Trump DHS Targets Deportation of Key Bridge Victim's Mother

Zoila Guerra Sandoval was cooking white beans when the Francis Scott Key Bridge fell into Baltimore Harbor in March 2024. The last conversation she had with José Mynor López — her co-parent, her friend, the father of her seven-year-old daughter — was about who would pick up the child from school.

He went to his overnight road maintenance shift. She never spoke to him again.

Two years later, the Department of Homeland Security has moved to deport Guerra Sandoval, 48, stripping away the limited immigration protections the Biden administration extended to family members of the six construction workers killed when a cargo vessel struck the bridge, according to public documents and statements from her attorneys.

The case lands with particular weight in Florida, where immigrant communities — including thousands of Guatemalan, Honduran, Salvadoran and Mexican nationals across the Treasure Coast's agricultural and construction sectors — are watching federal immigration enforcement with mounting anxiety. Immigrant advocacy groups say families here are drawing direct parallels to Guerra Sandoval's situation.

Guerra Sandoval is in the country without legal status. After the bridge collapse, Biden administration officials approached roughly 30 people connected to the six victims and encouraged them to apply for immigration relief, according to Rachel Girod, the immigration attorney representing Guerra Sandoval and four other clients with ties to the collapse. The men who died were originally from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

Guerra Sandoval qualified because her daughter — a U.S. citizen — lost her father in the disaster and now depends on her as the sole caretaker.

Applying meant stepping fully out of the shadows. Girod said her client submitted fingerprints and personal information on the explicit promise of a work permit. "And instead, what they gave her is a hearing in front of an immigration judge with a deportation charge against her," Girod said.

In April, Guerra Sandoval received a letter from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services notifying her that her application for relief had been denied and that she is now in removal proceedings.

A former Biden-era USCIS official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, confirmed that the agency reviewed applications from bridge collapse families on a case-by-case basis under emergency relief policies. USCIS did not respond to a request for comment on Guerra Sandoval's case.

The Trump administration has set a goal of deporting one million people annually and has directed enforcement resources toward all undocumented immigrants, regardless of circumstance. "When everybody is a priority, the person convicted of some of the most heinous crimes is just as much a priority as the mother of a child who lost her father in a national tragedy," Girod said.

Ama Frimpong, chief of services at We Are CASA, an immigrant advocacy organization that worked with bridge collapse families, confirmed Guerra Sandoval's name appeared on correspondence shared with Biden administration officials. "We cannot let a child who lost her father on the bridge now lose her mother," Frimpong said.

Mynor López's body was the last recovered — found two months after the collapse. His daughter, now seven, told her mother she remembers him. "She says, 'Yes, but my dad died in the water,'" Guerra Sandoval said.

For Treasure Coast families watching from communities like Indiantown in Martin County — a predominantly immigrant enclave where Guatemalan and Mexican workers have built lives in agriculture and construction for decades — the case is a signal, not an outlier. Local immigration attorneys and faith-based advocates in the region say clients who previously pursued legal relief programs under Biden-era protections are now reconsidering whether coming forward was a mistake.

This article was generated with AI assistance using publicly available information. It was reviewed and approved by a human editor before publication. TC Sentinel uses AI writing tools in accordance with FTC guidelines.