Scottish Catholic Observer

A ten year-old girl who asked Pope Francis to stop her father from being deported from the USA was finally reunited with him last weekend.

Jersey Vargas travelled to the Vatican earlier this week as part of a group delivering 1300 letters to the Pope from children of undocumented immigrants worried that their families would be separated by deportation.

Jersey was the only one of the group to manage to speak to the Pope during the trip, and greeted him with a napkin her mother embroidered with ‘nido de armor’ (“nest of love” in Spanish) before asking him to tell President Obama to stop deportations.

Jersey’s father Mario Vargas-Lopez was freed from a detention centre in Louisiana and reunited with his family in Los Angeles last Friday.

After serving a six-month sentence for drink driving, he was then detained by US Immigration before facing deportation.

Her mother Lola Vargas was raising the $5000 bond to free Mr Vargas-Lopez, but television footage of Jersey pleading with the Pope persuaded another relative to help.

Following the campaign for his release, Jersey spoke about her mother’s struggles looking after the family when her father working in construction in Tennessee and then detained.

“It’s been very hard since my dad hasn’t been home,” Jersey said. “My mom has had to be the provider for my family, she’s been the mother and father for two years.”

Despite Jersey’s public plea to the Pope, the bond amount was not changed and Vargas-Lopez is still required to stay in communication with ICE and tell agency officials where he is pending his next court appearance.

The family’s lawyer Alex Galvez agreed that the release was unrelated to the daughter’s visit with the Pope saying that her message to the Catholic leader was related to the “larger need” to improve an immigration system in the United States that separates families.