By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
CNN Contributor
March 23, 2011
San Diego (CNN) -- Under our system, two things are crystal clear: Law enforcement agencies are required to treat children with more care than adults, and U.S. citizens have certain rights that are not to be abridged -- including the right to due process.
Just don't try telling any of that to the parents of Emily Ruiz. They know better. Those principles didn't apply in the case of the 4-year-old from Brentwood, New York, who -- after traveling to Guatemala to visit relatives with her grandfather -- was denied entry into the United States on March 11 by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and instead sent back to Guatemala.
That is no way to treat a U.S. citizen. You see, while both of her parents are illegal immigrants, Emily was born in the United States and so she is a U.S. citizen. That is supposed to mean something in this country. At the very least, it should mean that authorities shouldn't have done anything more than greet the little girl with a polite and sincere: "Welcome home."
Instead, according to her family's attorney, Emily was detained alone for several hours at Dulles International Airport while authorities tried to figure out what to do and while her grandfather was treated for what seemed to be a panic attack.
"It's outrageous," David Sperling, the family's attorney, told me. "Effectively, she (Emily) was deported. They treated her like an 'anchor baby,' like a second-class citizen. I can't imagine that they would treat any other U.S. citizen this way."
Speaking of so-called anchor babies, an offensive term used by some on the right to describe the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants who supposedly keep their parents anchored in the United States, this case shows that the whole concept is bogus. Emily couldn't even keep herself anchored in the United States, let alone her parents.
I asked Sperling if he believed that Emily was treated shoddily because she is Latina.
"Absolutely," he said. "If this was a Caucasian girl from some European country, this would never have happened."
According to multiple accounts, here is what happened. At the end of their stay in Guatemala, Emily and her grandfather boarded a plane to return to New York. The grandfather had a work visa and a notarized letter from Emily's parents authorizing him to travel with her. The girl had a U.S. passport. But because of bad weather, the flight was diverted to Washington.
When the two landed there, and went through the processing for re-entry in the United States, it was discovered that the grandfather's visa was no longer valid and that he had a prior arrest for illegal entry in the 1990s. Agents took him into custody and prepared to deport him back to Guatemala.
But what about Emily? When she and her grandfather didn't get off the plane in New York, her father, Leonel, called the airline, and a representative told him that U.S. immigration officials had detained his loved ones in Washington. So then the father called the immigration officials. And, when he was asked about his own immigration status and that of his wife's, he acknowledged that they were both undocumented.
According to Sperling, the father then was given a choice: Emily could be left in a children's detention facility or sent back to Guatemala with her grandfather. The father said he would prefer that Emily stay with her grandfather, and so Emily was deported from the country -- her country.
But oddly enough, the attorney said, the one option the father wasn't given was to go pick up his daughter in Washington. That's what he planned to do, he told The New York Times, but he was never given the chance. (The same article said that officials at Customs and Border Protection gave Ruiz the opportunity to collect her at the airport.)
Officials with Customs and Border Protection declined to comment to me on the record. The best they would do is a statement sent to news agencies declaring that "CBP strives to reunite U.S. citizen children with their parents," without actually saying that it happened in this case.
Sperling told me he plans to travel to Guatemala next week to retrieve Emily.
The idea of an illegal immigrant voluntarily meeting with U.S. immigration officials is not as far-fetched as you might think. Leonel Ruiz is an illegal immigrant, but he is also a father. Besides, if he had come forward, according to immigration lawyers and immigration enforcement officials I've spoke to over the years, he might not have been apprehended and deported. Immigration officials have wide discretion, and they don't have to deport every illegal immigrant with whom they come into contact.
Don't lose sight of the facts through the PR. Or is it CYA? Even if it's true that that Emily's father gave permission for the government to send his daughter back to Guatemala, that doesn't let U.S. officials off the hook. Emily is a minor, but she is also a U.S. citizen with a right to due process -- what Thomas Jefferson called an "inalienable" right granted her not by her father but by her creator.
It's not fair or appropriate for Customs and Border Protection to pawn off the awesome responsibility of whether Emily stays in the United States or goes back to Guatemala to the father just so they can wash their hands of this case and claim they were just following orders.
There are established rules and procedures for how U.S. immigration enforcement agencies are supposed to deal with minors, and those guidelines are set by years of legal precedent. Most of them deal with minors who are in the country illegally and yet still have rights. U.S. citizens have even more rights.
The unanswered question in this case is whether Customs and Border Protection followed those rules and its own procedures and did everything it could to reunite Emily with her family. It doesn't look like it. Rather it looks like U.S. immigration officials couldn't wait to get this girl on a plane and get her off their hands.
What has happened to our country? Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano seems to brag about the Obama administration's record number of deportations every few weeks, to counter claims that her department is soft on illegal immigration. Has the administration so depleted the pool of illegal immigrants that it's moved on to deporting U.S. citizens?
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs should look into this case, and the Department of Homeland Security should launch an internal investigation. And if it is ultimately decided that Customs and Border Protection officials acted hastily and irresponsibly, they should lose their jobs --as swiftly and as easily as Emily Ruiz lost the freedom that was her birthright.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette Jr.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/03/23/navarrette.child.deported/?hpt=Sbin
Showing posts with label Citizens Deported. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Citizens Deported. Show all posts
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Deportation for petty larceny?
Editorial
The Washington Post
February 19, 2011
EDGAR LUIS CABRERA, a lawful, permanent resident of Loudoun County, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of petty larceny in 2005 and was sentenced to 12 months in jail. He never served time behind bars because the sentence was suspended. He went about his life without other run-ins with the law until last fall, when he was notified that he would be deported. The reason: his guilty plea to the misdemeanor.
The news came as a shock to Mr. Cabrera, who claims that his lawyer never told him about the risk of removal linked to the plea. Had Mr. Cabrera been sentenced to less than one year - or pleaded guilty to a charge that carried a lesser sentence - it's likely he would have avoided deportation.
Last year the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that lawful immigrants who unwittingly entered guilty pleas that marked them for deportation should be given a chance to reopen their cases if their lawyers failed to advise them of the possible deportation consequences. In New York and Massachusetts, where state law is relatively flexible, such challenges have been raised, and some have prevailed.
Not so in Virginia, where Mr. Cabrera lives - and where the rules governing challenges to convictions are among the harshest in the country. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in December that Mr. Cabrera and others like him could not bring such challenges.
Chief Judge Dean S. Worcester, presiding over Mr. Cabrera's case in Loudoun County, has refused to abide by the Virginia court's decree, arguing that the high court's decision is unnecessarily narrow and wrong. As a matter of justice, Judge Worcester is correct; as Virginia law stands, his position is weaker. He recently ordered new proceedings for Mr. Cabrera, but chances are slim that his decision will be allowed to stand.
There are two other possibilities. Virginia legislators could broaden state law; they would not be inventing a right but giving meaning to one that the U.S. Supreme Court has said exists. Or the U.S. attorney general could step in to review cases in which immigrants have been barred from challenging plea-induced deportations. The attorney general does not have the authority to reopen a state criminal case, but he does have some discretion over final orders of deportation. He should use that discretion to determine whether justice is being served by deporting nonviolent legal residents who have been prohibited from exercising their constitutional rights.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/19/AR2011021903359.html
The Washington Post
February 19, 2011
EDGAR LUIS CABRERA, a lawful, permanent resident of Loudoun County, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of petty larceny in 2005 and was sentenced to 12 months in jail. He never served time behind bars because the sentence was suspended. He went about his life without other run-ins with the law until last fall, when he was notified that he would be deported. The reason: his guilty plea to the misdemeanor.
The news came as a shock to Mr. Cabrera, who claims that his lawyer never told him about the risk of removal linked to the plea. Had Mr. Cabrera been sentenced to less than one year - or pleaded guilty to a charge that carried a lesser sentence - it's likely he would have avoided deportation.
Last year the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that lawful immigrants who unwittingly entered guilty pleas that marked them for deportation should be given a chance to reopen their cases if their lawyers failed to advise them of the possible deportation consequences. In New York and Massachusetts, where state law is relatively flexible, such challenges have been raised, and some have prevailed.
Not so in Virginia, where Mr. Cabrera lives - and where the rules governing challenges to convictions are among the harshest in the country. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in December that Mr. Cabrera and others like him could not bring such challenges.
Chief Judge Dean S. Worcester, presiding over Mr. Cabrera's case in Loudoun County, has refused to abide by the Virginia court's decree, arguing that the high court's decision is unnecessarily narrow and wrong. As a matter of justice, Judge Worcester is correct; as Virginia law stands, his position is weaker. He recently ordered new proceedings for Mr. Cabrera, but chances are slim that his decision will be allowed to stand.
There are two other possibilities. Virginia legislators could broaden state law; they would not be inventing a right but giving meaning to one that the U.S. Supreme Court has said exists. Or the U.S. attorney general could step in to review cases in which immigrants have been barred from challenging plea-induced deportations. The attorney general does not have the authority to reopen a state criminal case, but he does have some discretion over final orders of deportation. He should use that discretion to determine whether justice is being served by deporting nonviolent legal residents who have been prohibited from exercising their constitutional rights.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/19/AR2011021903359.html
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Judge Orders Woman Adopted from Mexico at 5 Months Old to be Deported
Hispanically Speaking News
December 11, 2010
This week a federal immigration judge has ordered a 38 year old woman who was adopted from a Mexican orphanage by US citizens at 5 months old to be deported back to Mexico.
Tara Ammons Cohen, who has been in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma since July 8, 2009, has lost her argument that she would be in danger if she were deported to Mexico. Immigration laws do not recognize adoption as a special circumstance in deportations.
After bring the 5-month-old baby to the US, Cohen’s parents failed to get her nationalized. By the time that Cohen tried to straighten out her citizenship issues, she was already in trouble with the law.
The married mother of two was arrested in 2008 on theft and drug trafficking charges. She pleaded guilty to stealing a purse containing two bottles of prescription pills and to the trafficking charge, though she never sold a pill.
Cohen’s legal challenge pointed out that her particular circumstances – white, a woman, poor – would make her like an immigrant and subject to abuse and violence in Mexico. She also suffers from a bipolar disorder and has been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder stemming from an assault when she was a teenager.
“Six out of 10 migrant women and girls experience sexual violence in Mexico and all such women face this serious risk of trafficking,” Her attorney said in his legal brief. “... Kidnapping of migrants for ransom reached almost 10,000 in 2009. ...“Additionally, there is documentary evidence that (Cohen) would be persecuted in Mexico on account of her mental illness.”
Judge Tammy Fitting’s ruling essentially denied every aspect of Cohen’s appeal except to agree that a drug conviction that led to her deportation problem was not a serious crime requiring her automatic removal.
http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/judge-orders-women-adopted-from-mexico-at-5-months-old-to-be-deported/3468/
December 11, 2010
This week a federal immigration judge has ordered a 38 year old woman who was adopted from a Mexican orphanage by US citizens at 5 months old to be deported back to Mexico.
Tara Ammons Cohen, who has been in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma since July 8, 2009, has lost her argument that she would be in danger if she were deported to Mexico. Immigration laws do not recognize adoption as a special circumstance in deportations.
After bring the 5-month-old baby to the US, Cohen’s parents failed to get her nationalized. By the time that Cohen tried to straighten out her citizenship issues, she was already in trouble with the law.
The married mother of two was arrested in 2008 on theft and drug trafficking charges. She pleaded guilty to stealing a purse containing two bottles of prescription pills and to the trafficking charge, though she never sold a pill.
Cohen’s legal challenge pointed out that her particular circumstances – white, a woman, poor – would make her like an immigrant and subject to abuse and violence in Mexico. She also suffers from a bipolar disorder and has been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder stemming from an assault when she was a teenager.
“Six out of 10 migrant women and girls experience sexual violence in Mexico and all such women face this serious risk of trafficking,” Her attorney said in his legal brief. “... Kidnapping of migrants for ransom reached almost 10,000 in 2009. ...“Additionally, there is documentary evidence that (Cohen) would be persecuted in Mexico on account of her mental illness.”
Judge Tammy Fitting’s ruling essentially denied every aspect of Cohen’s appeal except to agree that a drug conviction that led to her deportation problem was not a serious crime requiring her automatic removal.
http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/judge-orders-women-adopted-from-mexico-at-5-months-old-to-be-deported/3468/
Friday, November 5, 2010
Children of the Exodus: What becomes of kids who are deported without their families?
By Melissa del Bosque
Texas Observer
Thursday, November 04, 2010
On the Hildago-Reynosa International Bridge, there is a small white room tucked inside the Mexican immigration office where children, apprehended and then released by the U.S. Border Patrol, file in day after day and wait for a family member to claim them.
The office is run by Mexico’s social services agency called the Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, or DIF. It receives dozens of repatriated children every week ranging from infants a few days old to 18-year-olds. As the children wait, they peer out, unseen, through a mirrored, plate-glass window at passing motorists. The children arrive with T-shirts covered in mud and the cuffs of their torn jeans still damp from the Rio Grande. Some have cuts and scrapes from running through thorny mesquite groves and cacti, trying to evade U.S. border agents. Others have angry red wounds from snakebites or puncture marks from an IV drip after being rescued from heat exhaustion in the desert. Then there are the marks you can’t see: having been kidnapped or raped by traffickers, or having witnessed the death of a family member or friend during their journeys.
The children clutch their belongings in small, clear plastic bags with Department of Homeland Security tags attached. They carry remarkably little for such a perilous journey. Inside the plastic bags there might be a cell phone, shoe laces, (removed for their protection while in U.S. custody), and maybe a rosary, or some wadded-up American cash, or a few pesos. They appear downtrodden, exhausted yet resolute: With few exceptions they’ll cross again because their parents or loved ones are en el otro lado and on the other side of the Rio Grande there is hope. Hope to study, to work, or to just hug their mothers or fathers again.
The teenagers act tough and stare at the wall or the floor while they wait to be claimed. Sometimes they crack jokes so the younger kids won’t cry. The little kids can’t hide their grief. They cry for their parents or their abuelos, which makes it harder for the older kids. A 29-year-old woman with the unlikely name of Agatha Christie Cano (her father is a mystery buff) is the sole employee at the DIF office on the bridge. She sits behind a small wooden desk, a pink daisy pen with a smiley face in a pencil holder by her side. Each morning she fans out on her desk the questionnaires that she’ll fill out during her interviews with the children. Cano is cheerful, but then she has only been working at the DIF for six weeks. As soon as she finishes nursing school next year, she says, she plans to apply for work in the United States.
Cano must piece together a child’s history with information from the Mexican Consulate in McAllen. The consulate conducts an initial interview to make sure the children’s rights have not been violated before U.S. Border agents send them back to Mexico. Cano helps figure out who will claim the children once they’ve been returned, which is more difficult than it might seem. Every child’s family is scarred by death, divorce or migration to the United States. They also share poverty and few opportunities for work or education.
Two brothers from Zacatecas, Armando, 17, and José, 13, arrive on a Thursday afternoon. Border Patrol apprehended them Wednesday morning near Roma, Texas, after the brothers walked several hours in 103-degree heat. Cano listens intently as Armando, the eldest, tells their story, his face impassive as his younger brother starts to cry. After seven hours of walking, their mother had collapsed. The coyote and the rest of the group kept walking. Armando went for help while José stayed behind with their mother. He walked to a highway and flagged down a truck driver who called Border Patrol. By the time he returned with the agents, their mother was dead, and his brother was nearly unconscious. The agents inserted an IV and pumped fluids into his arm, which saved his life. José sobs quietly as his brother speaks. Cano offers him a tissue. “We never wanted to go,” Armando tells her. “We were doing fine where we were.” Cano nods. His mother had left them with their grandmother and crossed illegally several years ago, he tells her. She lived in Chicago, remarried, and had a 3-year-old son in the United States. After their grandmother died, problems started among the family members in Zacatecas.
“My mother wanted us all to be together again,” Armando says. “She said we could live together
in Chicago.”
“Do you have anyone, an uncle or an aunt who can come for you?” Cano asks. “Does your father know you’re here?”
“We haven’t seen him in years,” Armando says, shaking his head.
Cano fills out the questionnaire. The boys watch blankly. “Isn’t there anyone who can come for you?” she presses Armando. The room is quiet except for the sound of José crying.
After a few hours of waiting for a relative, José, Armando and four other teenage boys are herded into a van and driven to a larger DIF shelter for repatriated children in downtown Reynosa. A lone policeman guards the entrance. The shelter is in a tough, rundown neighborhood near the railroad tracks. Surrounded by a stucco wall, it has tall iron gates and iron bars over the windows.
There is a funereal pall over the city, worsened by the searing August heat and the ongoing drug war. Everyone seems wary, hunkered down. No one goes out after dark. A week earlier, thugs threw a grenade at the city hall. The mayor was rumored to be living with his family in McAllen for his own protection. A DIF employee mentions that his office downtown was strafed with bullets two weeks earlier. He and the other employees hid under their desks until the gun battle was over.
Even with the military Humvees circling the city’s plaza, the children keep coming. The number of unaccompanied children passing through here remains constant despite the spiraling violence. As of mid-August, 800 children had come through the shelter since January, according to Eleuterio Valdez, the shelter’s director. In 2008, there were 1,550 children, and in 2009, Valdez housed 1,670 kids.
