Earlier this week, Queens couple Cristina Ojeda and Monica Alcota were able to celebrate their marriage for the first time without the fear of deportation threatening their future.
For two years, Ojeda, 26, and Alcota, 36, having been fighting to keep Argentina-born Alcota in the U.S., arguing that denying her a green card based on the Defense of Marriage and Family Act (DOMA) is discrimination.
Monday, the couple’s lawyer, Lavi Soloway received a letter stating the deportation case against Alcota was closed November 30 after immigration Judge Terry Bain’s ruling.
Soloway said the government “moved in the right direction in the time we needed.”
In 2009, Alcota had been living in the U.S. for ten years after overstaying her visa. In July 2009, she was pulled a Greyhound bus, taken to New Jersey, and thrown in immigration detention. For three months, Ojeda traveled hours every day to visit her beloved.
In 2010, the couple married in Connecticut, as New York had not yet legalized gay marriage, and until Monday, had lived in fear that at any moment, the wives could be sent away.
