Catalino Guerrero, who was facing imminent deportation from the U.S., was told late last week that he has received a yearlong stay of removal.

Just four days ago, Guerrero, a father of four and grandfather of four, was told by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to buy a ticket to Mexico and leave on Thursday, Aug. 28 -- back to a country he hasn't lived in for 23 years. He had applied for a stay of removal but wasn't sure it would be granted in time. Guerrero has no more connections in Mexico -- all his relatives have died or are in the U.S.

"We have another year. Well, that's very good. He doesn't go to Mexico. We don't have family there, we don't have nothing there. We are so happy," said Veronica Guerrero, one of his daughter's.

Guerrero fled Puebla, Mexico, because of gang violence and economic hardship in 1991. He applied for a work permit three years after arriving in the States and received it in 1995. After that, he continued to renew it.

His lawyer, however, unbeknownst to him, had applied for work authorization on his behalf under political asylum. He was denied political asylum, though the lawyer never told Guerrero. Deportation proceedings began soon after, and he was given a deportation notice for June 21, 2013. 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.

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

Guerrero's daughter Veronica said the stress of the threat of deportation was making her father's stroke worse.

"We are all waiting for the Obama Administration to help with the deportation charges, the people without papers who have been here for 20 years who have nothing in the countries they left, where everything they have is in America. Lots of people are fighting because this is breaking families apart, and a lot of kids have grown up here, this is all they know."