It’s a Wednesday afternoon, and Valdez is busy. He fans himself with a notebook; there’s no AC at the shelter. A hysterical woman is on the phone from Florida. She paid a man in Reynosa to smuggle her 3-year-old-son to Florida. She hasn’t heard from the smuggler in a week. Valdez assures her he’ll call if the toddler is brought in. As he hangs up the phone, the six boys file in, sent from Cano’s small DIF office on the bridge. Armando and José, who lost their mother the previous afternoon, look as if they’re still in shock. Valdez tells me the shelter provides psychological counseling if it’s needed. In the lobby, there is a door marked “psychologist,” but I never see anyone there during the course of a week.
The other boys are sullen. Valdez and the policeman pat them down for weapons, and Valdez takes their belts and meager belongings, which they still carry in the plastic Homeland Security bags. He places their things in yellow manila envelopes. “This is for your safety,” he says. “You’ll get your things back when your relatives come.” The boys watch, downcast, as he places their belongings in a file cabinet, then locks it.
At least 80 percent of the children who pass through here are boys. They are housed in a separate dorm on the other side of the walled compound from the girls. Valdez keeps the boys locked inside when they’re not in the cafeteria. “The boys are a lot more adventurous,” he says.
Inside the dorm room crammed with bunk beds, a lanky teenager named Pedro, 16, sits on the couch watching a soccer match on television. His mother and four siblings live 35 miles away in Harlingen, Texas. From the Mexican side of the river, he can see the traffic signs pointing the way home. He’s been trying to get there for six months.
This is his second time at the DIF shelter, he says. Last night a Border Patrol helicopter spotted him and seven others on the U.S. side of the river. They were chased through the brush. An agent tackled Pedro. He spent the night in a freezing holding cell. Today he’s back in Reynosa. When he was 5 years old, his mother smuggled him across the river. He attended elementary and middle schools in Harlingen. Then his grandmother became ill in Michoacán. His mother decided Pedro, the eldest at 13, should return to Mexico to help care for his grandmother, which he did until she passed away. Now he’s stuck in Reynosa trying to get back to his family. He nearly drowned once already, he says, floating on an inner tube across the swollen river choked with branches and refuse from upstream. The Rio Grande is at its highest level in 30 years. The McAllen newspaper is full of reports of migrants’ bodies being fished out of the river by Border Patrol agents on the U.S. side of the garbage-strewn riverbank.
Pedro is burning through his family’s savings, having already paid smugglers hundreds of dollars. It’s impossible to cross without paying the Gulf cartel, which keeps tight control over the Mexican side of the river. Just to float an inner tube to McAllen costs $400. “My stepfather gives me the money,” Pedro says. His mother is remarried to a U.S. citizen. Every time Pedro’s apprehended, his stepfather drives to Reynosa and bails him out. Then he gives Pedro more money to pay another smuggler. Pedro wonders how much longer his stepfather will keep coming. “I want to go back to school in Harlingen,” he says. “There isn’t anything left for me in Michoacán.”
His mother can’t become legal in the United States. In 1996, Congress stiffened immigration laws so that anyone who entered illegally and married a U.S. citizen could no longer pay a fine to become legal. Instead, his mother would have to return to Mexico, wait years then reapply to enter. These days, the U.S. government isn’t inclined to allow anyone to re-enter once they’ve admitted to entering illegally. It’s a Catch-22.
Valdez, like every DIF official I speak to, assures me that before a child is released to anyone, DIF makes sure they are related. A battery of documentation is required, including birth certificates and a photo ID from the relative with a surname matching the child’s. They say they always reunite the children with their families and send them home. But what happens if home is on the other side of the Rio Grande? Or if there is no home?
I arrange an interview with the head of the DIF in Matamoros, Marisa Castañeda de Silva, the mayor’s wife. (Every mayor’s wife is obliged to run the city’s DIF office, while the governor’s wife oversees DIF for the entire state.) After 20 minutes of waiting in the lobby, I am ushered into a conference room with soft light, scented candles and plates of cookies. Castañeda plies me with cookies and thanks me for coming. In 2008, a Mexican congressional committee reported 90,000 children had been sent back by U.S. authorities to border cities like hers. At least 13,500 were never claimed. I ask Castañeda whether children are being abandoned in her city and what happens to them after they leave the DIF? She begins reading from scripted answers on index cards handed to her by a public relations employee. “The shelter is always ready. We provide blankets and clothes for the children,” she smiles. “We work closely with the church to raise money for food and clothes for the shelter.” I wait politely, and then ask again. The public relations employee scribbles furiously on an index card, then hands it to her. “We work to reunite children with their parents,” she says, then refers me to Lilia Orizaga, who runs the shelter. Her assistant sends me on my way with a bag of cookies.
Matamoros receives about half the children that Reynosa does at its shelter—324 children from January to mid-August of this year, says Orizaga. A city of 450,000, Matamoros is smaller than Reynosa and not as desirable a place to cross. In Reynosa, it’s a straight shot to San Antonio and Interstate 35, then on to any destination in the United States. Pass through Matamoros to Brownsville, and just north of the city you reach vast and barren ranchland, which is probably why Border Patrol has sent 14-year-old Susana here. This is her fifth failed attempt to reach the United States in a month. Susana arrived at the Matamoros shelter an hour ago. She clutches a small, black duffel bag as if she might be leaving at any moment. She was in the Reynosa DIF already, Orizaga says, but a cousin bailed her out. Susana says they crossed that night in an inflatable boat. The boat became trapped among broken tree limbs and debris. They were lost for five hours, until Border Patrol agents fished them out.
Her goal is to make it to Kansas, where her father works. “I haven’t seen him in five years,” she says. It costs $2,500 to get to there. “My father pays half in Reynosa and the other half when I arrive in McAllen,” she says. She’s been caught three times by Border Patrol: once on a bus in Houston, the second time at the San Antonio bus station, the third time on the river. She just spent two days in a Border Patrol holding cell, where she says she was scared at first because she was alone, “but then the cell filled with at least 10 other children, and we were all together.” She doesn’t know what happened to her cousin, she says. “The smugglers separated us before we crossed.” Susana says she’s ready to go home. “I don’t want to stay here. I’m tired of fighting,” she says.
Orizaga says the Reynosa shelter should never have released Susana to her cousin. “This time it will have to be a parent,” she says. But Susana is doubtful that either parent will come to Matamoros. “I don’t believe my father will come for me, and the truth is, I don’t think my mother will, either, because she has to take care of my younger brothers and sisters,” she says.
Susana is one of three kids who say they’ll go home once they leave the shelter. The other two are Armando and José, who never wanted to cross in the first place. After two days, an uncle materializes at the Reynosa shelter to drive the boys back to Zacatecas. They are the exceptions. Dozens of other kids I interview over two weeks in Matamoros and Reynosa say they’ll cross again as soon as they have the money.
They cycle through the shelters again and again. On the Reynosa bridge, Cano says in the six weeks she’s worked for the DIF, she’s seen some kids multiple times already. “The children from Reynosa and the other border cities will come through five, seven, even 11 times,” she says. Cano refers kids who pass though repeatedly to another government program downtown that offers computer courses and vocational training. The hope is that the children will go back to school or find work instead of crossing the river. “But I’m not sure they actually go,” she says.
The only lucrative employment in Reynosa these days seems to be smuggling humans or contraband. There are people in Reynosa poised to help anyone who wants to cross the Rio Grande, providing they pay a price. There are pateros (human smugglers) at the plaza, the bus station or just milling around downtown, a man who works with the migrant community says. He asks to remain anonymous because he fears retribution from the cartel. “Back in the ’90s, being a patero was a trade, and there were rules,” he says. “You paid your money, and they delivered you to the other side.” Now cartel thugs and organized crime dominate the business. What can’t be made in contraband is recouped smuggling migrants. If the children are lucky, they’ll find a smuggler who plays by the old rules, and they’ll make it safely to their destination. With the Gulf cartel in charge of the river and the security gauntlet on the U.S. side, the chances of crossing safely grow increasingly slim.
Sometimes the kids are paid by smugglers to be caminantes (walkers) accompanying migrants through the remote South Texas ranches. They get from $10 to $20 a head for every migrant they guide through the rough terrain, he says. Others are paid or intimidated by the cartels to smuggle drug loads in backpacks. “These children are like uncut diamonds. Criminals can mold them any way they want,” the man says. “With all of the security problems we have now, a lot of children are being taken for many different things, and it’s a very, very big problem.” Minors are seldom charged with crimes in the United States. Instead, Border Patrol returns them to Mexico, where they are placed in a DIF shelter.
“The children are dumped back in Reynosa like packages,” says Rebeca Rodriguez, director of Reynosa’s nonprofit center for human rights, Centro Estudios Fronterizos y Derechos Humanos. Rodriguez used to work for the DIF in the neighboring city of Rio Bravo in the mid-’90s. A social worker, she left the agency after a year and says the experience left her frustrated. “I’m sure DIF told you that a relative with an ID and documents must come to pick the child up, but the documents can be forged. And they don’t monitor the children after they’ve gone. They just give them back and say ‘bye bye,’ ” she says. “With all of the technology we have, they should be able to monitor them for at least three months.”
I try to investigate what happens to the kids once they leave the shelter, but I underestimate the fear and paranoia fueled by drug violence in Reynosa. Several journalists have been kidnapped or killed, so there’s no media coverage about the cartels or organized crime. There’s no official information from the city government, either. The city is rife with rumors—some true, some not. Among other things, I hear that the Gulf cartel is the de facto authority in the city. I hear that migrants, including children, are being kidnapped at the bus station and that the local police are involved. The police also keep an eye on the river for the cartel. No city official will talk about the impact of organized crime on the children. Every time I ask about los malos (the bad people), as people refer to them here, the officials change the subject. When I discreetly ask some of the children whether they’re afraid or have had encounters with los malos, they look at me blankly or stare at the floor. On the Reynosa bridge, a lanky 15-year-old boy insists I leave the office while he speaks to Cano alone. “It’s something very serious,” he says. Later, she tells me the boy begged her not to contact his mother because he’s afraid she’ll be kidnapped at the bus station.
After I pester a DIF official in Reynosa for days, he finally opens up. He says he’ll talk anonymously about organized crime. He furtively glances both ways down the hallway in front of his office, then gestures for me to come inside. He closes and locks both doors. “Look, I know what’s happening,” he says, mopping his brow with a tissue, “because we talk to the children.” The man confirms that children are kidnapped at the bus station and that police are involved. “These are very well-known secrets,” he says. “But we cannot talk about it openly because we live here, and it’s very, very delicate. There are people in uniform and people without uniforms watching all the time.” He means that if you say something publicly that might enrage organized crime, a group of armed men might show up at your door one morning, maybe with a police escort, march you to their SUV at gunpoint, and your family will never see you again. Someday, he tells me, when things get better, he’ll write a book about it.
Many kidnapped children don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the DIF because they’re not Mexican, the official says. They come from Central and South America and are waiting to “jump to the other side,” as he puts it. From January to August of this year, Mexican immigration had deported 44,918 children to Central and South America. The migrant advocate in Reynosa tells me the kidnappings and extortions have been plaguing the city at least since 2004. “In the last three years, things have gotten really horrible,” he says. “The migrants are terrified. They don’t want to denounce the crimes anymore. They just want to go home.” There are safe houses all over the city, he says, where migrants are being held for ransom. It’s the worst for migrants with relatives in the United States because they are perceived to have more money.
Two weeks later, the massacre of 72 migrants at a ranch near Matamoros makes international headlines. It’s discovered that they were Central and South American migrants too poor to pay the Zeta cartel’s ransom. The only confirmed survivor is an 18-year-old boy from Ecuador.
The kids are too frightened to talk about their experiences, but at a shelter run by Catholic nuns, I speak with a slight, 27-year-old Guatemalan man with the face of a teenager. Speaking in a whisper, he says he asked a man on the street for directions to a money-changing house. Instead, the man tied his hands with rope, took his shoes, and threw him into a dark room with several other bound men. The kidnappers had taken $250 from him and were trying to extort his poverty-stricken family for more. He’s lucky, he says, because he escaped. He takes his baseball cap off, and I notice a fresh scar across his eyebrow. He wants to be deported to Guatemala, but he’s terrified to leave the shelter. The kidnappers are outside, he says, waiting. The nuns can do nothing to prevent it.
As I leave the shelter, I see a group of men in baseball caps and jeans standing across the street. Three men propped against the wall of the shelter smoke a joint. Their eyes are red. They stare emptily back at me. I look up, and a line of men sits watching from a building ledge overlooking the shelter. Dressed in black T-shirts, they remind me of vultures.
Back at Agatha Christie cano’s office on the Reynosa bridge, three teenage boys file into the small office and wait. Chances are, the motorists chatting on their cell phones or listening to their radios on the bridge will never notice what goes on below them. On the Rio Grande, people are also on the move, hundreds of them, day after day, covered in the mud and muck of the river. A mud-encrusted, wide-eyed teen is marched past me by two uniformed immigration officers. He’s Central American, Cano says. Since he’s not Mexican, he’s out of her jurisdiction. The immigration officials won’t do interviews. The topic of immigration has become too politically sensitive, one of them says. The boy is whisked away.
If government leaders could rise above the divisive politics, they could stop this humanitarian crisis. Mexico and the United States have binational accords and a repatriation program to protect migrant children, yet neither country ensures they’re safely returned home. The U.S. Border Patrol and the DIF could set up a database to monitor children at risk to prevent them from ending up on the streets. The U.S. Congress could pass comprehensive immigration reform that includes a family reunification process to prevent children from being dumped in Mexican shelters. The Border Patrol already has a congressional mandate to screen for vulnerable kids and refer them to U.S. agencies that can help, yet advocates say it’s not being done. One thing is for certain: Until politicians on both sides of the river eradicate the poverty that uproots these families, children won’t stop coming. Even if the United States puts soldiers on the border and spends billions on fences and high-tech equipment, they’re not going to stop the exodus.
At least not until there’s something to hope for at home. A skinny 15-year-old from the mountains of Veracruz slumps in an office chair in front of Cano’s desk. She picks up a pen and begins filling out the paperwork. He has nothing but a Catholic rosary. The cuffs of his jeans are tattered and still damp from the river. “Aren’t you afraid of being killed?” Cano asks the boy. “Wouldn’t it be better to go back home?” He shakes his head, “No.” His father is dead, he says. His mother and three younger brothers and sisters are at home waiting for him to send money if he makes it. “Where I come from,” he says, “we’re not afraid to die.”
Support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
Texas Observer
Thursday, November 04, 2010
On the Hildago-Reynosa International Bridge, there is a small white room tucked inside the Mexican immigration office where children, apprehended and then released by the U.S. Border Patrol, file in day after day and wait for a family member to claim them.
The office is run by Mexico’s social services agency called the Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, or DIF. It receives dozens of repatriated children every week ranging from infants a few days old to 18-year-olds. As the children wait, they peer out, unseen, through a mirrored, plate-glass window at passing motorists. The children arrive with T-shirts covered in mud and the cuffs of their torn jeans still damp from the Rio Grande. Some have cuts and scrapes from running through thorny mesquite groves and cacti, trying to evade U.S. border agents. Others have angry red wounds from snakebites or puncture marks from an IV drip after being rescued from heat exhaustion in the desert. Then there are the marks you can’t see: having been kidnapped or raped by traffickers, or having witnessed the death of a family member or friend during their journeys.
The children clutch their belongings in small, clear plastic bags with Department of Homeland Security tags attached. They carry remarkably little for such a perilous journey. Inside the plastic bags there might be a cell phone, shoe laces, (removed for their protection while in U.S. custody), and maybe a rosary, or some wadded-up American cash, or a few pesos. They appear downtrodden, exhausted yet resolute: With few exceptions they’ll cross again because their parents or loved ones are en el otro lado and on the other side of the Rio Grande there is hope. Hope to study, to work, or to just hug their mothers or fathers again.
The teenagers act tough and stare at the wall or the floor while they wait to be claimed. Sometimes they crack jokes so the younger kids won’t cry. The little kids can’t hide their grief. They cry for their parents or their abuelos, which makes it harder for the older kids. A 29-year-old woman with the unlikely name of Agatha Christie Cano (her father is a mystery buff) is the sole employee at the DIF office on the bridge. She sits behind a small wooden desk, a pink daisy pen with a smiley face in a pencil holder by her side. Each morning she fans out on her desk the questionnaires that she’ll fill out during her interviews with the children. Cano is cheerful, but then she has only been working at the DIF for six weeks. As soon as she finishes nursing school next year, she says, she plans to apply for work in the United States.
Cano must piece together a child’s history with information from the Mexican Consulate in McAllen. The consulate conducts an initial interview to make sure the children’s rights have not been violated before U.S. Border agents send them back to Mexico. Cano helps figure out who will claim the children once they’ve been returned, which is more difficult than it might seem. Every child’s family is scarred by death, divorce or migration to the United States. They also share poverty and few opportunities for work or education.
