A beneficiary of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program who killed two children in a hit and run accident has been released from jail and will be able to return to the the protections of the program, according to OregonLive.com.
Cinthya Garcia-Cisneros, an illegal immigrant who came to the U.S. from Mexico as a child and was shielded from deportation by DACA, was convicted of two counts of felony hit and run after she killed two Forest Grove, Oregon stepsisters — Anna Dieter-Eckerdt and Abigail Robinson ages 6 and 11 respectively — playing in a leaf pile last October.
Last week, as OregonLive.com reported Tuesday, a judge dismissed a deportation case against Garcia-Cisneros and as a result of the ruling, her attorney says she is able to go back under the protections of DACA — meaning she can obtain a work permit and Social Security number.
The DACA program is what allowed Garcia-Cisnero to obtain a driver’s license.
A U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement spokesman told the Oregon publication that “it is within [the department’s] discretion to look into whether or not a case should be charged again.”
The children’s parents said they forgave Garcia-Cisneros and urged the judge to sentence her to probation — which he did — earlier this year.
Garcia-Cisneros remained in jail due to the immigration case against her.
“Today is like any other day without our girls. Through our grief we have chosen to love and celebrate the joy that they have brought into our lives and the lives of so many others,” Susan Dieter-Robinson, Dieter-Eckerdt’s mother and Robinson’s stepmother, said in a statement to Portland’s KGW following the dismissal of the deportation case.
“We don’t want Anna and Abigail’s lives to be remember by the tragedy but rather by the love story they are all teaching us to live,” she added.
According to KGW, Garcia-Cisnero will still be on probation for her criminal conviction until January 2017.
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