Some of you got in touch with me last week after the first of my posts about the deportation of Josefina Perez.
You wanted to know how you could help Perez and her three children, who are struggling to scrounge together money they’ll need to get from Tijuana to the central Mexican state of Puebla when Perez is deported at the end of this month.
Perez has been selling tamales and organizing weekend yard sales as she packs up the belongings she and her family accumulated during 13 years living in the United States. In early March, Manuel Guzman, her longtime partner and the father of her three children, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the family’s Linda Vista apartment and deported.
Perez was also arrested, but her deportation was temporarily stayed so her two youngest children, U.S. citizens, could finish the school year.
On Friday, I caught up with Trinidad Wilkinson, an employee of Linda Vista’s Bayside Community Center and told her of readers’ interest in helping the Perez family. She has been helping them raise money for the trip to rejoin Guzman.
She said anyone interested in helping the Perez family with monetary donations could send a check, payable to the Bayside Community Center, to:
Attn: Trinidad Wilkinson
Bayside Community Center
2202 Comstock St.
San Diego, CA 92111
She asked that donors write Josefina Perez’s name on the check’s memo line or on a slip of paper accompanying the donation. You can contact Wilkinson directly at (858) 278-0771.
For the next two weeks you can also visit the Bayside Community Center on Fridays between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m., when Wilkinson has been holding rummage sales to raise money for the family’s trip. Over the last several weeks, she said, the sales have raised about $477 of the $1,200 the family needs to raise. You’ll likely find Perez there, too, Wilkinson said, selling her tamales.
— ADRIAN FLORIDO