In two days, a Mexican-born man, Catalino Guerrero, will be on a plane back to a country he hasn't lived in for 23 years. At 57 years old, he has no living family there or any connections, and he is not in good health after suffered a stroke. Instead, all his ties are in America, but he will be expected to leave behind his family -- sons and daughters and grandchildren, and community ties.

Rabbis and Christian faith leaders held a rally on Monday outside the Newark, New Jersey field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to protest the deportation notice for Catalino Guerrero.

"This is a humane issue. No matter what our faith is, or what our religious affiliation is, what happens is families are being torn apart. Kids are losing their grandparents or their parents, and it's no longer an issue of whether the person is illegal or not, it's a humane issue and a moral issue. Families should not be separated, they should be together," said Catalina Adorno, an immigrant rights activist who qualified for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Adorno's family came from the same village, Puebla, as Guerrero, and like him left because of extreme poverty. Her parents got poorer and poorer after the signing of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). At the start of NAFTA, more than one quarter of Mexican workers were employed in agricultural production.

"My family grew corn and beans and all of these crops. So they were affected a lot when these policies passed. When you are a poor farmer who is competing against these big companies who are now exporting the crops to the U.S., you are pretty much affected to the point where you can't make a living anymore and have to find another way to do it. And for many of us that means coming to the U.S."

Guerrero was told by ICE to buy a plane ticket and be prepared to leave the country Aug. 28. Whatever the Obama administration decides to offer to millions of undocumented workers through the president's executive action, those details are not likely to be forthcoming until after Labor Day.

Guerrero fled Puebla, Mexico because of gang violence and economic hardship in 1991. He has four children, one of who qualified for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and grandchildren. He applied for a work permit three years after arriving in the States, and received his first work permit in 1995. 

His lawyer, however, unknown to him, had also applied for work authorization under political asylum. He was denied political asylum -- but the lawyer never informed him. Eight years after applying for work authorization, Guerrero was summoned to immigration court and given a deportation notice for June 21, 2013 because of fraud. Friends and family were able to get approval for a stay of removal request for a year, and they have applied for another stay before ICE said he had to go. Advocates wonder how Guerrero can be deported when a decision on the recent stay of removal request has been decided.

We contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment on Guerrero's case and they issued the following statement,

"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement exercises discretion on a case by case basis, as necessary to focus resources on our stated priorities. Under the deferred action process, and prosecutorial discretion as a whole, ICE is screening every alien we encounter, including those in custody. Decisions are based on the merits of each case, the factual information provided to the agency and the totality of the circumstances. A review of the case of Catalino Crecenciano Guerrero, a Mexican national, is currently underway."