Débora Rey and Martín Verdi, an Argentine couple with U.S. citizenship, voted for Donald Trump in last November’s election, convinced by his “tough on illegal immigrants” approach. What they never imagined was that Trump’s new policies would come crashing down on their own son, Agustín Gentile — an Argentine national, but a fully legal U.S. resident with a valid green card.
Gentile is 31 years old and has lived in the United States since he was 13. He is the father of two American children, ages six and eight, and is now in prison, on the verge of deportation, after immigration authorities seized his green card due to a minor criminal record.
That happened last February, when he arrived from abroad at Los Angeles Airport. On April 14, while showing up for an appointment in his hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, he was detained and taken to the Stewart Center in Georgia, about 850 kilometers away.
The Argentine consulate in Atlanta has been aware of the situation since April 21 and has provided assistance to the family, according to official sources.
“Betrayed and deceived”: the reaction of the parents of the Argentine who could be expelled by Trump
Rey and Verdi traveled by land to Atlanta, Georgia. They are now waiting for their son to face a court hearing, which will not be before May 12. They have no doubts about Trump and the vote of confidence they had given him. “We feel betrayed,” they told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia’s main newspaper.
The criminal record that led to Gentile’s arrest is a minor battery conviction in California in 2020. For that case, he received five years of probation, which was later reduced to three, and the case was closed in 2023.
According to immigration documents cited by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, immigration authorities believe he committed “acts that constitute the essential elements of a crime involving moral turpitude.”
“This is crazy. My son tells me that, where he is now, he’s the only person who has papers. Everyone else is undocumented,” Rey told the Georgia newspaper. She and her husband drove nine hours from their home in North Carolina to visit Agustín.
The couple acknowledged supporting Trump’s policies, hoping he would target undocumented criminals. “But he didn’t say he was going to do this, that he was going to go after people who have been here for a long time,” the woman complained.
Verdi added that Trump “said he was going to go after all the criminals who came here illegally,” citing examples such as the case of Laken Riley, a student killed by a Venezuelan immigrant without legal status.
Regretting their vote, Rey and Verdi now face a painful irony. “We wouldn’t have voted for him if we had known this,” they asserted. “What he committed was a massive deception.”