George W Bush’s favorite chef DEPORTED after a 36-year secret came out

Texans were stunned when a world-famous chef who once prepared meals for George W Bush was deported for crossing the border illegally in 1989.

Sergio Garcia, who became a Waco staple for his wildly popular Mexican food truck, was initially arrested in March on a two-decade-old deportation warrant.

As the Chef was loading Sergio’s Food Truck, a man in civilian clothes approached him and in the distance stood another man with a vest that said POLICE. Waco Bridge reporting.

‘They asked me if I was Sergio, and I said, ‘Yes, Sergio,'” Garcia said. ‘Then they said, ‘You should come with us.’

At first Garcia thought it was just a mix-up because he had no criminal record; just a two-decade-old deportation order for illegal reentry that immigration officials have never tried to enforce before.

But within just 24 hours, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deported Garcia to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico; this separated him from his four US-born adult children and his wife, Sandra, who would later reunite with him in his hometown of Monterrey.

As the news spread in the city of more than 146,000 people, many tried to understand what had happened.

“At first I thought someone had made a mistake, caught the wrong guy,” said Floyd Colley, owner and operator of Brazos Bike Lounge.

Garcia made a name for himself with the dinner events he hosted at George W. Bush’s Western White House in the early 2000s. The former president and first lady are seen with Laura Bush

Garcia had leased some of the old restaurant space to Colley to open his bike shop, and before that, Colley said, Garcia had been one of his early supporters as a young bike mechanic doing business out of his car.

‘If it wasn’t for Sergio, I wouldn’t have a shop,’ said the owner.

‘You hear all this stuff about catching dangerous criminals, but it’s like, ‘He’s one of the nicest people I know.’ I absolutely do not believe he is a dangerous criminal.

‘There were months when Sergio didn’t even charge me rent,’ Colley said.

But as Garcia rose in the Waco business world from selling ceviche out of Styrofoam cups to hosting dinners at the Bush Western White House in the early 2000s, he was living in the United States without proper documentation.

He and a friend moved to central Texas in 1989, when he was 29, after becoming frustrated that his boss at a construction company in Veracruz repeatedly refused to raise his salary.

Garcia had obtained his passport and visa before heading to the city with his friend.

At the time, visa overstays in the United States were considered a minor administrative infraction, and neither the Department of Homeland Security nor ICE existed.

Still, Garcia said: ‘I wasn’t planning on staying long anyway.’

After moving to Texas on a visa in 1989, Garcia started working in local kitchens.

But as he made friends and found work at local restaurants, he realized his dream of becoming a chef might be within reach.

“I had to get my money upfront,” Garcia explained.

So he worked in the kitchens of the Czech Shop and the Brazos Queen II riverboat restaurant; where he first met Sandra while visiting Waco with a dance group from Monterrey, Mexico.

This was also where head chef Geoffrey Michaels let himself stay in the kitchen late to prepare shrimp cocktails and ceviche, as well as marinated diced fish.

He then took the opportunity to make a small vending ceviche out of Styrofoam cups to pick up nearby football players.

From there, Garcia bought his first food truck, working nights.

By 1995, Sandra and Sergio opened their first brick-and-mortar location, El Siete Mares, and were typically operating seven days a week.

Soon the menu expanded and Sergio’s former employers began referring their friends and customers to the seafood shop.

“That’s when my business with white people started to grow,” Sergio joked.

By 1995, El Siete Mares found a larger home, and after Bush was elected president in 2000, Garcia’s restaurant became a favorite with the press.

However, due to the economic crisis in 2011, the Garcias were forced to close the restaurant.

Fortunately, they were able to rebound in 2013 with a new facility and food truck, and closed in September, making about $100,000 a year; after his daughters tried to keep the place open without him.

While working at one of the restaurants, he met Sandra, who was visiting Waco with a dance group from Monterrey, Mexico.

The duo started their own restaurant and food truck business

During this time, Garcia said he and his wife have tried to obtain legal status by hiring immigration attorneys in Austin, Houston, San Antonio and, more recently, even in Florida.

“It was terrible,” Garcia said. ‘We spent a lot of money hiring different lawyers and different attorneys.’

He claimed a Houston lawyer mishandled the case and inflamed the situation, which led an immigration judge to order deportation in 2002.

ICE agents have ignored deportation orders for more than two decades, but immigration attorney Susan Nelson said authorities can no longer evaluate whether someone is contributing to the community.

‘Now they’re going out and looking for people with those old orders,’ he said.

But ICE officials said in a statement to Waco Bridge that Garcia was “a twice-deported criminal alien from Mexico” who “had full due process under the law and was ordered deported by an immigration judge at substantial taxpayer expense.”

‘In complete contravention of our country’s legal system, he evaded the authorities and remained an immigrant smuggler for more than 23 years.’

Garcia says he leaves behind ‘many friends, family, work and church’

He and Sandra are now exploring legal options to return to the United States

It remains unclear exactly what happened to Garcia after he was deported, but his family said they were unable to speak to him for more than a month.

Garcia claimed that he planned to take a bus from Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey, where his wife’s family still lived, but the bus never went to Monterrey and instead took him and nine other deportees to a compound where their phones were confiscated.

‘These people barely fed us and demanded money to take us across the border,’ he claimed, and claimed his kidnappers threatened to turn anyone who refused the offer into ‘worse people’.

“They kept saying, ‘This isn’t personal, it’s just business,'” he recounted.

Meanwhile, his family was left in the dark about his whereabouts.

“For a very long time when my father was with those people, we couldn’t communicate and had no idea where he was,” his daughter Esmeralda said.

Garcia said that after 36 days in captivity, he and others crossed the Rio Grande in a rubber boat, then walked for several hours through the South Texas bush before being captured by Border Patrol.

Garcia then spent the next month in a detention center before flying to Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost border state. From there, Sandra’s family arranged to buy her a flight to Mexico City and finally to her hometown of Monterrey.

ICE officials also said Garcia “once again demonstrated that he thought he was above the law by illegally re-entering the United States near Laredo, Texas, on April 30.”

Now reunited with his wife, the couple is trying to explore legal options to return to the United States, where Garcia said he has “many friends, family, work and church.”

They even maintain the Form I-212 application, which allows deported immigrants to re-apply for admission to the United States.