What Does a Couple Do When One Partner Is Deported?

American citizens whose spouses have been deported face wrenching decisions on what is best for their future, especially when they have children.

Hector Reyes parked his truck in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez, his phone lighting up with photos and videos of his son Daniel receiving his high school diploma.

The ceremony was happening only a mile away in El Paso. But Mr. Reyes had been deported in 2017 and barred for 20 years from entering the United States for having twice illegally crossed the border.

His wife and two children, all American citizens, have made a life in El Paso, while Mr. Reyes lives eight blocks from the border. He recalled looking up at the sky on the night of the graduation in May, waiting to see the fireworks that would mark the end of his son’s high school years.

“This life,” he said, “I don’t wish it to nobody.”

Families like Mr. Reyes’s have been closely watching a new Biden administration policy that aims to provide a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens. Though the initial program was not open to people living outside the country, the families said it was a first sign that there was an openness to reconsidering their plight. The deported spouses understood it to be a long shot, but perhaps their only chance of overcoming lifetime or decades-long bans from coming to the United States.

But the new program was swiftly met with strong Republican opposition, and was put on hold by a federal judge in Texas after 16 states sued to block it. With former President Donald J. Trump threatening mass deportations if he regains the presidency in November, the families could not only lose their bid for consideration but also see many more joining their ranks.