Under our current immigration system, families are destroyed every day. Take what happened to Melissa McGuire-Maniau, for instance.

Melissa is a wife, a mother of three, a full-time college student, an activist and a veteran of the United States Air Force. Her husband of seven years was brought to the United States from Mexico by his mother in 1985. Though both his mother and wife have petitioned for him, he is still living with an undocumented status.

“We are now five years into this application process,” said Melissa, “And still working our way through the paperwork with no results.”

In 2011, her husband was taken from their home and detained in a private immigrant detention center in South Florida. Through support of her family and friends, they were able rally for his release after just three days, but Melissa still remembers the experience as “the most painful days of my life.”

Melissa’s family is one of the lucky ones. For now, they are together. They do not have to deal with the crippling economic hardship that can come from losing the family’s breadwinner. Her children do not have to deal with the pain and psychological damage of losing a parent. But until the immigration system changes to include a pathway to citizenship, families like Melissa’s will continue to live in fear.