Two brothers from Zacatecas, Armando, 17, and José, 13, arrive on a Thursday afternoon. Border Patrol apprehended them Wednesday morning near Roma, Texas, after the brothers walked several hours in 103-degree heat. Cano listens intently as Armando, the eldest, tells their story, his face impassive as his younger brother starts to cry. After seven hours of walking, their mother had collapsed. The coyote and the rest of the group kept walking. Armando went for help while José stayed behind with their mother. He walked to a highway and flagged down a truck driver who called Border Patrol. By the time he returned with the agents, their mother was dead, and his brother was nearly unconscious. The agents inserted an IV and pumped fluids into his arm, which saved his life. José sobs quietly as his brother speaks. Cano offers him a tissue. “We never wanted to go,” Armando tells her. “We were doing fine where we were.” Cano nods. His mother had left them with their grandmother and crossed illegally several years ago, he tells her. She lived in Chicago, remarried, and had a 3-year-old son in the United States. After their grandmother died, problems started among the family members in Zacatecas.
“My mother wanted us all to be together again,” Armando says. “She said we could live together
in Chicago.”
“Do you have anyone, an uncle or an aunt who can come for you?” Cano asks. “Does your father know you’re here?”
“We haven’t seen him in years,” Armando says, shaking his head.
Cano fills out the questionnaire. The boys watch blankly. “Isn’t there anyone who can come for you?” she presses Armando. The room is quiet except for the sound of José crying.
After a few hours of waiting for a relative, José, Armando and four other teenage boys are herded into a van and driven to a larger DIF shelter for repatriated children in downtown Reynosa. A lone policeman guards the entrance. The shelter is in a tough, rundown neighborhood near the railroad tracks. Surrounded by a stucco wall, it has tall iron gates and iron bars over the windows.
There is a funereal pall over the city, worsened by the searing August heat and the ongoing drug war. Everyone seems wary, hunkered down. No one goes out after dark. A week earlier, thugs threw a grenade at the city hall. The mayor was rumored to be living with his family in McAllen for his own protection. A DIF employee mentions that his office downtown was strafed with bullets two weeks earlier. He and the other employees hid under their desks until the gun battle was over.
Even with the military Humvees circling the city’s plaza, the children keep coming. The number of unaccompanied children passing through here remains constant despite the spiraling violence. As of mid-August, 800 children had come through the shelter since January, according to Eleuterio Valdez, the shelter’s director. In 2008, there were 1,550 children, and in 2009, Valdez housed 1,670 kids.
It’s a Wednesday afternoon, and Valdez is busy. He fans himself with a notebook; there’s no AC at the shelter. A hysterical woman is on the phone from Florida. She paid a man in Reynosa to smuggle her 3-year-old-son to Florida. She hasn’t heard from the smuggler in a week. Valdez assures her he’ll call if the toddler is brought in. As he hangs up the phone, the six boys file in, sent from Cano’s small DIF office on the bridge. Armando and José, who lost their mother the previous afternoon, look as if they’re still in shock. Valdez tells me the shelter provides psychological counseling if it’s needed. In the lobby, there is a door marked “psychologist,” but I never see anyone there during the course of a week.
The other boys are sullen. Valdez and the policeman pat them down for weapons, and Valdez takes their belts and meager belongings, which they still carry in the plastic Homeland Security bags. He places their things in yellow manila envelopes. “This is for your safety,” he says. “You’ll get your things back when your relatives come.” The boys watch, downcast, as he places their belongings in a file cabinet, then locks it.
At least 80 percent of the children who pass through here are boys. They are housed in a separate dorm on the other side of the walled compound from the girls. Valdez keeps the boys locked inside when they’re not in the cafeteria. “The boys are a lot more adventurous,” he says.
Inside the dorm room crammed with bunk beds, a lanky teenager named Pedro, 16, sits on the couch watching a soccer match on television. His mother and four siblings live 35 miles away in Harlingen, Texas. From the Mexican side of the river, he can see the traffic signs pointing the way home. He’s been trying to get there for six months.
This is his second time at the DIF shelter, he says. Last night a Border Patrol helicopter spotted him and seven others on the U.S. side of the river. They were chased through the brush. An agent tackled Pedro. He spent the night in a freezing holding cell. Today he’s back in Reynosa. When he was 5 years old, his mother smuggled him across the river. He attended elementary and middle schools in Harlingen. Then his grandmother became ill in Michoacán. His mother decided Pedro, the eldest at 13, should return to Mexico to help care for his grandmother, which he did until she passed away. Now he’s stuck in Reynosa trying to get back to his family. He nearly drowned once already, he says, floating on an inner tube across the swollen river choked with branches and refuse from upstream. The Rio Grande is at its highest level in 30 years. The McAllen newspaper is full of reports of migrants’ bodies being fished out of the river by Border Patrol agents on the U.S. side of the garbage-strewn riverbank.
Pedro is burning through his family’s savings, having already paid smugglers hundreds of dollars. It’s impossible to cross without paying the Gulf cartel, which keeps tight control over the Mexican side of the river. Just to float an inner tube to McAllen costs $400. “My stepfather gives me the money,” Pedro says. His mother is remarried to a U.S. citizen. Every time Pedro’s apprehended, his stepfather drives to Reynosa and bails him out. Then he gives Pedro more money to pay another smuggler. Pedro wonders how much longer his stepfather will keep coming. “I want to go back to school in Harlingen,” he says. “There isn’t anything left for me in Michoacán.”
His mother can’t become legal in the United States. In 1996, Congress stiffened immigration laws so that anyone who entered illegally and married a U.S. citizen could no longer pay a fine to become legal. Instead, his mother would have to return to Mexico, wait years then reapply to enter. These days, the U.S. government isn’t inclined to allow anyone to re-enter once they’ve admitted to entering illegally. It’s a Catch-22.
Valdez, like every DIF official I speak to, assures me that before a child is released to anyone, DIF makes sure they are related. A battery of documentation is required, including birth certificates and a photo ID from the relative with a surname matching the child’s. They say they always reunite the children with their families and send them home. But what happens if home is on the other side of the Rio Grande? Or if there is no home?
I arrange an interview with the head of the DIF in Matamoros, Marisa Castañeda de Silva, the mayor’s wife. (Every mayor’s wife is obliged to run the city’s DIF office, while the governor’s wife oversees DIF for the entire state.) After 20 minutes of waiting in the lobby, I am ushered into a conference room with soft light, scented candles and plates of cookies. Castañeda plies me with cookies and thanks me for coming. In 2008, a Mexican congressional committee reported 90,000 children had been sent back by U.S. authorities to border cities like hers. At least 13,500 were never claimed. I ask Castañeda whether children are being abandoned in her city and what happens to them after they leave the DIF? She begins reading from scripted answers on index cards handed to her by a public relations employee. “The shelter is always ready. We provide blankets and clothes for the children,” she smiles. “We work closely with the church to raise money for food and clothes for the shelter.” I wait politely, and then ask again. The public relations employee scribbles furiously on an index card, then hands it to her. “We work to reunite children with their parents,” she says, then refers me to Lilia Orizaga, who runs the shelter. Her assistant sends me on my way with a bag of cookies.
Matamoros receives about half the children that Reynosa does at its shelter—324 children from January to mid-August of this year, says Orizaga. A city of 450,000, Matamoros is smaller than Reynosa and not as desirable a place to cross. In Reynosa, it’s a straight shot to San Antonio and Interstate 35, then on to any destination in the United States. Pass through Matamoros to Brownsville, and just north of the city you reach vast and barren ranchland, which is probably why Border Patrol has sent 14-year-old Susana here. This is her fifth failed attempt to reach the United States in a month. Susana arrived at the Matamoros shelter an hour ago. She clutches a small, black duffel bag as if she might be leaving at any moment. She was in the Reynosa DIF already, Orizaga says, but a cousin bailed her out. Susana says they crossed that night in an inflatable boat. The boat became trapped among broken tree limbs and debris. They were lost for five hours, until Border Patrol agents fished them out.
Her goal is to make it to Kansas, where her father works. “I haven’t seen him in five years,” she says. It costs $2,500 to get to there. “My father pays half in Reynosa and the other half when I arrive in McAllen,” she says. She’s been caught three times by Border Patrol: once on a bus in Houston, the second time at the San Antonio bus station, the third time on the river. She just spent two days in a Border Patrol holding cell, where she says she was scared at first because she was alone, “but then the cell filled with at least 10 other children, and we were all together.” She doesn’t know what happened to her cousin, she says. “The smugglers separated us before we crossed.” Susana says she’s ready to go home. “I don’t want to stay here. I’m tired of fighting,” she says.
Orizaga says the Reynosa shelter should never have released Susana to her cousin. “This time it will have to be a parent,” she says. But Susana is doubtful that either parent will come to Matamoros. “I don’t believe my father will come for me, and the truth is, I don’t think my mother will, either, because she has to take care of my younger brothers and sisters,” she says.
Susana is one of three kids who say they’ll go home once they leave the shelter. The other two are Armando and José, who never wanted to cross in the first place. After two days, an uncle materializes at the Reynosa shelter to drive the boys back to Zacatecas. They are the exceptions. Dozens of other kids I interview over two weeks in Matamoros and Reynosa say they’ll cross again as soon as they have the money.
They cycle through the shelters again and again. On the Reynosa bridge, Cano says in the six weeks she’s worked for the DIF, she’s seen some kids multiple times already. “The children from Reynosa and the other border cities will come through five, seven, even 11 times,” she says. Cano refers kids who pass though repeatedly to another government program downtown that offers computer courses and vocational training. The hope is that the children will go back to school or find work instead of crossing the river. “But I’m not sure they actually go,” she says.
The only lucrative employment in Reynosa these days seems to be smuggling humans or contraband. There are people in Reynosa poised to help anyone who wants to cross the Rio Grande, providing they pay a price. There are pateros (human smugglers) at the plaza, the bus station or just milling around downtown, a man who works with the migrant community says. He asks to remain anonymous because he fears retribution from the cartel. “Back in the ’90s, being a patero was a trade, and there were rules,” he says. “You paid your money, and they delivered you to the other side.” Now cartel thugs and organized crime dominate the business. What can’t be made in contraband is recouped smuggling migrants. If the children are lucky, they’ll find a smuggler who plays by the old rules, and they’ll make it safely to their destination. With the Gulf cartel in charge of the river and the security gauntlet on the U.S. side, the chances of crossing safely grow increasingly slim.
Sometimes the kids are paid by smugglers to be caminantes (walkers) accompanying migrants through the remote South Texas ranches. They get from $10 to $20 a head for every migrant they guide through the rough terrain, he says. Others are paid or intimidated by the cartels to smuggle drug loads in backpacks. “These children are like uncut diamonds. Criminals can mold them any way they want,” the man says. “With all of the security problems we have now, a lot of children are being taken for many different things, and it’s a very, very big problem.” Minors are seldom charged with crimes in the United States. Instead, Border Patrol returns them to Mexico, where they are placed in a DIF shelter.
“The children are dumped back in Reynosa like packages,” says Rebeca Rodriguez, director of Reynosa’s nonprofit center for human rights, Centro Estudios Fronterizos y Derechos Humanos. Rodriguez used to work for the DIF in the neighboring city of Rio Bravo in the mid-’90s. A social worker, she left the agency after a year and says the experience left her frustrated. “I’m sure DIF told you that a relative with an ID and documents must come to pick the child up, but the documents can be forged. And they don’t monitor the children after they’ve gone. They just give them back and say ‘bye bye,’ ” she says. “With all of the technology we have, they should be able to monitor them for at least three months.”
I try to investigate what happens to the kids once they leave the shelter, but I underestimate the fear and paranoia fueled by drug violence in Reynosa. Several journalists have been kidnapped or killed, so there’s no media coverage about the cartels or organized crime. There’s no official information from the city government, either. The city is rife with rumors—some true, some not. Among other things, I hear that the Gulf cartel is the de facto authority in the city. I hear that migrants, including children, are being kidnapped at the bus station and that the local police are involved. The police also keep an eye on the river for the cartel. No city official will talk about the impact of organized crime on the children. Every time I ask about los malos (the bad people), as people refer to them here, the officials change the subject. When I discreetly ask some of the children whether they’re afraid or have had encounters with los malos, they look at me blankly or stare at the floor. On the Reynosa bridge, a lanky 15-year-old boy insists I leave the office while he speaks to Cano alone. “It’s something very serious,” he says. Later, she tells me the boy begged her not to contact his mother because he’s afraid she’ll be kidnapped at the bus station.
After I pester a DIF official in Reynosa for days, he finally opens up. He says he’ll talk anonymously about organized crime. He furtively glances both ways down the hallway in front of his office, then gestures for me to come inside. He closes and locks both doors. “Look, I know what’s happening,” he says, mopping his brow with a tissue, “because we talk to the children.” The man confirms that children are kidnapped at the bus station and that police are involved. “These are very well-known secrets,” he says. “But we cannot talk about it openly because we live here, and it’s very, very delicate. There are people in uniform and people without uniforms watching all the time.” He means that if you say something publicly that might enrage organized crime, a group of armed men might show up at your door one morning, maybe with a police escort, march you to their SUV at gunpoint, and your family will never see you again. Someday, he tells me, when things get better, he’ll write a book about it.
Many kidnapped children don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the DIF because they’re not Mexican, the official says. They come from Central and South America and are waiting to “jump to the other side,” as he puts it. From January to August of this year, Mexican immigration had deported 44,918 children to Central and South America. The migrant advocate in Reynosa tells me the kidnappings and extortions have been plaguing the city at least since 2004. “In the last three years, things have gotten really horrible,” he says. “The migrants are terrified. They don’t want to denounce the crimes anymore. They just want to go home.” There are safe houses all over the city, he says, where migrants are being held for ransom. It’s the worst for migrants with relatives in the United States because they are perceived to have more money.
Two weeks later, the massacre of 72 migrants at a ranch near Matamoros makes international headlines. It’s discovered that they were Central and South American migrants too poor to pay the Zeta cartel’s ransom. The only confirmed survivor is an 18-year-old boy from Ecuador.
The kids are too frightened to talk about their experiences, but at a shelter run by Catholic nuns, I speak with a slight, 27-year-old Guatemalan man with the face of a teenager. Speaking in a whisper, he says he asked a man on the street for directions to a money-changing house. Instead, the man tied his hands with rope, took his shoes, and threw him into a dark room with several other bound men. The kidnappers had taken $250 from him and were trying to extort his poverty-stricken family for more. He’s lucky, he says, because he escaped. He takes his baseball cap off, and I notice a fresh scar across his eyebrow. He wants to be deported to Guatemala, but he’s terrified to leave the shelter. The kidnappers are outside, he says, waiting. The nuns can do nothing to prevent it.
As I leave the shelter, I see a group of men in baseball caps and jeans standing across the street. Three men propped against the wall of the shelter smoke a joint. Their eyes are red. They stare emptily back at me. I look up, and a line of men sits watching from a building ledge overlooking the shelter. Dressed in black T-shirts, they remind me of vultures.
Back at Agatha Christie cano’s office on the Reynosa bridge, three teenage boys file into the small office and wait. Chances are, the motorists chatting on their cell phones or listening to their radios on the bridge will never notice what goes on below them. On the Rio Grande, people are also on the move, hundreds of them, day after day, covered in the mud and muck of the river. A mud-encrusted, wide-eyed teen is marched past me by two uniformed immigration officers. He’s Central American, Cano says. Since he’s not Mexican, he’s out of her jurisdiction. The immigration officials won’t do interviews. The topic of immigration has become too politically sensitive, one of them says. The boy is whisked away.
If government leaders could rise above the divisive politics, they could stop this humanitarian crisis. Mexico and the United States have binational accords and a repatriation program to protect migrant children, yet neither country ensures they’re safely returned home. The U.S. Border Patrol and the DIF could set up a database to monitor children at risk to prevent them from ending up on the streets. The U.S. Congress could pass comprehensive immigration reform that includes a family reunification process to prevent children from being dumped in Mexican shelters. The Border Patrol already has a congressional mandate to screen for vulnerable kids and refer them to U.S. agencies that can help, yet advocates say it’s not being done. One thing is for certain: Until politicians on both sides of the river eradicate the poverty that uproots these families, children won’t stop coming. Even if the United States puts soldiers on the border and spends billions on fences and high-tech equipment, they’re not going to stop the exodus.
At least not until there’s something to hope for at home. A skinny 15-year-old from the mountains of Veracruz slumps in an office chair in front of Cano’s desk. She picks up a pen and begins filling out the paperwork. He has nothing but a Catholic rosary. The cuffs of his jeans are tattered and still damp from the river. “Aren’t you afraid of being killed?” Cano asks the boy. “Wouldn’t it be better to go back home?” He shakes his head, “No.” His father is dead, he says. His mother and three younger brothers and sisters are at home waiting for him to send money if he makes it. “Where I come from,” he says, “we’re not afraid to die.”
Support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Legal Immigrants Imprisoned and Deported in 'Wide Net' of DOC
By Tara MacIsaac
Epoch Times Staff
Oct 20, 2010
NEW YORK—Several hundred Immigrants marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on Tuesday, October 19, to draw attention to Department of Corrections (DOC) practices that they say threaten the freedoms of legal and illegal immigrants alike.
