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The Mexican owner of a steakhouse in Granger, Indiana, whose wife voted for President Donald Trump was scheduled to be deported Friday. Roberto Beristain, 43, who immigrated to the U.S. illegally nearly 20 years ago, was attending his yearly U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) check-in last month when officials arrested him in the state capital of Indianapolis, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.

Beristains family, which is made up of his wife Helen and their four U.S.-born children, has implored a federal immigrationjudge in New York to take up their father's case in an effort to buy him some more time in the country. Beristains stepson, Phil Kolliopoulos, created a petition for the judge to open the case, which has garnered more than 600 signatures, the South Bend Tribune reported Thursday.

Read: What We Know About Mexican Immigration: Study Shows Half Of All Undocumented Immigrants Are Mexican

A Republican, Beristain worked at Eddies Steak Shack eight years until January when he bought it from his wifes sister. Helen Beristain voted for Trump because she agreed with his hardline stance on immigration and the sentiment that undocumented immigrants who were convicted of crimes in the U.S. should be driven out of the country, his s 14-year-old daughterJasmine Beristain told the New York Daily News. Her mother, however, had no idea that doing so would affect her father, Jasmine said.

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat, penned an essay Tuesday arguing that the conservative community would lose a model citizen if Beristain were to be deported.

The last time Beristains family spoke with their father was Tuesday night while RobertoBeristain was being detained in a country jail in Kenosha, Wisconsin.Roberto Beristain's incarceration was because a deportation order was placed on him in 2000 while he was on a family vacation toNiagara Falls along the U.S.-Canada border.Beristain, who was driving, took a wrong turn and his family found themselves on the Canadian side of the border. When he tried to come back, U.S. border officials found out he was in the country illegally and placed a deportation order on him.

After the incident, Beristain was ordered to leave the country voluntarily on two separate occasions, which he refused to do because his wife was pregnant, Jasmine said.

Protests have erupted across the countryreaction to more than 680 immigrants being arrested within a month of Trump taking office, BuzzFeed reported last month. That was largely to due to anexecutive orderTrump signedJan. 25 calledEnhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States," whichresulted in more than 2 million legal immigrants becoming the targets of deportation raids for having criminal records for low-level crimeslike marijuana possession or writing a bad check.Before the executive order, legal immigrants could only become a removable alien when convicted of a crime.

There were approximately 11.1 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2014, making up3.5 percentof the U.S. population, the Pew Research Centerreportedin November. Among those, more than half were Mexican.

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Immigration Reform 2017: Trump Voter's Mexican Husband Set To Be Deported - International Business Times