Marisela Vallejos arrived in Nicaragua from Miami Jan. 8 on American Airlines flight number 969. It was the worst journey of her life. There were no words of comfort that could alleviate the grief she felt since she had been torn away from her little children. That Wednesday afternoon she became yet another victim of our hopelessly broken immigration system. She became one more of the thousands of immigrants who are deported after they have lived without documents in the United States – deported while their children, born in this country, remain here.

Vallejos' suffering was all the greater for knowing that her children, Cecia, 12, and Ronald, 7, had declared that they were going on a hunger strike to try to keep her from being deported. For 48 hours they remained on constant vigil in front of the immigration detention center in Pompano Beach, FL, where their mother had been held pending an appeal since the middle of December. But it was all in vain.

Like most of the cases of immigrants facing deportation, hers was complex. She crossed the border without documents with her infant daughter over a decade ago, in order to reunite with her husband who was living in the United States. They believed the family would be able to legalize its status under the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA). What Vallejos and her husband never expected was that their case would be rejected, that she would receive a deportation order, and that their four-year-long appeal process would turn out to be useless.

I wonder whether this is the sort of case President Barack Obama had in mind when he answered my question about whether he would consider a moratorium on immigration raids. “Well, one of the things Janet Napolitano will be doing is taking a look at what we have done in the past. What has been successful and what has not been successful.” he answered. “I want to be sure that we are operating in a manner consistent with our values, one that is humane. I do not want to see mothers separated from their children because of a policy that has not been analyzed in depth and that is ultimately not the key to resolving our immigration problems.”

Napolitano has only recently taken over the Department of Homeland Security, and it is not clear whether she has had time yet to “take a look at what we have done in the past,” but what is clear is that she wants to sweep the streets clean of “foreign criminals.” In one of her first comments on the subject of immigration, she said she was examining existing programs for applying the immigration laws in order to see whether or not taxpayers are getting “the best return for what they pay in taxes.”

The new immigration boss said that she is going to also pursue fugitive criminals who are in the country without documentation.

The question is whether people like Vallejos and her husband, whose supposed “crime” was to come to this country in search of a better life, will be considered “criminals.” As well, whether Vallejos’ deportation, separating her from her U.S.-born children, is “humane and consistent with our values.”

There is great hope in this land that the inadequate immigration system will be corrected under the new administration. But up to this moment, it is more of the same. An immigration reform, which opens the road toward legalization for undocumented immigrants, might have saved Marisela Vallejos from deportation, and her children would not have to be suffering the pain of separation from their mother.