This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
An announcement from the Home School Legal Defense Association reveals that a family who fled Germany to get away from the government's persecution for homeschooling their children likely will get a one-year's delay on an order from Joe Biden's administration they be sent back to face persecution.
The Romeike family fled Germany in 2008 because of that nation's Hitler-era law against homeschooling – and the fact that the public schools there were teaching leftist and other anti-Christian ideologies.
They ended up in America and succeeded in fighting off an attempt by Barack Obama, then president, to have them returned to the government harassment, fines, threats and worse they were enduring at the hands of German officials.
Joe Biden's administration recently ordered them to return to Germany to that persecution, but now the HSLDA says a temporary delay is expected.
The organization said it has gotten word from ICE of a "one-year delay of deportation."
"This is excellent news! According to our friends on Capitol Hill, this outcome is the direct result of your calls, your petition signatures, and your outreach to Congress on this issue," the organization said in a posted statement to supporters.
"Now the reality is that until this is signed on October 11, this is not guaranteed, but we do expect a positive outcome. We are sending our attorney, Kevin Boden, to join the Romeike family while they meet with ICE next week."
It was Boden who explained, "I spoke personally with the ICE officer in Knoxville, who told me we can anticipate them signing the order of supervision out for another year. And while we are very grateful for this news, we are continuing to advocate for a long-term solution for the Romeike family to allow their permanent stay in the United States."
According to a report in the Washington Stand, dozens of state and federal lawmakers and "tens of thousands of citizens" were urging Biden to relent and allow the family to stay.
"In 2008, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike fled Germany with their children because of an anti-homeschooling law that fined the family $9,000 and could have removed their children from their home. On two occasions in October 2006, armed German police entered the family’s home in order to force their children to attend public school, in one instance successfully," the report explained.
WND reported multiple times on the German government's attacks on the family, including when Barack Obama's administration tried to get them sent back to persecution in Germany.
The family members ultimately were allowed to stay in the U.S. following a ruling from a federal court that they would be subject to fines, threats, jail and even the loss of their children if they were returned.
Those penalties are based on a Hitler-era law that the German government still enforces against homeschooling.
One year prior to enactment of the 1938 law, which made it a criminal offense not to send children to public school, Hitler declared the "youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow."
"For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled," Hitler said. "This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing."
Obama's DOJ claimed the punishment was not persecution, just that Germany was applying Hitler's laws to everyone there.
Similar wars were launched by Germany against multiple homeschooling families at the time.
WND reported it was in 2006 when police officers appeared on the Romeike's doorstep to forcibly take their children to a local public school.
Later, armed police officers equipped with a battering ram forcibly took four children from German parents Dirk and Petra Wunderlich because they were being homeschooled.
Joe Biden's administration recently, through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ordered the Romeikes to get ready to be deported to Germany.
The Biden administration's move now apparently may be delayed, but there remain significant questions to be resolved. The children who escaped from German persecution now are adults, including some married to American citizens. The two youngest Romeikes were born in America and are citizens.
The family had been in the U.S. under a Department of Homeland Security grant of "indefinite deferred action status," officials reported.
