Robert L. Smith
The Plain Dealer
November 27, 2010
For the Maldonado children of Painesville, life as they know it is about to end and probably end badly.
The two oldest, Juan and Ivan, were young children when their parents brought them across the border. They retain only hazy recollections of Mexico.
The four youngest have never left the neighborhood. Now the sun is setting on their familiar world.
Federal agents arrested and deported their dad, Diego, nearly three weeks ago. Their mom, Manuela, must report to immigration authorities in downtown Cleveland by Dec. 14, with or without her American-born children.
After a decade working and living in the shadows, the Maldonados were found out. Now a mother faces a desperate choice, one expected to become more common in Northeast Ohio: Should she uproot her family whole, or leave children behind?
"We have nothing in Mexico," Manuela Maldonado said through an interpreter, her face a mask of pain and confusion.
Those in her working-poor neighborhood realize that the ejection of a well-liked family is but a beginning. Without immigration law reform, Lake County's largely illegal Mexican community faces a harrowing future.
Immigration enforcement is accelerating. And there is little public sympathy for a family of "illegals," even when half that family is American.
That reality lent an anxious edge to a recent display of solidarity, when dozens of neighbors and friends gathered around the Maldonado family's modest home on a rainy afternoon to show support.
"You'll probably see us again with another family in a couple weeks," said Veronica Dahlberg, an advocate for the Hispanic community. "Everybody's scared."
In Lake County, home to the region's largest concentration of illegal immigrants, legal and cultural forces are heading toward a painful clash.
The county's $90-million nursery industry is staffed largely by Mexican immigrants, many of whom arrived over the last 30 years from Leon, a major city in central Mexico. Some came with work visas. Many did not.
Dahlberg estimates Lake and Ashtabula counties are home to 8,000 to 9,000 Mexican immigrants, and maybe 75 percent of the community is undocumented, lacking legal status.
After years here, the community is deeply rooted. Many Mexican immigrants belong to so-called "mixed-status families," a blend of citizens and non-citizens, which complicates deportations and heightens the moral dilemma.
For decades, the presence of illegal immigrants was largely ignored in a county enriched by their labor. Nursery work is hard, dirty and seasonal, and Mexicans are simply the latest immigrant group willing to do it.
"For the most part, they're very good workers," said Mark Gilson, owner of Gilson Gardens in Perry and the past president of the Nursery Growers of Lake County Ohio. "I think they would make very good citizens."
His trade group supports comprehensive immigration reform, which might offer a path to citizenship for families like the Maldonados.
But the anti-immigrant sentiment pervasive nationally percolates in Northeast Ohio. Citizens groups have sprung up to lobby for stricter enforcement of existing immigration laws and to oppose anything that smacks of amnesty.
Julie Aldrich, a leader of a group that calls itself the Grassroots Rally Team, said Diego and Manuela knew the risk when they crossed the border.
"I do feel bad for the children, but it's the parents who should feel guilty, not us," she said. "We have to have laws and we need to enforce those laws."
That is becoming easier to do. Regional immigration authorities, once barely noticeable, are now flush with manpower and resources. The Department of Homeland Security has steadily reinforced its Border Patrol stations in Sandusky and in Erie, Pa.
The Border Patrol, in turn, alerted local cops and sheriff's deputies that it stands ready to take custody of any illegal immigrants they might encounter, and Hispanics now complain of being pulled over for "driving while brown."
At the Nov. 16 vigil outside the Maldonado home, a girl held a sign reading, "Traffic Stops = Deportation. Stop Tearing Apart Families."
It was bad luck, not a stop sign, that outed the Maldonados.
When immigration agents swept through Painesville in May of 2007, targeting people who had ignored court orders or been accused of crimes, they arrested any suspected illegal immigrants they stumbled upon, some 40 in all. Diego Maldonado was one of those "collateral arrests."
He and Manuela had come across the border in 1997, seeking to escape the poverty and the hopelessness of Leon, Manuela said. They started in California but headed to Painesville after Diego's brother assured them they could find work.
He was right. Both Diego and Manuela were working, he in a factory and she at a nursery, when Diego opened the door to a federal agent looking for someone else, a fateful decision. The couple had been in the country nine years and nine months. Had they reached the 10-year threshold, both would have been entitled to apply for legal status.
The family tried to fight deportation but by last year their savings and their legal options were exhausted. The couple failed to follow an immigration court's order to leave the country, said Kaahlid Walls, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, so the government acted.
On Nov. 9, ICE agents were waiting outside when Diego left for work. Ivan Maldonado, 15, witnessed his father's arrest through the front window and raced crying to his mother, who kept the children inside and called Dahlberg. She reached a lawyer who convinced ICE to allow the rest of the family to turn themselves in.
Dad was flown to San Antonio, Texas, and on Nov. 16 was sent walking across the border into Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, beginning his grim trek back to Leon.
Manuela, 40, faces life-changing decisions. Her youngest, Kevin, is three. The oldest, Juan, 18, cares for a baby boy he had with his American girlfriend. The family has no home in Mexico. Most of the children speak only English.
Should some be left behind, she wonders, for the better chance America offers? Who would raise them?
Should she take them all back to Mexico -- and to what?
It's a dilemma that pricks the conscience of a community.
At a community meeting Tuesday night, Rev. Roderick Coffee heard Manuela Maldonado share her story. He's pastor of a Concord congregation and president of the Lake County NAACP, which is newly interested in the immigration issue.
"I would think that we would be more prepared to handle this in a humanistic way," he said. "America has experience at immigration. We should be getting better."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: rsmith@plaind.com, 216-999-4024
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/11/facing_deportation_mother_has.html
