Maria Elizondo and her son Jorge sat at his dining room table on a conference call with three of the most powerful people in Minnesota.
One by one, Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorie Gildea voted to pardon Elizondo, her son translating and raising a finger with each vote to show his mom. When he got to three, her eyes welled up with tears.
With that, the Minnesota Board of Pardons voted unanimously in a special meeting Monday to grant a full pardon to Elizondo for past convictions of wrongfully obtaining assistance and identity theft, the first time in more than 35 years the board has granted this level of clemency from past offenses.
The uncommon act of forgiveness could save the mother of seven and grandmother of 14 from deportation to Mexico, and was possible only after a group of law school students at the University of St. Thomas heard her story — and got to work.
"I never envisioned that this would have been possible," Elizondo told her son shortly after the vote. "To have so many opportunities to have left, and yet stay behind and face the consequences for my actions was the best thing I ever did."
The moment was also powerful for Jorge, the eldest of her seven children, who was one of the primary providers for his family before his enlistment in the Army National Guard and deployment to Afghanistan in 2006.
After he left, Elizondo applied for food stamps and cash assistance from Norman County. That didn't cover their food and housing costs, so she also took a job at a turkey farm in Ada, Minn., under the pseudonym Natalia Rubio, using false identifying documents and someone else's Social Security number on her employment records.
"As a mom, and even myself now as a parent, I recognize that she did what she had to do, not to be malicious, but when you have a family there are things you have to do to overcome challenges," said Jorge. "Sometimes those things aren't necessarily things that we would otherwise engage in if the circumstances were different."
