[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 50 (Friday, March 17, 2023)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E227]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HONORING GUALTERIO SANTOS

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. J. LUIS CORREA

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, March 17, 2023

  Mr. CORREA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the achievements of 
Gualterio Santos.
  Gualterio Santos was an immigrant from a village in Oaxaca, Mexico 
who came to the United States when he was only sixteen years old and 
fought to avoid being separated from his wife, Sebastiana Morales, and 
their seven children.
  In November of 2017, he learned of a deportation order for him. He 
spent the past two years, thinking that at any moment the Immigration 
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents would come to arrest him.
  In October of 2019, the situation worsened when ICE agents were 
transporting him to the Mexican border into Tijuana was stopped when 
his attorney Crooms obtained an order pausing his expulsion.
  In December of 2019, a few days before Christmas Day, a miracle 
happened. Monica Crooms, an attorney fighting his case told him that 
his deportation order had been cancelled.
  Santos has lived in the United States too long to not consider the 
country, like Mexico, his home. He came to the United States in 1991 
and was a street vendor in Washington Heights, New York for nearly a 
decade.
  In 2000, he got lost in Michigan and crossed into Canada, and when he 
returned to the United States, ICE officers warned him that they were 
filing a complaint for which he had to appear before a judge in 
Detroit, Michigan.
  In 2003, without receiving a notification, Santos and his family 
moved to Southern California. The Santos opened a small flower shop 
called Santos Flowers that today became a chain of several stores, 
employing more than twenty people. He became known as ``the king of 
flowers.''
  He submitted his application for a green card when he thought about 
regularizing his situation. In August of 2017 he was summoned to a 
hearing, only to learn that the Detroit judge had waited for him and in 
his absence, had ordered his deportation in 2000.
  Santos was a well-liked man in the city for his contribution to the 
local economy, fifteen years he had created a distribution network that 
took his flowers to more than one hundred and fifty supermarkets. The 
judge received letters from politicians and community leaders asking 
him to seek legal pathways for Santos not to be deported. Gualterio 
Santos, an Oaxacan entrepreneur, considers the support given to him by 
officials in Santa Ana helped him recover his freedom. Santos is 
grateful for his second chance in the United States of America.
  I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring and celebrating the 
achievements of Gualterio Santos.

                          ____________________