Thousands of immigrants held by the DOC are transferred to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) every year, according to Make the Road New York (MRNY), the immigrant advocacy group that organized the march. Among the 3,000 to 4,000 transferred to detention centers as far away as Texas or Alabama, are not only undocumented immigrants, but also asylum seekers, victims of human trafficking, and those seeking protection under the Violence Against Women Act.
“They’re brought into the jail system and then (corrections officers) do a background check and then they’re suddenly in detention centers. It doesn’t mean that they’re here illegally. We’re estimating that about 35 percent are permanent residents, people who are here legally, who are just foreign born. That’s what they’re using to identify people. … There are cases of U.S. citizens being deported,” said Melissa Lefas, a law student at Cardozo School of Law and a member of the Immigration Justice Clinic at Cardozo.
A program run by ICE, Secure Communities, aims to identify criminal aliens for deportation by sharing information between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. A Secure Communities brochure states that “fingerprints submitted during the booking process (are) checked against FBI criminal history records and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) records, including immigration status, providing valuable information to accurately identify those in custody.”
The brochure highlights the case of several criminals involved in violent crimes and drug infractions who have been apprehended and deported through the information-sharing program. Lefas, however, maintains that "they’ve got this really wide net and there aren't the mechanisms to really be able to filter through and identify the right people."
Lefas supports legislation that City Council Members Daniel Dromm and Melissa Mark-Viverito are proposing, which calls for the city’s withdrawal from Secure Communities. DOC participates in the program voluntarily and is under no legal obligation to release detainee information, according to the proposal.
The current situation discourages immigrant victims of violence or witnesses of crimes to cooperate with police, say MRNY members. “Domestic violence victims in particular are reluctant to call for vital police assistance if they know the result will be the deportation of their loved one,” said MRNY in a press release.
DOC attorneys did not respond to inquiries and ICE did not respond as of press deadline.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/44575/
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Lawsuit: Mentally Ill US Citizen Wrongly Deported
WSBTV.COM
October 14, 2010
ATLANTA -- A mentally disabled U.S. citizen who spoke no Spanish was deported to Mexico with little but a prison jumpsuit after immigration agents manipulated him into signing documents allowing his removal, a lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges. His lawyers say the agents ignored records showing his Social Security number, while prison officials wouldn't tell concerned relatives what happened.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Atlanta by the American Civil Liberties Union seeks damages from the federal government and people ranging from Obama administration officials to immigration agents. It also asks for a jury trial.
Mark Lyttle was serving prison time in North Carolina for a misdemeanor offense in 2008 when prison officials say he gave Mexico as his place of birth, drawing the attention of immigration agents. His lawyers acknowledge he eventually signed papers allowing his deportation, but argue he was too mentally disabled to understand what he was doing. He spent four months in Central America before his family helped him return.
"The government failed to protect Mr. Lyttle, and individuals who lacked the proper training and oversight violated Mr. Lyttle's constitutional rights," the lawsuit said. The government does not have the right to deport U.S. citizens.
The lawsuit also alleges discrimination because Lyttle is of Puerto Rican descent and looks Hispanic.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice said the department would review the complaint once the government is served and will respond in court. An ICE spokesman said the agency wouldn't comment, citing ongoing litigation.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security did not have immediate comment on the lawsuit.
The ordeal began after Lyttle, now 33, was charged with inappropriately touching a female orderly at a psychiatric hospital. In August 2008, he was sentenced to 100 days in prison.
When Lyttle entered custody, "he reported his place of birth as Mexico City, Mexico," said Keith Acree, spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Correction.
A parallel federal lawsuit is being filed in North Carolina against immigration and prison officials there.
Lyttle's lawyers wouldn't make him available for an interview, but relatives have trouble believing he'd say he was from Mexico.
"I couldn't believe that, honestly," his 31-year-old brother David said. "That doesn't even make sense."
He was interviewed by multiple immigration agents in prison. One agent's notes say "Mr. Lyttle's name was assumed to be 'Jose Thomas' and that Mr. Lyttle's true name, Mark Daniel Lyttle, was assumed to be an alias," the lawsuit says, adding that the agent wrote that Lyttle entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico at age 3.
Immigration agents "coerced and manipulated" Lyttle more than once into signing false statements saying he was a citizen of Mexico and agreed to be deported, the suit says.
The lawsuit contends the agents searched databases on Lyttle's criminal history and repeatedly came up with records showing his Social Security number.
Because of his mental disabilities, "Mr. Lyttle did not understand what he was signing or that he unknowingly consented to being deported," the suit says.
David Lyttle said his brother has developmental problems at least partly because of a rough early childhood. He was removed from an abusive home at age 7 and ultimately adopted. He attended elementary school, but missed high school because he was frequently sent to mental hospitals.
"I'm pretty sure that under pressure from police and judges and immigration agents he would have been overwhelmed and confused," David Lyttle said.
In October 2008, Lyttle was sent to an immigration detention facility in south Georgia and interviewed by another agent. That interrogation form "accurately reflected that Mr. Lyttle was 'a native of United States and a citizen of United States,"' but the agent still said Lyttle could be deported because of criminal convictions.
An immigration judge ordered Lyttle deported in December 2008 without letting him present evidence or deny he was Mexican, the lawsuit says.
His lawyers say Lyttle was then flown to Texas and "forced to disembark and sent off on foot into Mexico, still wearing the prison-issued jumpsuit."
Shortly after, he was turned away at a U.S. border crossing in Texas and spent the next 115 days wandering Central America. He was arrested and imprisoned in Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua because he couldn't prove his identity or citizenship, the lawsuit says.
Meanwhile, his family wondered where he was. Prison officials told them he'd been released but didn't say he'd been handed over to immigration agents, David Lyttle said.
"It was just as if he vanished. We couldn't find him at all," David Lyttle said.
Lyttle finally made it to the U.S. embassy in Guatemala, where an employee tracked down his family. They sent copies of his adoption records, and a passport was issued. His family wired Lyttle money for a plane ticket.
On April 22, 2009, Lyttle landed in Atlanta, where he was detained by agents who tried to quickly deport him again, the suit says. A lawyer hired by his family found him in detention and got him released.
The Department of Homeland Security filed a motion on April 28, 2009 to terminate deportation proceedings, stating that he was, in fact, a U.S. citizen.
David Lyttle said his brother has a job and is doing OK.
"I hope that, at the end of all this, that he's well taken care of and compensated," David Lyttle said. "It's just a darn shame what he had to go through."
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/25387476/detail.html
October 14, 2010
ATLANTA -- A mentally disabled U.S. citizen who spoke no Spanish was deported to Mexico with little but a prison jumpsuit after immigration agents manipulated him into signing documents allowing his removal, a lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges. His lawyers say the agents ignored records showing his Social Security number, while prison officials wouldn't tell concerned relatives what happened.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Atlanta by the American Civil Liberties Union seeks damages from the federal government and people ranging from Obama administration officials to immigration agents. It also asks for a jury trial.
Mark Lyttle was serving prison time in North Carolina for a misdemeanor offense in 2008 when prison officials say he gave Mexico as his place of birth, drawing the attention of immigration agents. His lawyers acknowledge he eventually signed papers allowing his deportation, but argue he was too mentally disabled to understand what he was doing. He spent four months in Central America before his family helped him return.
"The government failed to protect Mr. Lyttle, and individuals who lacked the proper training and oversight violated Mr. Lyttle's constitutional rights," the lawsuit said. The government does not have the right to deport U.S. citizens.
The lawsuit also alleges discrimination because Lyttle is of Puerto Rican descent and looks Hispanic.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice said the department would review the complaint once the government is served and will respond in court. An ICE spokesman said the agency wouldn't comment, citing ongoing litigation.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security did not have immediate comment on the lawsuit.
The ordeal began after Lyttle, now 33, was charged with inappropriately touching a female orderly at a psychiatric hospital. In August 2008, he was sentenced to 100 days in prison.
When Lyttle entered custody, "he reported his place of birth as Mexico City, Mexico," said Keith Acree, spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Correction.
A parallel federal lawsuit is being filed in North Carolina against immigration and prison officials there.
Lyttle's lawyers wouldn't make him available for an interview, but relatives have trouble believing he'd say he was from Mexico.
"I couldn't believe that, honestly," his 31-year-old brother David said. "That doesn't even make sense."
He was interviewed by multiple immigration agents in prison. One agent's notes say "Mr. Lyttle's name was assumed to be 'Jose Thomas' and that Mr. Lyttle's true name, Mark Daniel Lyttle, was assumed to be an alias," the lawsuit says, adding that the agent wrote that Lyttle entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico at age 3.
Immigration agents "coerced and manipulated" Lyttle more than once into signing false statements saying he was a citizen of Mexico and agreed to be deported, the suit says.
The lawsuit contends the agents searched databases on Lyttle's criminal history and repeatedly came up with records showing his Social Security number.
Because of his mental disabilities, "Mr. Lyttle did not understand what he was signing or that he unknowingly consented to being deported," the suit says.
David Lyttle said his brother has developmental problems at least partly because of a rough early childhood. He was removed from an abusive home at age 7 and ultimately adopted. He attended elementary school, but missed high school because he was frequently sent to mental hospitals.
"I'm pretty sure that under pressure from police and judges and immigration agents he would have been overwhelmed and confused," David Lyttle said.
In October 2008, Lyttle was sent to an immigration detention facility in south Georgia and interviewed by another agent. That interrogation form "accurately reflected that Mr. Lyttle was 'a native of United States and a citizen of United States,"' but the agent still said Lyttle could be deported because of criminal convictions.
An immigration judge ordered Lyttle deported in December 2008 without letting him present evidence or deny he was Mexican, the lawsuit says.
His lawyers say Lyttle was then flown to Texas and "forced to disembark and sent off on foot into Mexico, still wearing the prison-issued jumpsuit."
Shortly after, he was turned away at a U.S. border crossing in Texas and spent the next 115 days wandering Central America. He was arrested and imprisoned in Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua because he couldn't prove his identity or citizenship, the lawsuit says.
Meanwhile, his family wondered where he was. Prison officials told them he'd been released but didn't say he'd been handed over to immigration agents, David Lyttle said.
"It was just as if he vanished. We couldn't find him at all," David Lyttle said.
Lyttle finally made it to the U.S. embassy in Guatemala, where an employee tracked down his family. They sent copies of his adoption records, and a passport was issued. His family wired Lyttle money for a plane ticket.
On April 22, 2009, Lyttle landed in Atlanta, where he was detained by agents who tried to quickly deport him again, the suit says. A lawyer hired by his family found him in detention and got him released.
The Department of Homeland Security filed a motion on April 28, 2009 to terminate deportation proceedings, stating that he was, in fact, a U.S. citizen.
David Lyttle said his brother has a job and is doing OK.
"I hope that, at the end of all this, that he's well taken care of and compensated," David Lyttle said. "It's just a darn shame what he had to go through."
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/25387476/detail.html
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Decorated War Vets Face Deportation; Colorado Brothers Born In Mexico, Raised In U.S.
By Lance Hernandez
7NEWS
September 22, 2010
DENVER -- Valente and Manuel Valenzuela can’t believe the Department of Homeland Security wants to deport them. The two brothers, who were born in Mexico but grew up in the U.S., are decorated war veterans, whose mother was a U.S. citizen.
Valente, 62, of Colorado Springs, told 7NEWS that he volunteered for the Army to avoid having to repeat 10th grade.
“They sent me to Vietnam,” he said, “after telling me they wouldn’t.”
Valente was awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery. He still has the scars to prove how difficult his job was.
“I have been dealing with post traumatic stress disorder for 42 years. I have Agent Orange on my hands,” he said. “My skin is discolored from Agent Orange from burying the canisters. I have bullet burns on my belly and have undergone three surgeries.”
Valente’s brother, Manuel, said he joined the Marines to avoid being drafted into the Army.
“We were in the jungle. It was hard,” Manuel said. “All you want to do is forget it.”
The brothers were stunned when they received letters from the Department of Homeland Security in 2009 informing them that they would face deportation hearings.
“It made me angry,” Valente said. “At first I wanted to go back to the International Bridge and burn an American flag and throw my medals back across the river. I was that angry.”
Then he and his brother decided to fight for their rights.
When asked why the government wanted to deport them, Valente said he had a domestic violence charge on his record from years ago.
Manuel said he too got into trouble and resisted arrest.
Both brothers believe their behavior may have been related to PTSD, which they are now receiving counseling for.
“I feel sick to my stomach that they’re going through this,” said attorney Mariela Sagastume. “They bravely served their country. They are war heroes. Who’s going to stand up for them?”
The attorney said that if the brothers are deported, “They will be stripped of all these resources, all the help, and they will be sent to a country they haven’t been to in decades.”
Sagastume told 7NEWS that both brothers crossed over to the U.S. as legal permanent residents in 1955.
“Because their mother was a U.S. citizen born in the U.S., they should have been issued citizenship,” she said. “I believe that an error was made.”
Immigration law was slightly different from 1941 to 1952 when the brothers were born.
The law then required the American parent to have resided in the U.S. for at least 10 years, five of those after the age of 16.
Sagastume said the brother’s mom met that requirement. “They lived along the border and she crossed over frequently,” Sagastume said. “We believe we can prove continuous presence here.”
“We are veterans and we are proud of what we did,” Manuel said. “It was hard during the war, but this is worse.”
Valente said he feels his government is being treasonous toward him.
“I feel my government has stabbed me in the back,” he said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities declined to comment for this story, saying they have very strict privacy policies for individual cases.
Speaking generally, a public affairs officer with the Executive Office for Immigration Review said there are a variety of reasons why a deportation hearing might be initiated against an individual and that breaking the law is one of them.
Members of the American G.I. Forum in Denver believe the brothers are getting a raw deal.
The Latino veterans group is backing the Valenzuelas in their battle against Homeland Security.
“We have a good cause here and we’re not going to stop until everything is resolved,” said Vice Commander Russell Lopez of the Skyline chapter.
Fellow veterans will lead a rally in support of the Valenzuela brothers at 9 a.m., Wednesday, Sept. 29 in front of the new Immigration Court at 621 17th St.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/25107233/detail.html
7NEWS
September 22, 2010
DENVER -- Valente and Manuel Valenzuela can’t believe the Department of Homeland Security wants to deport them. The two brothers, who were born in Mexico but grew up in the U.S., are decorated war veterans, whose mother was a U.S. citizen.
Valente, 62, of Colorado Springs, told 7NEWS that he volunteered for the Army to avoid having to repeat 10th grade.
“They sent me to Vietnam,” he said, “after telling me they wouldn’t.”
Valente was awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery. He still has the scars to prove how difficult his job was.
“I have been dealing with post traumatic stress disorder for 42 years. I have Agent Orange on my hands,” he said. “My skin is discolored from Agent Orange from burying the canisters. I have bullet burns on my belly and have undergone three surgeries.”
Valente’s brother, Manuel, said he joined the Marines to avoid being drafted into the Army.
“We were in the jungle. It was hard,” Manuel said. “All you want to do is forget it.”
The brothers were stunned when they received letters from the Department of Homeland Security in 2009 informing them that they would face deportation hearings.
“It made me angry,” Valente said. “At first I wanted to go back to the International Bridge and burn an American flag and throw my medals back across the river. I was that angry.”
Then he and his brother decided to fight for their rights.
When asked why the government wanted to deport them, Valente said he had a domestic violence charge on his record from years ago.
Manuel said he too got into trouble and resisted arrest.
Both brothers believe their behavior may have been related to PTSD, which they are now receiving counseling for.
“I feel sick to my stomach that they’re going through this,” said attorney Mariela Sagastume. “They bravely served their country. They are war heroes. Who’s going to stand up for them?”
The attorney said that if the brothers are deported, “They will be stripped of all these resources, all the help, and they will be sent to a country they haven’t been to in decades.”
Sagastume told 7NEWS that both brothers crossed over to the U.S. as legal permanent residents in 1955.
“Because their mother was a U.S. citizen born in the U.S., they should have been issued citizenship,” she said. “I believe that an error was made.”
Immigration law was slightly different from 1941 to 1952 when the brothers were born.
The law then required the American parent to have resided in the U.S. for at least 10 years, five of those after the age of 16.
Sagastume said the brother’s mom met that requirement. “They lived along the border and she crossed over frequently,” Sagastume said. “We believe we can prove continuous presence here.”
“We are veterans and we are proud of what we did,” Manuel said. “It was hard during the war, but this is worse.”
Valente said he feels his government is being treasonous toward him.
“I feel my government has stabbed me in the back,” he said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities declined to comment for this story, saying they have very strict privacy policies for individual cases.
Speaking generally, a public affairs officer with the Executive Office for Immigration Review said there are a variety of reasons why a deportation hearing might be initiated against an individual and that breaking the law is one of them.
Members of the American G.I. Forum in Denver believe the brothers are getting a raw deal.
The Latino veterans group is backing the Valenzuelas in their battle against Homeland Security.
“We have a good cause here and we’re not going to stop until everything is resolved,” said Vice Commander Russell Lopez of the Skyline chapter.
