"This has increased my faith in many ways. My trust in God, my hope, and also my charity. Just to think that it's not only my situation," he said. "I think my case, my situation, just reflects the situation many people are facing."
The young priest said that he united his difficulties to the suffering of those in his diocese also facing immigration problems or family separation.
On the issue of family separation, he said he wanted to share his experience "in a spiritual way," rather than in a political one.
A good point for reflection is thinking "what can the social teaching of the Church give to the whole situation," he said. "What is God asking us to reflect and pray about? I think we go back to the basics, to the essential things: faith, family."
Izquierdo knows what it is like to be far from one's family. In the last 12 years, he was able to return to the U.S., where his family lives, one time: for his ordination as a priest in 2018.
As he was undocumented when he was brought to Washington as a teenager, he had to wait 10 years to re-enter the country when he left the U.S. at age 20.
Izquierdo was born and mostly grew up in central Mexico -- and that is the country he considers his home. But much of his extended family has lived in Washington for years, since his grandfather first brought them there for work under the World War II Bracero program.
His father would go back and forth between Mexico and the U.S., until finally bringing his family to Washington right before Izquierdo's 17th birthday.
Izquierdo attended high school, learned English, and worked in the fields, in construction, and in warehouses. He was also very involved in his parish and in its youth ministry and choir.
"My vocation was born there," he explained. He thought he'd have to go back to Mexico to be a priest, but the then bishop of Yakima, Carlos A. Sevilla, said he wanted to sponsor him through the diocese.
"It would have been very hard for me to do discernment if the diocese would have said 'No, we will not sponsor you because of your situation,'" he said. "For this I'm very grateful, because I'm here, I'm a priest for two years already and I'm just grateful for God's will in my life and in the life of the people."
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Izquierdo studied for the priesthood first in Mexico and then in Canada. Bishop Joseph J. Tyson sent him to Rome to complete his theology degree, where he was ordained a deacon.
When he turned 30, he was finally able to return to his diocese to be ordained a priest.
"It was a long process," he acknowledged, "but because I was in formation, formation keeps you busy."
During the summers as a seminarian, since he could not return to Washington, he was sent to do missions in Central America, China, Italy, and Canada.
In late June, the priest graduated with his licentiate in sacred theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he studied public ethics and the social doctrine of the Church.
His advice for people facing the uncertainty involved in immigration situations is "to trust God."