them to prepare to leave the country within two weeks
following their next check-in with the agency, which is yet to be scheduled.
What are you worried might happen if you did have to return to Columbia now?
It's a hard question it is.
How we throw away 17 years into oblivion and start over it's difficult.
No, I don't know, I don't know.
While Hunter is sympathetic to the plight of the family
and says he wants to do what he can to help them,
he remains opposed to any measures that would make it easier for immigrants to enter the country.
There's lots of people that are seeking asylum that might not be politicians
but they're fleeing violence, they're fleeing cartel violence, gang violence-
Everybody's fleeing something.
Lots of these people arriving at the border might be legitimate asylum seekers
and they're just being either detained or turned back, do you think that's a problem?
I see what your'e saying, no I don't think that that's a big problem.
Once again this family got a visa to come into the United States first.
Do you think that they definition of asylum should be expanded a little bit to take into people-
No, no I think it's very simple, ICE needs to not be stupid.
Because you have the same cases when you have translators from Iraq and Afghanistan
and now Syria and Kurdistan, you have these translators that have been helping us
and this is really big in Iraq and Afghanistan, many military officers go to bat
to try to get their translators back over to the US.
So you would think out of anybody in the world,
who would have frontline permissions to having asylum and becoming a US citizen,
it's somebody that helped us for years with the US military,
was seen in their towns and villages in Iraq and Afghanistan
families being killed, death threats every day,
everybody knows that they're working with the Americans.
And they don't get ahead of the normal line, there are some cases but not all the time
and that's one of those dumb things too, that's a mistake.
Pablo and Camilo Dunoyer are hoping that somehow the family will be allowed to stay.
This country has, in a way, given us safety.
And we're thankful for that, we really are, we can't express that enough
the people who have come out and help us, people like Duncan Hunter,
it's all the people in this community.
Unfortunately right now the people who have the power over us
and who hold our lives in their hands aren't able to see it the way everyone else is seeing it.
And it's very frustrating.