Fellow veterans will lead a rally in support of the Valenzuela brothers at 9 a.m., Wednesday, Sept. 29 in front of the new Immigration Court at 621 17th St.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/25107233/detail.html
Monday, September 27, 2010
Family Fight, Border Patrol Raid, Baby Deported
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
September 20, 2010
A few days before her daughter Rosa’s first birthday, Monica Castro and the girl’s father had a violent argument in the trailer they all shared near Lubbock, Tex. Ms. Castro fled, leaving her daughter behind.
Ms. Castro, a fourth-generation American citizen, went to the local Border Patrol station. She said she would give the agents there information about the girl’s father, a Mexican in the country illegally, in exchange for help recovering her daughter.
Ms. Castro lived up to her side of the deal. But the federal government ended up deporting little Rosa, an American citizen, along with her father, Omar Gallardo. Ms. Castro would not see her daughter again for three years.
On the morning of Dec. 3, 2003, agents raided the trailer and seized Mr. Gallardo, who was wanted for questioning as a witness to a murder. They also took Rosa. Then they told Ms. Castro she had until that afternoon to get a court order if she wanted to keep her daughter.
A frantic lawyer rushed to court, and she called to plead for more time. But there was no court order yet when the government van arrived around 3 p.m., and agents hustled father and daughter into it for the long ride to the border.
Ms. Castro later sued the government, saying the agents had no legal authority to detain, much less deport, her daughter. Nor should Border Patrol agents, she said, take the place of family-court judges in making custody decisions.
The last court to rule in the case, the full United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, rejected Ms. Castro’s arguments, over the dissents of three judges.
The brief unsigned majority decision, echoing that of the trial judge, said the appeals court did not “condone the Border Patrol’s actions or the choices it made.” But, the decision went on, Ms. Castro could not sue the government because the agents had been entitled to use their discretion in the matter.
Ms. Castro’s lawyers last month asked the United States Supreme Court to hear the case, in a petition bristling with restrained incredulity.
The agents themselves have rejected the assertion that they may have acted a little rashly.
Holding Mr. Gallardo and the girl overnight, long enough for an American court to sort things out, would have involved “a tremendous amount of money,” Gregory L. Kurupas, the agent in charge of the Lubbock and Amarillo stations at the time, testified in a 2006 deposition.
Asked to quantify the daunting sum, Agent Kurupas replied, “Well over $200 plus.”
The American government gave Ms. Castro no help in finding Rosa beyond identifying the city in Mexico to which she had been delivered. That news did not comfort Ms. Castro.
“She was sent to Juárez, which is now the most dangerous city on the face of the planet,” said Susan L. Watson, one of Ms. Castro’s lawyers.
Mr. Gallardo was in time again arrested for entering the United States illegally. As part of his plea arrangement, he agreed to return Rosa, who had lived with his relatives in Mexico. He was once again deported, and my efforts to find him were unsuccessful.
The mother and child reunion, at the United States Consulate in Ciudad Juárez in 2006, was rocky. Rosa, then 4, did not recognize her mother and did not want to leave her other relatives.
“She was crying,” Ms. Castro recalled. “I started talking to her in Spanish, and she started yelling. She would hit me with her doll. She kicked me. She didn’t want anything to do with me. She wanted to be with her grandmother.”
Like the appeals court, the trial judge, Janis Graham Jack of Federal District Court in Corpus Christi, expressed some uneasiness about the case. Judge Jack said the agents might not have chosen “the optimal course of action.”
Judge Jerry E. Smith of the Fifth Circuit, who was in dissent when a three-judge panel of the court first heard the case and in the majority when the full court revisited it, agreed that the situation was not a happy one.
“No one is pleased,” Judge Smith wrote in his dissent, “that Castro did not see her daughter for three years.”
Things are much better these days, Ms. Castro said. Rosa is a happy, thriving 7-year-old in Corpus Christi. “She’s a straight-A honor roll student, in second grade now,” Ms. Castro said.
Ms. Castro added that the Supreme Court “should do something about the Border Patrol,” and perhaps the court will. The patrol did, after all, send an American infant to Ciudad Juárez with a man mixed up in a murder to save a couple of hundred dollars.
Or perhaps Ms. Castro will have to make do with the muted murmurs of sympathy she has received from judges who have heard her case so far. They do not condone what happened, are not pleased by it and, if pressed, are willing to say that the entire affair was “not optimal.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/us/21bar.html?_r=2&hpw
The New York Times
September 20, 2010
A few days before her daughter Rosa’s first birthday, Monica Castro and the girl’s father had a violent argument in the trailer they all shared near Lubbock, Tex. Ms. Castro fled, leaving her daughter behind.
Ms. Castro, a fourth-generation American citizen, went to the local Border Patrol station. She said she would give the agents there information about the girl’s father, a Mexican in the country illegally, in exchange for help recovering her daughter.
Ms. Castro lived up to her side of the deal. But the federal government ended up deporting little Rosa, an American citizen, along with her father, Omar Gallardo. Ms. Castro would not see her daughter again for three years.
On the morning of Dec. 3, 2003, agents raided the trailer and seized Mr. Gallardo, who was wanted for questioning as a witness to a murder. They also took Rosa. Then they told Ms. Castro she had until that afternoon to get a court order if she wanted to keep her daughter.
A frantic lawyer rushed to court, and she called to plead for more time. But there was no court order yet when the government van arrived around 3 p.m., and agents hustled father and daughter into it for the long ride to the border.
Ms. Castro later sued the government, saying the agents had no legal authority to detain, much less deport, her daughter. Nor should Border Patrol agents, she said, take the place of family-court judges in making custody decisions.
The last court to rule in the case, the full United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, rejected Ms. Castro’s arguments, over the dissents of three judges.
The brief unsigned majority decision, echoing that of the trial judge, said the appeals court did not “condone the Border Patrol’s actions or the choices it made.” But, the decision went on, Ms. Castro could not sue the government because the agents had been entitled to use their discretion in the matter.
Ms. Castro’s lawyers last month asked the United States Supreme Court to hear the case, in a petition bristling with restrained incredulity.
The agents themselves have rejected the assertion that they may have acted a little rashly.
Holding Mr. Gallardo and the girl overnight, long enough for an American court to sort things out, would have involved “a tremendous amount of money,” Gregory L. Kurupas, the agent in charge of the Lubbock and Amarillo stations at the time, testified in a 2006 deposition.
Asked to quantify the daunting sum, Agent Kurupas replied, “Well over $200 plus.”
The American government gave Ms. Castro no help in finding Rosa beyond identifying the city in Mexico to which she had been delivered. That news did not comfort Ms. Castro.
“She was sent to Juárez, which is now the most dangerous city on the face of the planet,” said Susan L. Watson, one of Ms. Castro’s lawyers.
Mr. Gallardo was in time again arrested for entering the United States illegally. As part of his plea arrangement, he agreed to return Rosa, who had lived with his relatives in Mexico. He was once again deported, and my efforts to find him were unsuccessful.
The mother and child reunion, at the United States Consulate in Ciudad Juárez in 2006, was rocky. Rosa, then 4, did not recognize her mother and did not want to leave her other relatives.
“She was crying,” Ms. Castro recalled. “I started talking to her in Spanish, and she started yelling. She would hit me with her doll. She kicked me. She didn’t want anything to do with me. She wanted to be with her grandmother.”
Like the appeals court, the trial judge, Janis Graham Jack of Federal District Court in Corpus Christi, expressed some uneasiness about the case. Judge Jack said the agents might not have chosen “the optimal course of action.”
Judge Jerry E. Smith of the Fifth Circuit, who was in dissent when a three-judge panel of the court first heard the case and in the majority when the full court revisited it, agreed that the situation was not a happy one.
“No one is pleased,” Judge Smith wrote in his dissent, “that Castro did not see her daughter for three years.”
Things are much better these days, Ms. Castro said. Rosa is a happy, thriving 7-year-old in Corpus Christi. “She’s a straight-A honor roll student, in second grade now,” Ms. Castro said.
Ms. Castro added that the Supreme Court “should do something about the Border Patrol,” and perhaps the court will. The patrol did, after all, send an American infant to Ciudad Juárez with a man mixed up in a murder to save a couple of hundred dollars.
Or perhaps Ms. Castro will have to make do with the muted murmurs of sympathy she has received from judges who have heard her case so far. They do not condone what happened, are not pleased by it and, if pressed, are willing to say that the entire affair was “not optimal.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/us/21bar.html?_r=2&hpw
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Houston native wrongly deported for 85 days
Immigration attorney says his client 'is not an anchor baby'
By SUSAN CARROLL
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Sept. 13, 2010
Nearly three months after U.S. immigration officials dumped Luis Alberto Delgado in Mexico despite his insistence that he is a U.S. citizen, the 19-year-old was permitted to re-enter the country last weekend with the U.S. government's blessing.
Delgado said U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents cleared him to return to the United States on Friday, roughly 85 days after he was detained by immigration officials and pressured to sign papers that cleared the way for his removal to Mexico.
Steven Cribby, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, declined to comment on Delgado's case.
On Monday in Houston, Delgado said he was pondering a lawsuit against the U.S. government, calling his case "an injustice."
U.S. Border Patrol agents detained Delgado after a traffic stop in South Texas on June 17 and held him for eight hours, questioning him about his citizenship.
Delgado said he gave immigration agents a copy of his birth certificate showing he was born at Houston's Ben Taub Hospital, a state of Texas identification card and a Social Security card.
Lack of fluency
But Delgado, who was raised in Mexico after his parents divorced, said immigration agents were suspicious of him because he did not speak English well, and insisted the paperwork he carried belonged to someone else.
Delgado said he eventually signed paperwork that resulted in his removal to Mexico because he wanted to be released from immigration custody, and thought he could fight his case from Houston.
"I believe (the agents) discriminated against me because I didn't speak English," he said. "If you don't speak very well, I think they just assume you're Mexican."
Isaias Torres, a Houston immigration attorney who took Delgado's case pro bono, said he believes the U.S. government was "at best, very negligent" in its handling of the case.
U.S. immigration officials have faced scrutiny in recent years over allegations that they have deported U.S. citizens, including a high-profile case of a mentally disabled Los Angeles man who was lost for months in Mexico in 2007.
Estimates of the number of U.S. citizens deported from the U.S. vary widely, and such statistics are not officially tracked by U.S. immigration officials, who recently adopted guidelines designed to prevent such deportations.
Torres said the government should not tolerate discrimination against U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who do not speak English fluently.
"I don't believe this is an isolated incident," Torres said.
He said such cases will become increasingly common because the U.S. government is deporting parents with U.S.-born children. Between 1998 and 2007, the United States removed 108,434 illegal immigrants with U.S. citizen children, according to a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report.
Delgado said he does not speak English well because he and his brother moved to Mexico with their mother after she divorced their father, who lived in Dallas. Delgado moved back to Houston about three years ago.
"This is not an anchor baby," Torres said. "He was born here and his mother moved back to Mexico."
Mother interviewed
Torres said he decided not to file a formal lawsuit after Delgado was removed in June because he was concerned that it would slow down the case. Instead, Torres and attorney Lionel Perez worked with U.S. officials to resolve the case administratively.
Delgado's mother, who lives in Michoacan, Mexico, came up to the border on Thursday for an interview with U.S. immigration officials and provided them with extra paperwork, including a copy of her own Mexican birth certificate.
Job is lost
Delgado said immigration officials told him Friday that he was cleared to return to the United States.
The next day, he packed up his clothes at his cousin's home in Reynosa and crossed the border through the Hidalgo port of entry.
He arrived at the Houston apartment he shares with his brother to learn that his construction job is gone, he said.
Now Delgado is searching for work, he said, and hoping to take classes to improve his English.
susan.carroll@chron.com
By SUSAN CARROLL
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Sept. 13, 2010
Nearly three months after U.S. immigration officials dumped Luis Alberto Delgado in Mexico despite his insistence that he is a U.S. citizen, the 19-year-old was permitted to re-enter the country last weekend with the U.S. government's blessing.
Delgado said U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents cleared him to return to the United States on Friday, roughly 85 days after he was detained by immigration officials and pressured to sign papers that cleared the way for his removal to Mexico.
Steven Cribby, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, declined to comment on Delgado's case.
On Monday in Houston, Delgado said he was pondering a lawsuit against the U.S. government, calling his case "an injustice."
U.S. Border Patrol agents detained Delgado after a traffic stop in South Texas on June 17 and held him for eight hours, questioning him about his citizenship.
Delgado said he gave immigration agents a copy of his birth certificate showing he was born at Houston's Ben Taub Hospital, a state of Texas identification card and a Social Security card.
Lack of fluency
But Delgado, who was raised in Mexico after his parents divorced, said immigration agents were suspicious of him because he did not speak English well, and insisted the paperwork he carried belonged to someone else.
Delgado said he eventually signed paperwork that resulted in his removal to Mexico because he wanted to be released from immigration custody, and thought he could fight his case from Houston.
"I believe (the agents) discriminated against me because I didn't speak English," he said. "If you don't speak very well, I think they just assume you're Mexican."
Isaias Torres, a Houston immigration attorney who took Delgado's case pro bono, said he believes the U.S. government was "at best, very negligent" in its handling of the case.
U.S. immigration officials have faced scrutiny in recent years over allegations that they have deported U.S. citizens, including a high-profile case of a mentally disabled Los Angeles man who was lost for months in Mexico in 2007.
Estimates of the number of U.S. citizens deported from the U.S. vary widely, and such statistics are not officially tracked by U.S. immigration officials, who recently adopted guidelines designed to prevent such deportations.
Torres said the government should not tolerate discrimination against U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who do not speak English fluently.
"I don't believe this is an isolated incident," Torres said.
He said such cases will become increasingly common because the U.S. government is deporting parents with U.S.-born children. Between 1998 and 2007, the United States removed 108,434 illegal immigrants with U.S. citizen children, according to a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report.
Delgado said he does not speak English well because he and his brother moved to Mexico with their mother after she divorced their father, who lived in Dallas. Delgado moved back to Houston about three years ago.
"This is not an anchor baby," Torres said. "He was born here and his mother moved back to Mexico."
Mother interviewed
Torres said he decided not to file a formal lawsuit after Delgado was removed in June because he was concerned that it would slow down the case. Instead, Torres and attorney Lionel Perez worked with U.S. officials to resolve the case administratively.
Delgado's mother, who lives in Michoacan, Mexico, came up to the border on Thursday for an interview with U.S. immigration officials and provided them with extra paperwork, including a copy of her own Mexican birth certificate.
Job is lost
Delgado said immigration officials told him Friday that he was cleared to return to the United States.
The next day, he packed up his clothes at his cousin's home in Reynosa and crossed the border through the Hidalgo port of entry.
He arrived at the Houston apartment he shares with his brother to learn that his construction job is gone, he said.
Now Delgado is searching for work, he said, and hoping to take classes to improve his English.
susan.carroll@chron.com
Saturday, July 24, 2010
ICE Raids U.S. Citizen
Carbondale Man Handcuffed, Threatened With Deportation
By Jaclyn Allen
ABC 7 News (Denver)
July 21, 2010
CARBONDALE, Colo. -- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents raided a Carbondale man's home and threatened to deport him last week.
The problem is, he is a U.S. Citizen.
"It was six in the morning, and I was still sleeping and I heard the knocking," said Marco Guevara.
When he opened the door, immigration agents quickly offered him a one-way ticket back to Ecuador.
"I was pretty sure they didn't want my family to know. They just wanted to take me in and make me disappear," said Guevara.
He said when he turned to call to his parents, he was tackled and handcuffed.
Carbondale police and sheriff's deputies teamed up with ICE agents last week for a series of gang sweeps. But in at least one case, their information was apparently wrong.
Guevara said he is a U.S. citizen with a valid U.S. passport which he's used to leave the country and return twice.
He said agents wouldn't listen to him, though, and his stepmother had to step in.
"I'm white. I speak fluent English," said Laurie Guevara-Stone. "There's just a lot of prejudice and racism and most people don't have someone like me in the house who can actually talk to these agents and make them calm down."
An ICE spokesman would not comment on the raid but released a statement to 7NEWS saying, "The ICE agent and sheriff's deputies on site acted appropriately and professionally. The incident is under investigation."
Brendan Greene with Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition said ICE agents "didn't have a leg to stand on."
"By act of law, if you're under the age of 18 when your parents become a citizen, you automatically become a citizen," said Greene.
He said Marco's father became a naturalized citizen in 2003 when Marco was 17.
"Unfortunately, it's something we see all too often with some of the ICE enforcement operations because of faulty databases that ICE uses to identify immigrants," said Greene. "In any other database a five to ten percent error rate would be unacceptable."
Guevara said the agents came to his home because they said he had a deportable offense -- a 2008 felony drug charge.
"I was hanging out with the wrong people," he said. "But I paid my fines, did my time, and never tried to justify it. I was held responsible for my actions."
Since then, he said he has found a job and been born again as a Christian. He said his favorite apostle, Paul, turned his life around, too.
"Just have faith and do the right thing, and you'll be alright," said Guevara.
Still, he said he lives in fear ICE will find something wrong with his papers and come knocking again.
"How many people have been deported, and then they could have been like, 'Oh, we made a mistake.' But who's going to bring them back? Who's going to help them out?" he said.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/24346394/detail.html
By Jaclyn Allen
ABC 7 News (Denver)
July 21, 2010
CARBONDALE, Colo. -- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents raided a Carbondale man's home and threatened to deport him last week.
