Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos Deportation Phoenix Arizona
Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, 36, as she is held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation in Phoenix, Arizona, on 8 February 2017. Facebook/Puente Human Rights Movement

A woman who had been living in the US since she was 14-years-old has been deported to Mexico.

The 36-year-old Guadalupe García de Rayos, mother to two US born children, was convicted in 2008 for using a fake social security number to work in the United States. Garcia received leniency from the Obama administration on the condition that she checked in with immigration officials regularly.

On Wednesday (8 February), she was taken into custody by immigration agents when she checked-in at the Phoenix offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

According to the officials, Garcia was turned over to Mexican authorities at a border crossing in Nogales, Arizona on Thursday morning.

The agency, in a statement, said to local media that her case "underwent review at multiple levels of the immigration court system, including the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the judges held she did not have a legal basis to remain in the U.S."

Garcia's attorney said that she was a victim of Trump's hard line position on illegal immigration. The new executive order on immigration was signed by Trump on 25 January.

"I think this is a direct result of the new executive orders that are being put into actions by President Trump calling them 'enhancing public safety,' which really appears only to be attacking immigrant communities and people of color," her lawyer Ray Maldonado said.

He added saying, "Getting back to the U.S., legally, there's really no route for her. There's no avenue for her. There's no application she can submit. There's no waiver she can submit. I mean, this is a prime example of our failed immigration system."

Her 14-year-old daughter Jacqueline said at a press conference after the deportation was announced: "Seeing my mom in that van... it was unexplainable. It was really heart-dropping."

"No one should ever go through the pain of having their mom taken away from them, or the pain of packing her suitcase," she said.

On Wednesday, several demonstrators protested outside the ICE office in Phoenix, Arizona and blocked vans, one of which was carrying Garcia.

According to reports, Garcia de Reyos has been an undocumented immigrant since she arrived in the US in the mid 1990s.

The Obama administration prioritised deportations of only undocumented immigrants who were convicted of a violent felony, serious misdemeanor or several misdemeanors.