KGW.com: An immigration judge has dropped the deportation case against Cinthya Garcia-Cisneros, the woman who struck and killed two Forest Grove girls playing in piles of leaves. Brought to the U.S. from Mexico as a young child, Garcia-Cisneros had temporary permission to be in the country through the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“Ms. Garcia-Cisneros was released from ICE custody Aug. 14 after an immigration judge dismissed her case,” said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Andrew S. Munoz.. KXL radio first reported the news of the decision.
Munoz referred further questions to Department of Justice officials, who declined to release any details of the release to KGW.
She contacted Washington County Community Corrections officials on Monday and met with a probation officer, said assistant director Joe Simich. Her probation officially started on Jan. 31 and will end Jan. 31, 2017, he said. She was credited for time served while held by immigration officials, he said.
Under terms of her probation, she is not to contact victims and she needs to schedule her 250 hour of community service. She also surrendered her driver’s license. Simich said.
On Oct. 20, stepsisters Anna Dieter-Eckerdt, 6, and Abby Robinson, 11, were alone in the street, playing in a leaf pile when Garcia-Cisneros drove through it, felt a bump and kept going. Garcia-Cisneros, 19, was found guilty Jan. 15 on two counts of failure to perform the duties of a driver.
She was sentenced to three years probation and 250 hours of community service in a courtroom packed with the victims’ emotional friends and family. She was released from the Washington County Jail within and taken into federal custody on an immigration hold.
“Cinthya, I forgive you. I do,” Anna’s mother and Abby’s stepmother Susan Dieter-Robinson said through tears while looking straight at Garcia-Cisneros during the sentencing. “There are consequences to our behaviors. That’s what we told our girls.”
She told the court how horrible it has been to live through this tragedy in the public eye. While reading her prepared statement, Dieter-Robinson took everyone through her emotions the night of Oct. 20, 2013. She explained how it had been the perfect fall day and the girls were so happy. She wasn’t home when she got the frantic call from her husband, Tom Robinson, of the terrible news.
The girls had been playing in a freshly-raked leaf pile in the street when Tom Robinson briefly went inside. That’s when Garcia-Cisneros, on her way home with her brother and boyfriend, drove through the leaves, not knowing the children were there. Both girls were killed.
“I knew it was an accident,” Dieter-Robinson cried. “The person who hit them didn’t know it had happened.”
Garcia-Cisneros testified that she heard about the deaths later and panicked. She confessed when police showed up at her door the next day.
“You made a choice not to come back and that greatly impacted how I got to say goodbye to my daughters. You were one block away, and I’m sure, scared,” Dieter-Robinson said to her.
The family asked the judge for no prison time, only probation. And before he granted that wish, it was Garcia-Cisneros’ turn. Through tears, she told the girls’ family she wished she could hug them.
Upon hearing the new Tuesday that Garcia-Cisneros would not be deported, Dieter-Robinson released the following statement to KGW:
Today is like any other day without our girls. Through our grief we have chosen to love and celebrate the joy that they have brought into our lives and the lives of so many others. We don’t want Anna and Abigail’s lives to be remember by the tragedy but rather by the love story they are all teaching us to live.
DCG