The problem is, he is a U.S. Citizen.
"It was six in the morning, and I was still sleeping and I heard the knocking," said Marco Guevara.
When he opened the door, immigration agents quickly offered him a one-way ticket back to Ecuador.
"I was pretty sure they didn't want my family to know. They just wanted to take me in and make me disappear," said Guevara.
He said when he turned to call to his parents, he was tackled and handcuffed.
Carbondale police and sheriff's deputies teamed up with ICE agents last week for a series of gang sweeps. But in at least one case, their information was apparently wrong.
Guevara said he is a U.S. citizen with a valid U.S. passport which he's used to leave the country and return twice.
He said agents wouldn't listen to him, though, and his stepmother had to step in.
"I'm white. I speak fluent English," said Laurie Guevara-Stone. "There's just a lot of prejudice and racism and most people don't have someone like me in the house who can actually talk to these agents and make them calm down."
An ICE spokesman would not comment on the raid but released a statement to 7NEWS saying, "The ICE agent and sheriff's deputies on site acted appropriately and professionally. The incident is under investigation."
Brendan Greene with Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition said ICE agents "didn't have a leg to stand on."
"By act of law, if you're under the age of 18 when your parents become a citizen, you automatically become a citizen," said Greene.
He said Marco's father became a naturalized citizen in 2003 when Marco was 17.
"Unfortunately, it's something we see all too often with some of the ICE enforcement operations because of faulty databases that ICE uses to identify immigrants," said Greene. "In any other database a five to ten percent error rate would be unacceptable."
Guevara said the agents came to his home because they said he had a deportable offense -- a 2008 felony drug charge.
"I was hanging out with the wrong people," he said. "But I paid my fines, did my time, and never tried to justify it. I was held responsible for my actions."
Since then, he said he has found a job and been born again as a Christian. He said his favorite apostle, Paul, turned his life around, too.
"Just have faith and do the right thing, and you'll be alright," said Guevara.
Still, he said he lives in fear ICE will find something wrong with his papers and come knocking again.
"How many people have been deported, and then they could have been like, 'Oh, we made a mistake.' But who's going to bring them back? Who's going to help them out?" he said.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/24346394/detail.html
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Deportation Nightmare: Eduardo Caraballo, US Citizen Born In Puerto Rico, Detained As Illegal Immigrant
The Huffington Post
May 25, 2010
Eduardo Caraballo, a U.S. citizen born in the United States, was detained for over three days on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant.
Despite presenting identifying documents and even his birth certificate, Caraballo was held by federal immigration authorities over the weekend and threatened with deportation, according to an NBC Chicago report. He was only released when his congressman, Luis Gutierrez -- a vocal supporter of immigration reform -- intervened on his behalf.
Caraballo was born in Puerto Rico, making him a natural-born citizen of the United States. He moved to the mainland as an infant, and now lives in Chicago.
Last week, NBC reports that he was arrested in connection with a stolen car in Berwyn. Caraballo maintains his innocence. In any case, when his mother posted bail on Friday, he was not freed.
"Instead of being released, he was told by authorities that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was detaining him because he was an illegal immigrant," NBC reports.
Caraballo spent the weekend in the custody of federal immigration agents. When he presented them with ID and his birth certificate, he says officials were skeptical: "Because of the way I look, I have Mexican features, they pretty much assumed that my papers were fake."
Only after his congressman interceded was Caraballo set free.
Rep. Gutierrez, a Chicagoan who is himself of Puerto Rican descent, is a long-time advocate of immigration reform. He was one of the first and loudest voices on the Hill to speak out against the Arizona immigration law, and he was recently arrested at a protest demanding fairer treatment for immigrants and their families.
"It gets worse," Gutierrez said in an interview. "We know of instances in which young people in his same situation are actually taken to the border and deported from the United States.
Not surprisingly, the nine-term Democratic congressman saw a disturbing connection to the situation in the Grand Canyon State.
"In Arizona, they want everybody to be able to prove they're legally in the country. They want everybody to prove that they're an American citizen. Here we had an American citizen, that the federal government... could not determine, for more than three days, his status as an American citizen. It's very, very, very dangerous ground to tread."
According to NBC Chicago, Caraballo "is considering legal action." Meanwhile, he and his congressman hope the incident will open people's eyes to the dangers of profiling.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/25/deportation-nightmare-edu_n_588788.html
May 25, 2010
Eduardo Caraballo, a U.S. citizen born in the United States, was detained for over three days on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant.
Despite presenting identifying documents and even his birth certificate, Caraballo was held by federal immigration authorities over the weekend and threatened with deportation, according to an NBC Chicago report. He was only released when his congressman, Luis Gutierrez -- a vocal supporter of immigration reform -- intervened on his behalf.
Caraballo was born in Puerto Rico, making him a natural-born citizen of the United States. He moved to the mainland as an infant, and now lives in Chicago.
Last week, NBC reports that he was arrested in connection with a stolen car in Berwyn. Caraballo maintains his innocence. In any case, when his mother posted bail on Friday, he was not freed.
"Instead of being released, he was told by authorities that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was detaining him because he was an illegal immigrant," NBC reports.
Caraballo spent the weekend in the custody of federal immigration agents. When he presented them with ID and his birth certificate, he says officials were skeptical: "Because of the way I look, I have Mexican features, they pretty much assumed that my papers were fake."
Only after his congressman interceded was Caraballo set free.
Rep. Gutierrez, a Chicagoan who is himself of Puerto Rican descent, is a long-time advocate of immigration reform. He was one of the first and loudest voices on the Hill to speak out against the Arizona immigration law, and he was recently arrested at a protest demanding fairer treatment for immigrants and their families.
"It gets worse," Gutierrez said in an interview. "We know of instances in which young people in his same situation are actually taken to the border and deported from the United States.
Not surprisingly, the nine-term Democratic congressman saw a disturbing connection to the situation in the Grand Canyon State.
"In Arizona, they want everybody to be able to prove they're legally in the country. They want everybody to prove that they're an American citizen. Here we had an American citizen, that the federal government... could not determine, for more than three days, his status as an American citizen. It's very, very, very dangerous ground to tread."
According to NBC Chicago, Caraballo "is considering legal action." Meanwhile, he and his congressman hope the incident will open people's eyes to the dangers of profiling.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/25/deportation-nightmare-edu_n_588788.html
Sunday, April 18, 2010
New Study: 88,000 U.S. Citizen Children Lost Parent to Deportation
March 31, 2010
The United States government deported the lawful immigrant parents of nearly 88,000 citizen children between 1997 and 2007, most for relatively minor crimes, according to a new report released today by the University of California, Davis, and University of California, Berkeley, law schools. The deportations often resulted in psychological harm, behavioral changes and problems in school for the children left behind.
The report, "In the Child’s Best Interest?" is based on analysis of data provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, interviews with affected families and comparisons of U.S. and international human rights standards. The study was a joint project of the Immigration Law Clinic at the UC Davis School of Law, and the International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at the UC Berkeley School of Law. It is available on the Web at http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/news/images/childsbestinterest.pdf.
Drastic revisions to U.S. immigration laws in 1996 led to large numbers of deported lawful permanent residents (green card holders), who now make up nearly 10 percent of immigrants deported from the U.S., according to the report. More than 68 percent of the deported green card holders were deported for minor crimes, including driving under the influence, simple assault and nonviolent drug offenses, it found.
"It is often the children in these families who suffer the most," said Raha Jorjani, a clinical professor of law at UC Davis and supervising attorney for the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic. "This nation should take into consideration the impact on families of uprooting individuals with such strong ties to the U.S.”
Current immigration laws severely restrict the ability of judges to consider the impact of deportation on children, the report notes. The authors recommend restoring judicial discretion in all cases involving the deportation of lawful permanent residents with U.S. citizen children.
“As Congress considers immigration reform, it’s time to focus on how the current system tears apart families and threatens the health and education of tens of thousands of children,” said Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy at Berkeley Law’s Warren Institute. “This report makes a strong case for restoring judicial discretion so immigration judges can weigh the best interests of children when deciding whether to deport a parent.”
The report examined deportation records between April 1997 and August 2007. The nearly 88,000 legal residents who were deported during this decade had lived in the U.S. an average of 10 years, and more than half had at least one child living at home, the study found. About half of the children were under age 5 when their parent was deported.
In 1996, Congress also significantly broadened the category of crimes considered an “aggravated felony,” the report notes. Although this category initially included only the most serious offenses, it now includes nonviolent theft and drug offenses, forgery and other minor offenses, many of which may not be felonies under criminal law. Lawful permanent residents convicted of an aggravated felony are now subject to mandatory deportation and other severe immigration consequences.
“Parents who are deported on the basis of criminal convictions are being punished twice for the same mistakes,” Jorjani said. “Even after successfully completing their criminal sentences, they are subject to penalties within the immigration system — and risk losing their families."
Families interviewed for the study reported negative health impacts, such as increased depression, sleeplessness and anxiety. Children also reported plummeting grades, increased behavioral problems and the urge to drop out of school to help support the family.
The study compares U.S. immigration policy to international standards that more adequately address potential family separations in deportation hearings.
“The rights to health and education are firmly entrenched in international human rights law, and nearly every major human rights treaty recognizes the need for special protection of children,” said Laurel Fletcher, director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “The U.S. should consider revising its policy to mirror European human rights standards, which permit judges to balance a nation’s security interest with the best interests of the child when considering deporting a parent.”
"In the Child’s Best Interest?" makes a number of recommendations to U.S. policymakers, including:
•restoring judicial discretion in cases involving the deportation of lawful permanent residents who have U.S. citizen children;
•establishing clear judicial guidelines in these family deportation cases;
•reverting to the pre-1996 definition of “aggravated felony”;
•collecting data on U.S. citizen children of deported lawful immigrant parents to gain fuller understanding of impact of deportation laws.
Co-authors of the study include J.D. candidates and research analysts at UC Davis School of Law and UC Berkeley School of Law.
About the clinics
The Immigration Law Clinic at the UC Davis School of Law provides legal representation to indigent noncitizens in removal proceedings before U.S. Immigration Courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and federal courts, including the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The clinic provides this necessary service to Northern California’s low-income immigrant communities while enabling students to gain practical, real-world experience. Clinic students take on all major aspects of litigation, including interviewing clients and witnesses, preparing legal briefs, drafting pleadings and motions, and arguing complex legal issues. The clinic regularly conducts naturalization and other workshops in the community. Responding to the impact of increased collaboration between criminal and immigration enforcement agencies, the clinic has been at the forefront of indigent detention and deportation defense. For more information visit: http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/.
The International Human Rights Law Clinic at the UC Berkeley School of Law implements innovative human rights projects to advance the struggle for justice on behalf of individuals and marginalized communities through research, advocacy, and policy development. The clinic employs an interdisciplinary model that leverages the intellectual capital of the university to provide innovative solutions to emerging human rights issues and develops collaborative partnerships with researchers, scholars, and human rights activists worldwide. Students are integral to all phases of the clinic's work and acquire unparalleled experience employing strategies to address the most urgent human rights issues of our day. For more information visit: http://www.humanrightsclinic.org/.
The Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at the UC Berkeley School of Law is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative venture to produce research, policy reforms and curricular innovation on issues of racial and ethnic justice in California and the nation. The institute’s mission is to engage the most difficult topics in a wide range of legal and policy subject areas, providing valuable intellectual capital to public and private sector leaders, the media, and the general public, while advancing scholarly understanding. Central to its methods are concerted efforts to build bridges connecting research, civic action, and policy debate so that each informs the other, while preserving the independence, quality and credibility of the academic enterprise. For more information visit: http://www.warreninstitute.org/.
About UC Davis
For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has 32,000 students, an annual research budget that exceeds $600 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.
http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=9447
The United States government deported the lawful immigrant parents of nearly 88,000 citizen children between 1997 and 2007, most for relatively minor crimes, according to a new report released today by the University of California, Davis, and University of California, Berkeley, law schools. The deportations often resulted in psychological harm, behavioral changes and problems in school for the children left behind.
The report, "In the Child’s Best Interest?" is based on analysis of data provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, interviews with affected families and comparisons of U.S. and international human rights standards. The study was a joint project of the Immigration Law Clinic at the UC Davis School of Law, and the International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at the UC Berkeley School of Law. It is available on the Web at http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/news/images/childsbestinterest.pdf.
Drastic revisions to U.S. immigration laws in 1996 led to large numbers of deported lawful permanent residents (green card holders), who now make up nearly 10 percent of immigrants deported from the U.S., according to the report. More than 68 percent of the deported green card holders were deported for minor crimes, including driving under the influence, simple assault and nonviolent drug offenses, it found.
"It is often the children in these families who suffer the most," said Raha Jorjani, a clinical professor of law at UC Davis and supervising attorney for the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic. "This nation should take into consideration the impact on families of uprooting individuals with such strong ties to the U.S.”
Current immigration laws severely restrict the ability of judges to consider the impact of deportation on children, the report notes. The authors recommend restoring judicial discretion in all cases involving the deportation of lawful permanent residents with U.S. citizen children.
“As Congress considers immigration reform, it’s time to focus on how the current system tears apart families and threatens the health and education of tens of thousands of children,” said Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy at Berkeley Law’s Warren Institute. “This report makes a strong case for restoring judicial discretion so immigration judges can weigh the best interests of children when deciding whether to deport a parent.”
The report examined deportation records between April 1997 and August 2007. The nearly 88,000 legal residents who were deported during this decade had lived in the U.S. an average of 10 years, and more than half had at least one child living at home, the study found. About half of the children were under age 5 when their parent was deported.
In 1996, Congress also significantly broadened the category of crimes considered an “aggravated felony,” the report notes. Although this category initially included only the most serious offenses, it now includes nonviolent theft and drug offenses, forgery and other minor offenses, many of which may not be felonies under criminal law. Lawful permanent residents convicted of an aggravated felony are now subject to mandatory deportation and other severe immigration consequences.
“Parents who are deported on the basis of criminal convictions are being punished twice for the same mistakes,” Jorjani said. “Even after successfully completing their criminal sentences, they are subject to penalties within the immigration system — and risk losing their families."
Families interviewed for the study reported negative health impacts, such as increased depression, sleeplessness and anxiety. Children also reported plummeting grades, increased behavioral problems and the urge to drop out of school to help support the family.
The study compares U.S. immigration policy to international standards that more adequately address potential family separations in deportation hearings.
“The rights to health and education are firmly entrenched in international human rights law, and nearly every major human rights treaty recognizes the need for special protection of children,” said Laurel Fletcher, director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “The U.S. should consider revising its policy to mirror European human rights standards, which permit judges to balance a nation’s security interest with the best interests of the child when considering deporting a parent.”
"In the Child’s Best Interest?" makes a number of recommendations to U.S. policymakers, including:
•restoring judicial discretion in cases involving the deportation of lawful permanent residents who have U.S. citizen children;
•establishing clear judicial guidelines in these family deportation cases;
•reverting to the pre-1996 definition of “aggravated felony”;
•collecting data on U.S. citizen children of deported lawful immigrant parents to gain fuller understanding of impact of deportation laws.
Co-authors of the study include J.D. candidates and research analysts at UC Davis School of Law and UC Berkeley School of Law.
About the clinics
The Immigration Law Clinic at the UC Davis School of Law provides legal representation to indigent noncitizens in removal proceedings before U.S. Immigration Courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and federal courts, including the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The clinic provides this necessary service to Northern California’s low-income immigrant communities while enabling students to gain practical, real-world experience. Clinic students take on all major aspects of litigation, including interviewing clients and witnesses, preparing legal briefs, drafting pleadings and motions, and arguing complex legal issues. The clinic regularly conducts naturalization and other workshops in the community. Responding to the impact of increased collaboration between criminal and immigration enforcement agencies, the clinic has been at the forefront of indigent detention and deportation defense. For more information visit: http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/.
The International Human Rights Law Clinic at the UC Berkeley School of Law implements innovative human rights projects to advance the struggle for justice on behalf of individuals and marginalized communities through research, advocacy, and policy development. The clinic employs an interdisciplinary model that leverages the intellectual capital of the university to provide innovative solutions to emerging human rights issues and develops collaborative partnerships with researchers, scholars, and human rights activists worldwide. Students are integral to all phases of the clinic's work and acquire unparalleled experience employing strategies to address the most urgent human rights issues of our day. For more information visit: http://www.humanrightsclinic.org/.
The Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at the UC Berkeley School of Law is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative venture to produce research, policy reforms and curricular innovation on issues of racial and ethnic justice in California and the nation. The institute’s mission is to engage the most difficult topics in a wide range of legal and policy subject areas, providing valuable intellectual capital to public and private sector leaders, the media, and the general public, while advancing scholarly understanding. Central to its methods are concerted efforts to build bridges connecting research, civic action, and policy debate so that each informs the other, while preserving the independence, quality and credibility of the academic enterprise. For more information visit: http://www.warreninstitute.org/.
About UC Davis
For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has 32,000 students, an annual research budget that exceeds $600 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.
http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=9447
Friday, April 2, 2010
Report criticizes increased deportation of legal immigrant parents
Tens of thousands were deported in the last decade, most them on 'minor criminal convictions,' according to a study by UC law schools.
