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Former Iowa City pastor deported in 2015 speaks out against Iowa immigration law
Max Villatoro’s deportation to Honduras gained national attention
IOWA CITY — After being deported in 2015, Max Villatoro spent years trying to piece together a life in Honduras and Mexico while his children were growing up without him in Iowa.
He was removed from the United States despite Eastern Iowa protests and 40,000 signatures from people around the country who didn’t think the Mennonite pastor and father should be deported.
“Those years you lose with your kids are never going to come back,” said Villatoro, 51. “I don’t have the same communication, with say, Anthony, as I used to. They grow up with themselves, kind of.”
Villatoro is back in Iowa legally, trying to reconnect with family and friends. But a new Iowa law threatens to disrupt the lives of Villatoro and other immigrants, he said. Senate File 2340 — temporarily blocked in federal court — allows the arrest and forced removal of immigrants if they previously had been deported or denied entry.
Judge Stephen Locher of the Southern District of Iowa ruled in June the Iowa law was preempted by federal law, which reserves enforcement of immigration laws to the U.S. government. The judge issued a preliminary injunction, pausing the state law while legal proceedings play out.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird on June 19 appealed that decision, sending the case to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The legislation would cause immigrants to leave Iowa at a time the state needs workers for construction, hospitality and agriculture, Villatoro told about 100 people gathered for a march and protest Monday night in Iowa City.
“If they run away from this state, you’re probably going to have to close businesses,” he told The Gazette. “They do the jobs nobody else wants to do.”
Whisked away without goodbyes
Early March 3, 2015, immigration agents pulled up in front of Max Villatoro’s Iowa City home, arresting him before he could tell his wife goodbye. He was one of more than 2,000 people arrested in a five-day nationwide sweep. About half the people taken into custody had been convicted of felonies, including involuntary manslaughter, child pornography, robbery, kidnapping and sexual assault, the federal government reported at the time.
Villatoro’s crimes, from 1999, were drunken driving and buying false identification so he could get a driver’s license. He pleaded guilty, served probation and paid a fine. At the time of his deportation, Villatoro’s children were ages 7 through 15.
Long-distance father
Villatoro was sent to Honduras, where had hadn’t lived in nearly 20 years. Without hope of reentry to the United States for at least a decade, he worked construction jobs in Honduras and Mexico — where it was easier for his children and wife, Gloria, to visit because she was born in Mexico, Villatoro said in a Tuesday interview.
He later became a permanent resident of Mexico, living in Ensenada, south of Tijuana. He started a business making concrete blocks for construction. Gloria and their younger children moved to Mexico, where Gloria sold hamburgers from their house. But it was a tough life without financial stability, Villatoro said.
“When we were discouraged in Mexico, our kids went back to USA because they don’t like Mexico,” he said.
Legal return to U.S. in 2021
Then, in 2021, Villatoro got a call from an immigration lawyer who asked whether the family could make it to the U.S.-Mexico border in three days. The world was grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and there was a 43 percent reduction in asylum admissions from the previous year, U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported.
They went with no records — Max’s Iowa driver’s license had expired and Gloria’s passport was no longer current — but they had faith.
“We just believed this time something good will happen,” Max Villatoro said.
The Villatoros got provisional work permits and plan to seek green cards through their adult children, who are U.S. citizens.
“They (immigrant officials) say ‘Welcome to USA. Don’t miss any of these appointments, because you can become a resident or even a citizen if you do everything right.’ They sent us to Iowa again,” Villatoro said. “It was a miracle. This is God.”
New life in Iowa
Villatoro does not want to return to the ministry while applying for permanent residency — in part because he felt badly about leaving his Spanish-speaking Mennonite congregation without a leader in 2015. Instead, he’s been doing small remodeling projects, yard work and painting.
The Villatoros’ youngest child, Aileen, now a student at Liberty High School, wrote about her father’s immigration struggle in the school newspaper in May.
“My father, Max Villatoro, got deported in 2015 and has endured so much to be happy and comfortable with our family,” she wrote in the piece co-written by Madelyn Johnson. “Some are quick to label undocumented immigrants as criminals and say they are taking jobs and opportunities. However, they add diversity and culture that raises the value of our country.”
Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com
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