The email from a U.S. immigration officer presented Kelly and Yerson Vargas with a stark choice: accept deportation to their native Colombia or risk being charged with a crime and separated from their 6-year-old daughter, Maria Paola.

The Vargases, held at a Texas detention center, had already received a deportation order and been pressured to board flights to Colombia. They had resisted because they had submitted visa applications as victims of human trafficking, saying they faced forced labor and death threats from cartel members in Mexico as they transited to the U.S.

In the October 31 email, the immigration officer threatened to prosecute them for failure to comply with the deportation order, a rarely used statute that could lead to 10 years in prison.

Their case illustrates how U.S

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