By Teresa Watanabe
The Los Angeles Times
April 1, 2010
Authorities have deported the legal immigrant parents of more than 88,000 U.S. citizen children in the last decade, according to a report released Wednesday.
The report, published by the UC Berkeley and UC Davis law schools, found that the majority of parents were deported for what it described as "minor criminal convictions" now classified as aggravated felonies, including nonviolent drug offenses, simple assaults and drunk driving. One parent was deported after selling $5 worth of drugs.
The report also found that the deported parents had lived in the country for an average of 10 years and more than half of them had at least one child at home. The deportations caused increased depression, sleeplessness and behavioral problems, plummeting grades and a greater urge to drop out of school, according to the study's interviews with family members.
The deportations began increasing after Congress made several controversial revisions to immigration laws in 1996. The revisions broadened the types of deportable offenses considered "aggravated felonies," required mandatory deportation for those convicted of such crimes, and severely limited a judge's ability to consider the effects of deportation on children.
"It is a travesty that this is happening without any judicial discretion," said Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy for Berkeley Law School's Warren Institute. "We're not saying you can't deport people. We're saying there should be a fair judicial process that takes into account the impact on their children."
The report detailed one case of a California man who fled Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime in the mid-1970s. He resettled in the United States in 1981, graduated from high school, served in the U.S. Army and found work as a mechanic. He married and had five children here.
But he was convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense in 2002. The offense was classified as a felony because he served a 365-day sentence. Now he has been ordered deported.
The report recommends that judges regain discretionary authority in cases involving legal permanent residents and their citizen children. It also urges a return to the pre-1996 definitions of "aggravated felonies" and the collection of data on affected children.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-deport1-2010apr01,0,1319846.story
By Teresa Watanabe
The Los Angeles Times
April 1, 2010
Authorities have deported the legal immigrant parents of more than 88,000 U.S. citizen children in the last decade, according to a report released Wednesday.
The report, published by the UC Berkeley and UC Davis law schools, found that the majority of parents were deported for what it described as "minor criminal convictions" now classified as aggravated felonies, including nonviolent drug offenses, simple assaults and drunk driving. One parent was deported after selling $5 worth of drugs.
The report also found that the deported parents had lived in the country for an average of 10 years and more than half of them had at least one child at home. The deportations caused increased depression, sleeplessness and behavioral problems, plummeting grades and a greater urge to drop out of school, according to the study's interviews with family members.
The deportations began increasing after Congress made several controversial revisions to immigration laws in 1996. The revisions broadened the types of deportable offenses considered "aggravated felonies," required mandatory deportation for those convicted of such crimes, and severely limited a judge's ability to consider the effects of deportation on children.
"It is a travesty that this is happening without any judicial discretion," said Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy for Berkeley Law School's Warren Institute. "We're not saying you can't deport people. We're saying there should be a fair judicial process that takes into account the impact on their children."
The report detailed one case of a California man who fled Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime in the mid-1970s. He resettled in the United States in 1981, graduated from high school, served in the U.S. Army and found work as a mechanic. He married and had five children here.
But he was convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense in 2002. The offense was classified as a felony because he served a 365-day sentence. Now he has been ordered deported.
The report recommends that judges regain discretionary authority in cases involving legal permanent residents and their citizen children. It also urges a return to the pre-1996 definitions of "aggravated felonies" and the collection of data on affected children.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-deport1-2010apr01,0,1319846.story
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
U.S.-born kids may be victims of aid law, Migrant parents may be afraid to seek state help
By Daniel González
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 1, 2010
The number of suspected illegal immigrants being reported to federal authorities by state welfare workers as required by a new state law has slowed to a trickle in recent days.
The sharp decline is a sign that the new law is working, proponents say, because it indicates fewer illegal immigrants are applying for public benefits out of fear they could be turned over to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. But immigrant advocates say they are alarmed that the new law is also making undocumented parents afraid to apply for benefits for their U.S.-born children, even though their children are eligible for federal food stamps, basic health-care services and other public benefits for the poor.
"It's a de facto denial of benefits for children who are eligible. I would say it is happening, absolutely," said Daniel Ortega, a Phoenix lawyer and immigrant advocate.
State Rep. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, who backed the law, agreed that it is probably blocking U.S.-born children from receiving benefits they are legally entitled to because their undocumented parents are afraid they might be deported if they apply.
"Unfortunately they are caught in a tough place," said Barto, who chairs the House Health and Human Services Committee. "I just think they will have to depend on friends and family and the private sector (for assistance). There are other resources they can take advantage of that don't involve the taxpayer."
When asked if one of the goals of the new law, which took effect Nov. 24, is to make undocumented parents afraid to apply for benefits for their U.S.-citizen children, Barto replied, "Yes, I think it is."
The law, passed by the state Legislature in September as part of the state budget, requires Department of Economic Security workers to report to ICE the names of people who apply for public benefits if they admit they are in the country illegally. Workers who fail to report suspected illegal immigrants can be charged with a misdemeanor.
The first three weeks after the law took effect, DES workers reported the names of 772 people who sought public benefits and were believed to be in the country illegally. That breaks down to an average of 45 per day, excluding weekends and holidays.
From Dec. 18 through Monday, the most recent data available, DES workers reported 30 suspected illegal immigrants to ICE, or 5 per day.
"It has pretty much trickled off," said Stephen Meissner, a DES spokesman. Meissner could not explain why the number being reported to federal authorities had dropped off so sharply. He said he did not believe there had been an overall drop in applications for benefits, but he could not provide data.
Vincent Picard, a spokesman for ICE in Phoenix, would not say whether federal authorities have investigated any of the names turned over by the DES or whether anyone on the list had been arrested or deported for immigration violations.
He said ICE will investigate cases that meet the agency's priorities and evaluate the names of those referred to determine immigration status and criminal history.
"Top priority is given to aliens who pose the greatest threat to public safety, such as those with prior convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping, burglary and other serious property crimes," he said in an e-mail.
Clarifying confusion
After the law took effect, the DES issued an informational bulletin on Dec. 2 to help workers understand whom to report to ICE and when. The memo was intended to help clarify widespread confusion over the law.
The bulletin, obtained by The Arizona Republic, states that not having papers is not in itself proof that an applicant is illegally in the U.S. "Only when they declare that they are in the United States illegally or the agency receives documentation from (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) that they are in violation of immigration law, must a referral be sent to OSI (the Office of Special Investigations)," the bulletin states.
Meissner said the DES policy says that workers are supposed to ask about the legal status only of people applying for benefits for themselves. Parents applying for benefits for their children must show proof that their children are U.S. citizens or legal residents, but workers are not supposed to ask parents about their legal status if they are only applying for benefits for their children, he said.
As a result, Meissner said, he believes that all the people whose names have been turned over to ICE were suspected illegal immigrants who applied for public benefits for themselves. He could not provide a breakdown.
Ortega, the Phoenix lawyer, said numerous undocumented parents have told him that they were asked about their legal status when they tried to apply for benefits for their citizen children.
Since the law took effect, immigrant advocates have been advising undocumented parents not to answer questions about their own immigration status when applying for children who are in the country legally or are U.S. citizens.
"We tell them to say, 'What difference does it make? I am here to apply for my children, not for me,' " Ortega said.
DES asks for 'papers'
A 23-year-old undocumented woman from Mexico said a DES worker called her earlier this month and asked her if she had "papers." The call came after she had applied to renew public benefits, including food stamps and basic medical services, for her 11-month-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, through the state's Medicaid program. She said she also applied for emergency medical assistance for herself, her husband and her 5-year-old son, all of whom are undocumented.
The woman, who asked that her name not be published out of fear she could be deported, said the DES worker asked only about the immigration status of her, her husband and the 5-year-old, not the U.S. citizen daughter. But all of them, including the baby, were denied benefits.
"They asked me if I, my husband and child had papers, and I said I wasn't going to answer, and they said if I didn't answer, they wouldn't renew my benefits," the woman said.
Tara McCollum Plese, director of government and media relations for the Arizona Association of Community Health Centers, said she thinks people are giving up services and benefits to which they are entitled rather than risk being reported to ICE. Her group association includes 16 federally qualified health centers with 130 sites across the state that provide services regardless of ability to pay or immigration status.
"I am hearing from a lot of our health clinics that they have seen a real precipitous drop in the demand for services," McCollum Plese said.
McCollum Plese said she is concerned that children may not receive vaccines for the swine-flu virus if their undocumented parents are afraid to apply for medical-care benefits.
"It's also a public-health issue," she said.
Sick children who go untreated risk infecting others, she said. They also risk getting sicker and ending up in hospital emergency rooms.
"Then, the cost is borne by the hospital," she said, "and that is passed on to the rest of us, so it's a real problem."
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/01/01/20100101des.html
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 1, 2010
The number of suspected illegal immigrants being reported to federal authorities by state welfare workers as required by a new state law has slowed to a trickle in recent days.
The sharp decline is a sign that the new law is working, proponents say, because it indicates fewer illegal immigrants are applying for public benefits out of fear they could be turned over to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. But immigrant advocates say they are alarmed that the new law is also making undocumented parents afraid to apply for benefits for their U.S.-born children, even though their children are eligible for federal food stamps, basic health-care services and other public benefits for the poor.
"It's a de facto denial of benefits for children who are eligible. I would say it is happening, absolutely," said Daniel Ortega, a Phoenix lawyer and immigrant advocate.
State Rep. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, who backed the law, agreed that it is probably blocking U.S.-born children from receiving benefits they are legally entitled to because their undocumented parents are afraid they might be deported if they apply.
"Unfortunately they are caught in a tough place," said Barto, who chairs the House Health and Human Services Committee. "I just think they will have to depend on friends and family and the private sector (for assistance). There are other resources they can take advantage of that don't involve the taxpayer."
When asked if one of the goals of the new law, which took effect Nov. 24, is to make undocumented parents afraid to apply for benefits for their U.S.-citizen children, Barto replied, "Yes, I think it is."
The law, passed by the state Legislature in September as part of the state budget, requires Department of Economic Security workers to report to ICE the names of people who apply for public benefits if they admit they are in the country illegally. Workers who fail to report suspected illegal immigrants can be charged with a misdemeanor.
The first three weeks after the law took effect, DES workers reported the names of 772 people who sought public benefits and were believed to be in the country illegally. That breaks down to an average of 45 per day, excluding weekends and holidays.
From Dec. 18 through Monday, the most recent data available, DES workers reported 30 suspected illegal immigrants to ICE, or 5 per day.
"It has pretty much trickled off," said Stephen Meissner, a DES spokesman. Meissner could not explain why the number being reported to federal authorities had dropped off so sharply. He said he did not believe there had been an overall drop in applications for benefits, but he could not provide data.
Vincent Picard, a spokesman for ICE in Phoenix, would not say whether federal authorities have investigated any of the names turned over by the DES or whether anyone on the list had been arrested or deported for immigration violations.
He said ICE will investigate cases that meet the agency's priorities and evaluate the names of those referred to determine immigration status and criminal history.
"Top priority is given to aliens who pose the greatest threat to public safety, such as those with prior convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping, burglary and other serious property crimes," he said in an e-mail.
Clarifying confusion
After the law took effect, the DES issued an informational bulletin on Dec. 2 to help workers understand whom to report to ICE and when. The memo was intended to help clarify widespread confusion over the law.
The bulletin, obtained by The Arizona Republic, states that not having papers is not in itself proof that an applicant is illegally in the U.S. "Only when they declare that they are in the United States illegally or the agency receives documentation from (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) that they are in violation of immigration law, must a referral be sent to OSI (the Office of Special Investigations)," the bulletin states.
Meissner said the DES policy says that workers are supposed to ask about the legal status only of people applying for benefits for themselves. Parents applying for benefits for their children must show proof that their children are U.S. citizens or legal residents, but workers are not supposed to ask parents about their legal status if they are only applying for benefits for their children, he said.
As a result, Meissner said, he believes that all the people whose names have been turned over to ICE were suspected illegal immigrants who applied for public benefits for themselves. He could not provide a breakdown.
Ortega, the Phoenix lawyer, said numerous undocumented parents have told him that they were asked about their legal status when they tried to apply for benefits for their citizen children.
Since the law took effect, immigrant advocates have been advising undocumented parents not to answer questions about their own immigration status when applying for children who are in the country legally or are U.S. citizens.
"We tell them to say, 'What difference does it make? I am here to apply for my children, not for me,' " Ortega said.
DES asks for 'papers'
A 23-year-old undocumented woman from Mexico said a DES worker called her earlier this month and asked her if she had "papers." The call came after she had applied to renew public benefits, including food stamps and basic medical services, for her 11-month-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, through the state's Medicaid program. She said she also applied for emergency medical assistance for herself, her husband and her 5-year-old son, all of whom are undocumented.
The woman, who asked that her name not be published out of fear she could be deported, said the DES worker asked only about the immigration status of her, her husband and the 5-year-old, not the U.S. citizen daughter. But all of them, including the baby, were denied benefits.
"They asked me if I, my husband and child had papers, and I said I wasn't going to answer, and they said if I didn't answer, they wouldn't renew my benefits," the woman said.
Tara McCollum Plese, director of government and media relations for the Arizona Association of Community Health Centers, said she thinks people are giving up services and benefits to which they are entitled rather than risk being reported to ICE. Her group association includes 16 federally qualified health centers with 130 sites across the state that provide services regardless of ability to pay or immigration status.
"I am hearing from a lot of our health clinics that they have seen a real precipitous drop in the demand for services," McCollum Plese said.
McCollum Plese said she is concerned that children may not receive vaccines for the swine-flu virus if their undocumented parents are afraid to apply for medical-care benefits.
"It's also a public-health issue," she said.
Sick children who go untreated risk infecting others, she said. They also risk getting sicker and ending up in hospital emergency rooms.
"Then, the cost is borne by the hospital," she said, "and that is passed on to the rest of us, so it's a real problem."
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/01/01/20100101des.html
Monday, December 28, 2009
Families separated by miles, years and immigration laws
Immigration rules for close relatives to be re-examined
By Antonio Olivo
The Chicago Tribune
December 27, 2009
When Peter Aldeza first arrived in Illinois from the Philippines, he filed U.S. Immigration paperwork to allow his older brother and sister to join him. That was 26 years ago.
Just last month, his sister, Sionie Sales, finally arrived to live in the U.S., in what has been a bittersweet reunion of once-close siblings now trying to become reacquainted. She was an exuberant 26-year-old when he left home. She is a grandmother now.
"It has been very interesting and very fulfilling," said Aldeza, 48, his voice cracking with emotion. "She's a lot older, but very much the same."
Their story embodies the experience of thousands of families waiting on a legal Immigration process bogged down by delays, a frustration that lies at the heart of renewed efforts to reform the U.S. Immigration system.
A bill introduced in Congress by Democratic lawmakers this month seeks a "promotion of family unity" by placing a high priority on eliminating backlogs for legal Immigration -- which activists say contribute to the country's problems with illegal Immigration. They say some prospective immigrants, frustrated by the delays, find a way into the country illegally.
Among the changes proposed under the bill is a provision to exempt immediate relatives from the annual cap on immigrant visas for a given country.
That would have the effect of speeding up the process for everyone else in line. Conservative groups seeking to limit all forms of Immigration have long opposed family pipelines, arguing that letting more people into the U.S. would place extra burdens on schools and other infrastructure.
For Sales, 52, the process began when she was a young nursing student eager to leave her poverty-stricken island in the Southeast Pacific Ocean to be with her younger brother in the U.S.
The two share fond childhood memories of swimming in the hot springs near their home in the outskirts of Manila, venturing into the capital as young adults and, above all, teaming up in playful fights against their older brother, David, now 54.
His application to come to the U.S. is still pending.
With adulthood came the desire for greater opportunity -- something in short supply for many who are perpetually struggling in the Philippines, the siblings said.
Because Aldeza was born in the U.S. -- when their parents briefly worked in Chicago as medical students -- he was qualified to immediately sponsor his siblings' applications.
Sales recalled being thrilled by the idea of coming to the U.S.
"I really wanted to work here," she said.
However, as the years went by with no word about her application, the excitement faded into a vague hope, she said.
Over time, what was once a strong family bond became frayed by the distance, with Aldeza traveling back to the Philippines for just two short visits during the last two decades as he raised his family here. Sales married and had two children of her own.
"We kept in touch through letters, pictures and by the telephone," mostly when family news was to be delivered, such as when children and grandchildren were born and when their parents died several years ago, Aldeza said.
Finally, in June 2008, a letter to Sales from the U.S. government arrived out of the blue, confirming that her Immigration application had been processed and approved.
"I was overjoyed and excited, but at the same time worried because I may not be able to work now," said Sales, who took more than a year to decide that after all that time, she still wanted to come. "I'm already 52 years old. I haven't worked for a long time."
As she adjusts to her new surroundings -- particularly the frigid Midwestern winters -- Sales said she is preparing to begin anew by studying for entrance exams for nursing school here.
With much of the Philippines still wracked by poverty -- exacerbated by two typhoons in October that killed about 1,000 people and caused $4.4 billion in damages -- Sales also is trying to bring her children and three grandchildren to the U.S.
