A German family that unsuccessfully fought for asylum to send their children to school in the United States faces deportation next month — despite living in Tennessee for 15 years with the government’s blessing.
In 2014, the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security granted “deferred action” status to seven members of the Romeike family, who withdrew their children from the German public school system out of concern that it distorted their children’s individuality and attacked “family values.”
But earlier this month, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told the family they had four weeks to apply for German passports before their deportation – with zero explanation for the sudden deportation.
Deportation “will tear the family apart,” patriarch Uwe Romeike, 52, told The Post, his voice calm and weary.
The Romeike family’s life suddenly changed by the government has come more than a decade after Uwe Romeike and his wife, Hannelore, fled Bissingen, Germany with their then five children in violation of the country’s strict education laws, which effectively banned home schooling.
Uwe and Hannalore Romeike withdrew their children from public school in Germany after seeing how it affected their personalities.Facebook Hannelore Romeike
The couple, who are evangelical Christians, decided to educate their children themselves after witnessing how their children’s “whole personality” changed and suffered health problems while attending public school, Uwe Romeike said.
The content of their children’s textbooks, which included concepts contrary to their religion such as pro-abortion and homosexuality, as well as insulting “family values,” further eroded parents’ trust in public schools, according to court documents.
“The content we found there was contrary to what we believed,” said Uwe Romeike. “Why would you teach children to disrespect parents? Why do you trust Satan instead of God?”
After being fined more than $7,000 for pulling their children out of the public school system — and having police show up at their door to escort their children to public school — the Romeikes moved to Morristown, Tenn., where they filed for asylum, according to court documents .
The three-judge panel ruled against the Romeikes’ asylum claim because they did not prove how they were mistreated by German authorities enforcing the country’s school attendance laws. Facebook Lydia Romeike Bates
A Tennessee immigration judge granted the family asylum in 2010, but that ruling was overturned and a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled against them, with Judge Jeffrey Sutton writing that Romeikes failed to prove how German authorities enforced school attendance laws “equally with persecution.”
The US Supreme Court declined to review the Romeikes’ case in 2014, but DHS granted them permission to remain under a surveillance order and an indefinite deferred action.
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In their decade and a half in Morristown, the Romeikes and their children, ages 10 to 26, are well established in their community.
Uwe and Hannalore are homeschooling their three youngest children, including two who were born in the United States, while two of their grown children are married American citizens.
“We are not a financial burden to the government,” said Uwe Romeike, who once worked as a pianist at nearby Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City. “We pay our taxes, we contribute to society and in society.”
Immigration experts say the glacial pace of Romeike’s deportations is likely because authorities treat their cases as a low priority — but it’s only a matter of time before the feds revoke their ability to remain in the US.
Many of the family’s supporters blasted the Biden administration for spending its resources on deporting the Romeikes, rather than tracking the more than 1.5 million immigrants who entered the United States illegally in the past three years.
“As millions of illegal immigrants flood our southern border and disappear into our country, your immigration authorities have chosen to punish families who have built their lives in Tennessee within the legal parameters of our immigration system,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R- Tennessee) wrote this week in a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Immigration legal experts say despite receiving deferred action status, Romeike’s days in the US are numbered. Facebook Hannelore Romeike
Republican US Representative Diana Harshbarger, whose district includes Morristown, introduced legislation that would grant families permanent resident status.
A petition started by the Home School Legal Defense Association urging the Biden administration to restore their deferred status has received more than 70,000 signatures so far.
“In the face of this uncertainty, and the potential for radical change in their lives, they will smile, they will laugh, they will talk to you,” said Kevin Boden, Romeikes’ lawyer and director of HSLDA International. “They have incredible determination.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
