One of the many unfortunate aspects of the Trump reign is that it has me more meanspirited. I find I take special delight when something bad happens to any of his supporters who, of course, are legion. This is obviously bad for the soul, but I nonetheless revel in such occurrences.
Take, for example, the case of Cynthia Olivera, a Canadian living in the United States and married to an American. To hear Cynthia's version, she has been ill-used, having been brought to the U.S. by her parents "without permission" when she was 10 years old. She married an American and has three children, and both she and husband Francisco were cheerful advocates of Trump's deportation policies until they affected Cynthia.
The family of a Canadian national who supported Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations of immigrants say they are feeling betrayed after federal agents recently detained the woman in California while she interviewed for permanent US residency – and began working to expel her from the country.
“We feel totally blindsided,” Cynthia Olivera’s husband – US citizen and self-identified Trump voter Francisco Olivera – told the California news station KGTV. “I want my vote back.”
By 1999, when she was about 19, US immigration officials at the Buffalo border crossing had determined Olivera was living in the country without legal status and obtained an expedited order to deport her. But, after being removed, she was able to return to the US by driving to San Diego from Mexico within a few months.
In 2024, toward the end of his presidency, Joe Biden’s administration granted her a permit allowing her to work legally in the US. She had also been navigating the process to obtain legal permanent US residency, colloquially referred to as a green card, for years.
Apparently, the generosity of the Biden presidency was not appreciated, the family putting their full support behind Trump. Despite living and working for 25 years in the United States, Cynthia was soon to fall victim to the very policy she ardently supported, a spokesperson saying in a statement that Cynthia was “an illegal alien from Canada”.
Olivera had been “previously deported and chose to ignore our law and again illegally entered the country”, said the spokesperson’s statement, as reported by Newsweek. The statement noted that re-entering the US without permission after being deported is a felony, and it said Olivera would remain in Ice’s custody “pending removal to Canada”.
For some it is a sobering experience when they learn they are not so special, and the rules they thought applied only to others come knocking on their door.
Karma does, indeed, bite.