"I've sent their papers to the visa center, but (U.S. Immigration officials) have not yet answered," she said, adding that she hopes the process won't again be filled with delay. "I want them to be with me here."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-family-reunited-25-dec27,0,7575783.story
By Antonio Olivo
The Chicago Tribune
December 27, 2009
When Peter Aldeza first arrived in Illinois from the Philippines, he filed U.S. Immigration paperwork to allow his older brother and sister to join him. That was 26 years ago.
Just last month, his sister, Sionie Sales, finally arrived to live in the U.S., in what has been a bittersweet reunion of once-close siblings now trying to become reacquainted. She was an exuberant 26-year-old when he left home. She is a grandmother now.
"It has been very interesting and very fulfilling," said Aldeza, 48, his voice cracking with emotion. "She's a lot older, but very much the same."
Their story embodies the experience of thousands of families waiting on a legal Immigration process bogged down by delays, a frustration that lies at the heart of renewed efforts to reform the U.S. Immigration system.
A bill introduced in Congress by Democratic lawmakers this month seeks a "promotion of family unity" by placing a high priority on eliminating backlogs for legal Immigration -- which activists say contribute to the country's problems with illegal Immigration. They say some prospective immigrants, frustrated by the delays, find a way into the country illegally.
Among the changes proposed under the bill is a provision to exempt immediate relatives from the annual cap on immigrant visas for a given country.
That would have the effect of speeding up the process for everyone else in line. Conservative groups seeking to limit all forms of Immigration have long opposed family pipelines, arguing that letting more people into the U.S. would place extra burdens on schools and other infrastructure.
For Sales, 52, the process began when she was a young nursing student eager to leave her poverty-stricken island in the Southeast Pacific Ocean to be with her younger brother in the U.S.
The two share fond childhood memories of swimming in the hot springs near their home in the outskirts of Manila, venturing into the capital as young adults and, above all, teaming up in playful fights against their older brother, David, now 54.
His application to come to the U.S. is still pending.
With adulthood came the desire for greater opportunity -- something in short supply for many who are perpetually struggling in the Philippines, the siblings said.
Because Aldeza was born in the U.S. -- when their parents briefly worked in Chicago as medical students -- he was qualified to immediately sponsor his siblings' applications.
Sales recalled being thrilled by the idea of coming to the U.S.
"I really wanted to work here," she said.
However, as the years went by with no word about her application, the excitement faded into a vague hope, she said.
Over time, what was once a strong family bond became frayed by the distance, with Aldeza traveling back to the Philippines for just two short visits during the last two decades as he raised his family here. Sales married and had two children of her own.
"We kept in touch through letters, pictures and by the telephone," mostly when family news was to be delivered, such as when children and grandchildren were born and when their parents died several years ago, Aldeza said.
Finally, in June 2008, a letter to Sales from the U.S. government arrived out of the blue, confirming that her Immigration application had been processed and approved.
"I was overjoyed and excited, but at the same time worried because I may not be able to work now," said Sales, who took more than a year to decide that after all that time, she still wanted to come. "I'm already 52 years old. I haven't worked for a long time."
As she adjusts to her new surroundings -- particularly the frigid Midwestern winters -- Sales said she is preparing to begin anew by studying for entrance exams for nursing school here.
With much of the Philippines still wracked by poverty -- exacerbated by two typhoons in October that killed about 1,000 people and caused $4.4 billion in damages -- Sales also is trying to bring her children and three grandchildren to the U.S.
"I've sent their papers to the visa center, but (U.S. Immigration officials) have not yet answered," she said, adding that she hopes the process won't again be filled with delay. "I want them to be with me here."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-family-reunited-25-dec27,0,7575783.story
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Johnson: Immigrant mom's journey ends in a cell
By Bill Johnson
The Denver Post
12/11/2009
Here is a concept: What is right can still be wrong. I think it goes back to the way I was raised.
You likely know nothing of the case of Estrella Jacquez-Quiroz. It likely will not surprise you, either, that a jury took only a couple of hours Tuesday to convict the Longmont woman.
The baseline story is a familiar one. The woman, now 26, was brought to the U.S. from Mexico by her family about 10 years ago. She enrolled in and graduated from Fairview High in Boulder.
She becomes pregnant and has a son. What does she do?
She goes out and gets not one, but two jobs, "to provide a better life for her baby," her public defender, Matthew Connell, would later say.
And then came the very familiar part of the story: You cannot get a job without a Social Security number, and you for sure cannot get a Social Security number if you are a citizen of another country.
On the witness stand, Jacquez-Quiroz testified she hadn't the money to go down the proper legal avenues to become a citizen. There was a baby to feed. So she bought a fake Social Security card.
Her employers never bothered to check, simply telling her to get to work.
The woman broke the law. No way for a jury to get around that. It convicted her on two felony counts, criminal impersonation and possession of a forged document.
The judge gave her 90 days of probation, forgoing any jail time because this woman — obviously a clear, deep and present danger to our republic — had already spent 105 days behind bars.
Yes, 105 days in jail.
To rid us of this threat, Jacquez-Quiroz has been handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings.
All of the above, no question, is legally proper. So why does it reek to me of unfairness? Maybe it is just me.
There must be a better way.
She was not rounded up in some big ICE raid. A busybody on her street called police to complain that Jacquez-Quiroz's now-8-year- old boy was walking the couple of blocks from her home to his third-grade class alone.
The cops waved away that nonsense but upon further investigation discovered Jacquez- Quiroz was in the country illegally and working with a fake ID.
The illegal-immigration crackdown nuts on their radio shows and in their living rooms are cheering what is happening to Jacquez-Quiroz. As if it were moral, much less that it actually means anything.
The immigration-reform story I could really get behind is one that does not end with her arrest, but the arrest of those who employed her.
If they did not know about Jacquez-Quiroz, they did not want to know.
We could end illegal immigration in this country tomorrow if the same cops who slammed the cell door on her immediately started going after those who employed her.
Let them defend themselves before a judge and a jury.
But that will never happen. Not in this country, where finding cheap labor and making a profit is king, where a person's legal status is all wink-wink and "Get to work."
When the cops do arrive, of course, it is all: "I didn't know! I was hoodwinked!"
The American way is they all go unpunished and on their merry way, letting it be known there is an opening for Jacquez-Quiroz's old job.
You tell me: Whom do you think they are going to get?
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_13973579#ixzz0Zav4rSHm
The Denver Post
12/11/2009
Here is a concept: What is right can still be wrong. I think it goes back to the way I was raised.
You likely know nothing of the case of Estrella Jacquez-Quiroz. It likely will not surprise you, either, that a jury took only a couple of hours Tuesday to convict the Longmont woman.
The baseline story is a familiar one. The woman, now 26, was brought to the U.S. from Mexico by her family about 10 years ago. She enrolled in and graduated from Fairview High in Boulder.
She becomes pregnant and has a son. What does she do?
She goes out and gets not one, but two jobs, "to provide a better life for her baby," her public defender, Matthew Connell, would later say.
And then came the very familiar part of the story: You cannot get a job without a Social Security number, and you for sure cannot get a Social Security number if you are a citizen of another country.
On the witness stand, Jacquez-Quiroz testified she hadn't the money to go down the proper legal avenues to become a citizen. There was a baby to feed. So she bought a fake Social Security card.
Her employers never bothered to check, simply telling her to get to work.
The woman broke the law. No way for a jury to get around that. It convicted her on two felony counts, criminal impersonation and possession of a forged document.
The judge gave her 90 days of probation, forgoing any jail time because this woman — obviously a clear, deep and present danger to our republic — had already spent 105 days behind bars.
Yes, 105 days in jail.
To rid us of this threat, Jacquez-Quiroz has been handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings.
All of the above, no question, is legally proper. So why does it reek to me of unfairness? Maybe it is just me.
There must be a better way.
She was not rounded up in some big ICE raid. A busybody on her street called police to complain that Jacquez-Quiroz's now-8-year- old boy was walking the couple of blocks from her home to his third-grade class alone.
The cops waved away that nonsense but upon further investigation discovered Jacquez- Quiroz was in the country illegally and working with a fake ID.
The illegal-immigration crackdown nuts on their radio shows and in their living rooms are cheering what is happening to Jacquez-Quiroz. As if it were moral, much less that it actually means anything.
The immigration-reform story I could really get behind is one that does not end with her arrest, but the arrest of those who employed her.
If they did not know about Jacquez-Quiroz, they did not want to know.
We could end illegal immigration in this country tomorrow if the same cops who slammed the cell door on her immediately started going after those who employed her.
Let them defend themselves before a judge and a jury.
But that will never happen. Not in this country, where finding cheap labor and making a profit is king, where a person's legal status is all wink-wink and "Get to work."
When the cops do arrive, of course, it is all: "I didn't know! I was hoodwinked!"
The American way is they all go unpunished and on their merry way, letting it be known there is an opening for Jacquez-Quiroz's old job.
You tell me: Whom do you think they are going to get?
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_13973579#ixzz0Zav4rSHm
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Two More Legal Residents Caught in the Maw of our Immigration-Security-State
By Seth Hoy, Immigration Impact
November 12, 2009
Alternet
Over the past several months, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has made concerted efforts to overhaul our flawed immigration detention system—aiming for more transparency and broadened federal oversight. Deserving of equal attention, however, is Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) loose enforcement policy, which also ensnares legal immigrants.
Last week, the L.A. Times reported that ICE wrongfully detained two legal immigrant women who were permitted to be in the country under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). According to the article, Maria de Barrera was arrested in her Los Angeles home after ICE showed up looking for people who no longer lived at the residence. Even though she showed ICE agents her worker’s permit, she was taken to an immigration detention center until her lawyer showed up with VAWA documentation.
Another legal immigrant permitted to live in the U.S., Elvira Ayon, was arrested in Delano, CA and carted off to an immigration detention center in Arizona where she stayed for one month. Again, she was released only after her lawyer arranged for her release.
ICE spokeswoman, Virginia Kice, chalked the wrongful detentions up to ICE’s lack of access to DHS’s databases where information on immigration permits and benefits are kept. Kice also suggested that wrongful detention cases like these “don’t occur very often.”
Last April, the Associate Press ran a story about another such case involving Pedro Guzman, a 31-year-old Los Angeles native. ICE deported Guzman, who is mentally ill and illiterate, to Mexico despite the fact that he informed immigration officers of his U.S. citizenship. The AP article concluded that there are, in fact, many more cases involving wrongful detention.
In a drive to crack down on illegal immigrants, the United States has locked up or thrown out dozens, probably many more, of its own citizens over the past eight years. A monthslong AP investigation has documented 55 such cases, on the basis of interviews, lawsuits and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. These citizens are detained for anything from a day to five years. Immigration lawyers say there are actually hundreds of such cases.
While the cases of Maria de Barrera, Elvira Ayon and Pedro Guzman are clearly not the only stories of wrongful detention or deportation, they are indicative of a much larger problem within our ineffectual, inconsistent and poorly run immigration system—a problem not solved by promises of oversight and accountability but by actual reform of our entire immigration system. Until then, innocent legal immigrants will continue to sit in immigration detention.
Seth Hoy is a writer at Immigration Impact.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143895/
November 12, 2009
Alternet
Over the past several months, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has made concerted efforts to overhaul our flawed immigration detention system—aiming for more transparency and broadened federal oversight. Deserving of equal attention, however, is Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) loose enforcement policy, which also ensnares legal immigrants.
Last week, the L.A. Times reported that ICE wrongfully detained two legal immigrant women who were permitted to be in the country under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). According to the article, Maria de Barrera was arrested in her Los Angeles home after ICE showed up looking for people who no longer lived at the residence. Even though she showed ICE agents her worker’s permit, she was taken to an immigration detention center until her lawyer showed up with VAWA documentation.
Another legal immigrant permitted to live in the U.S., Elvira Ayon, was arrested in Delano, CA and carted off to an immigration detention center in Arizona where she stayed for one month. Again, she was released only after her lawyer arranged for her release.
ICE spokeswoman, Virginia Kice, chalked the wrongful detentions up to ICE’s lack of access to DHS’s databases where information on immigration permits and benefits are kept. Kice also suggested that wrongful detention cases like these “don’t occur very often.”
Last April, the Associate Press ran a story about another such case involving Pedro Guzman, a 31-year-old Los Angeles native. ICE deported Guzman, who is mentally ill and illiterate, to Mexico despite the fact that he informed immigration officers of his U.S. citizenship. The AP article concluded that there are, in fact, many more cases involving wrongful detention.
In a drive to crack down on illegal immigrants, the United States has locked up or thrown out dozens, probably many more, of its own citizens over the past eight years. A monthslong AP investigation has documented 55 such cases, on the basis of interviews, lawsuits and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. These citizens are detained for anything from a day to five years. Immigration lawyers say there are actually hundreds of such cases.
While the cases of Maria de Barrera, Elvira Ayon and Pedro Guzman are clearly not the only stories of wrongful detention or deportation, they are indicative of a much larger problem within our ineffectual, inconsistent and poorly run immigration system—a problem not solved by promises of oversight and accountability but by actual reform of our entire immigration system. Until then, innocent legal immigrants will continue to sit in immigration detention.
Seth Hoy is a writer at Immigration Impact.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143895/
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Feds talking to illegal immigrants in sheriff’s office probe
By Mike Sunnucks
Phoenix Business Journal
September 1, 2009
The U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights investigation into Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s immigration policies has included interviews with illegal immigrants, some of whom were deported and returned to the U.S.
USDOJ also is relying on a federal lawsuit, Melendres v. Arpaio, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a Mexican national who is legally in the U.S. and claims to have been harassed and unlawfully detained by the MCSO in 2007. The USDOJ is investigating whether the sheriff’s office unfairly targets Hispanics in its raids on businesses and crime sweeps.
USDOJ’s interviews involve Hispanics who are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants as well as illegal immigrants who were arrested by the MCSO, deported and then returned to the U.S. to testify, according to sources familiar with the investigation who asked not to be identified.
USDOJ spokesman Alejandro Miyar said Aug. 28 he did not know who investigators are interviewing and Justice officials did not provide additional information as of Tuesday evening.
Arpaio said Monday he did not know who the USDOJ is talking to in the case.
The MCSO stopped cooperating with the inquiry earlier this year saying it is politically motivated. “I don’t know what they are doing,” Arpaio said.
The federal civil rights investigation was started in late 2008, but was publicly announced with prodding from Washington after Barack Obama took over as president. Arpaio critics also had been pressing the USDOJ and FBI to look at Arpaio for alleged abuse of power and other matters.
The sheriff denies wrongdoing and says he enforces the law.
His attorney in the civil rights matter criticized the DOJ: “If it is true that DOJ is identifying illegal immigrants who have been deported already and had illegally re-entered the country for the purpose of interviewing them and building a case against Sheriff Joe, DOJ would essentially be prioritizing their political vendetta against Sheriff Joe in a civil case over the enforcement of criminal laws written to secure the border and those legally in the U.S. If any of the illegal immigrants are released or immunized in exchange for their testimony, I don’t think future victims will think DOJ’s political battle against Sheriff Joe was worth the cost,” said Robert Driscoll, a private attorney representing the MCSO in the civil rights investigation.
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2009/08/31/daily38.html
Phoenix Business Journal
September 1, 2009
The U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights investigation into Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s immigration policies has included interviews with illegal immigrants, some of whom were deported and returned to the U.S.
USDOJ also is relying on a federal lawsuit, Melendres v. Arpaio, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a Mexican national who is legally in the U.S. and claims to have been harassed and unlawfully detained by the MCSO in 2007. The USDOJ is investigating whether the sheriff’s office unfairly targets Hispanics in its raids on businesses and crime sweeps.
USDOJ’s interviews involve Hispanics who are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants as well as illegal immigrants who were arrested by the MCSO, deported and then returned to the U.S. to testify, according to sources familiar with the investigation who asked not to be identified.
USDOJ spokesman Alejandro Miyar said Aug. 28 he did not know who investigators are interviewing and Justice officials did not provide additional information as of Tuesday evening.
Arpaio said Monday he did not know who the USDOJ is talking to in the case.
The MCSO stopped cooperating with the inquiry earlier this year saying it is politically motivated. “I don’t know what they are doing,” Arpaio said.
The federal civil rights investigation was started in late 2008, but was publicly announced with prodding from Washington after Barack Obama took over as president. Arpaio critics also had been pressing the USDOJ and FBI to look at Arpaio for alleged abuse of power and other matters.
The sheriff denies wrongdoing and says he enforces the law.
His attorney in the civil rights matter criticized the DOJ: “If it is true that DOJ is identifying illegal immigrants who have been deported already and had illegally re-entered the country for the purpose of interviewing them and building a case against Sheriff Joe, DOJ would essentially be prioritizing their political vendetta against Sheriff Joe in a civil case over the enforcement of criminal laws written to secure the border and those legally in the U.S. If any of the illegal immigrants are released or immunized in exchange for their testimony, I don’t think future victims will think DOJ’s political battle against Sheriff Joe was worth the cost,” said Robert Driscoll, a private attorney representing the MCSO in the civil rights investigation.
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2009/08/31/daily38.html
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