When she went to work Wednesday – the day her nightmare immigration story were made public – she was terrified about how her colleagues would react to her illegal status.
“I was sweating, nauseous, worried,” she said. “I know in America people are very against illegal immigrants. I expected a lot of negative comments.”
Instead, she was embraced. “It was very emotional. From my coworkers to my supervisors – it was just unbelievable. Some patients were asking be if the could contact Congress.”
In fact, no one had to call: Congress was already on the phone.
While Belounis did her nurse’s rounds, U.S. Senator Michael Bennet’s office and U.S. Representative Scott Tipton reached out to David Wyatt, Belouniss’s husband – a U.S. citizen she met twenty years ago while on the U.S. Pro Ski Tour and married in 2013 at the La Plata County Clerk & Recorder’s Office– asking what they could do to help.
David Wyatt, who was so anxious that ICE officials would seize Belouniss, he became sick, said it was surreal. “They say they’re going to help us. Until them, we were alone. It just means the world to me and Sonia,” he said.
While Democrat Bennet and Republican Tipton hold wildly different positions on how to reform America’s immigration laws, the unlikely allies united in becoming champions for Belouniss and Wyatt - individuals whose lives were in crisis and at the mercy of an indifferent bureaucracy.
Josh Green, a Tipton spokesman, said situations like Belouniss’s and Wyatts are too common.
He said Belouniss’s like of rights as a visa waiver program violator was “a really unfortunate aspect of the situation. We certainly encourage anyone who’s having similar issues with a federal agency to get in touch with our office,” he said.
The support extended to Belouniss was not limited to powerful politicians.
Belouniss and Wyatt reported being overwhelmed by hundreds of encouraging messages from friends, family and absolute strangers through Facebook.
On comment boards, news of Belouniss’s plight provoked outcry, much of it from our small community.
On the Herald’s website, Richard Miller wrote, “I know David and Sonia. Her departure from Durango would be a loss. It’s unfortunate that a bunch of idiotic bureaucrats don’t recognize the value that people bring to a community.”
Others directed their anger at illegal immigrants who some viewed as less deserving of citizenship than Belouniss.
On Facebook, Dusty Beals wrote, “This is a fine example of how broken our immigration policy is. We welcome with open arms the majority of illegals who come across our southern border... Most of them join our welfare system. This young lady has done everything right to make a life here and be a responsible citizen and she is being treated like a criminal. She should be at the front of the citizenship line, not facing deportation!”
Others disputed this type of logic. Frannie Metz said, “ You people are idiots. You think that because ‘she has a good heart’ and because she’s French and not Mexican that she should be permitted to stay in this country? … You all sound like racists.”
Sylvia Malagon said, “There are millions of undocumented immigrants just like the nurse in the story: good, hardworking people striving to make a better life for their families. They are paying taxes (they pay via an ITIN number) yet getting no benefits. Fox News and others have painted an ugly but very unrealistic picture of illegal immigration.”
But many people seemed to recognize in Belouniss’s story – whereby one mistake leaves a family abject and utterly powerless to stop the wheels of powerful government bureaucracy – something deep, human and vulnerable.
Dawn LaMarre-Shafer said, “What a terrible way to have to live! Our system is in despair need of repair. We have a working woman married to a US citizen and they incarcerate her for a month like a criminal? … ...let them be.
David Simmons, an immigration lawyer in Denver, said, “there’s a certain amount of cruelty inherent in all immigration laws. It’s unusual for someone to go to prison for a month. But the overall situation, in which people married to U.S. citizens face deportation, is not unusual at all.”
“Congress has to realize it’s dealing with human beings, not numbers,” he said.
He said it’s easy to sympathize with someone like Belouniss, whose life and marriage are in jeopardy due to a technical mistake.
But he said the public tends to be “schizophrenic” when it comes to illegal immigrants, urging immigration officials to “vigorously go after people who they don’t like and vigorously not apply the law for people who they do like.”
He said as a public relations matter, Belouniss is able to transcend the xenophobia that courses through the national immigration debate – and often finds expression by demonizing Hispanic immigrants as scheming geopolitical opportunists piggybacking on American taxpayer.
“People look at her, and say, ‘Of course we shouldn’t deport this white French pro skier. We like her! But we should go after a Mexican landscaper with the full fury and might of the United States government, even though legally, they’re both immigration violators,” he said.
Though it’s unlikely that Congress will pass immigration reform, and Belouniss still might be deported at any moment, she has allies in Durango and across the world.
On Facebook, Tiphaine Toullec wrote about Belouniss: “De tout Coeur avec toi” – in English, “my whole heart is with you.”
