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
Showing posts with label families and citizenship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label families and citizenship. Show all posts
Monday, September 27, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
When parents are detained in immigration raids, who thinks of the children?
By Lauren Knobbe
MinnPost.Com
Published Tue, Jun 22 2010 4:09 pm
WASHINGTON — Sen. Al Franken today introduced a bill aimed at helping the children of those swept up in immigration raids to avoid falling through the cracks as their parents face possible deportation.
The bill would require the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to create guidelines for dealing with children who have been separated from their parents and consider the children’s best interests in proceeding. Franken emphasized that immigration laws must be followed but enforcement has consequences for the children of illegal immigrants that also need to be addressed.
"Four million U.S. citizen children in our country have at least one undocumented immigrant parent," Franken said, with 40,000 of them in Minnesota. "They should not have to live in fear that one day their parents will simply not come home. They deserve much better than being abandoned without explanation."
The measure is a response to raids like a 2006 one at a Worthington meat-packing plant. Following that December raid, a second-grader and 2-year-old were left by themselves for a week until their grandmother arrived to care for them. Their parents had been detained.
According to Franken's office, more than 100,000 parents of U.S. citizen children were deported in the last 10 years. Upon deportation, these children have no way to find their parents and frequently experience neglect.
Franken’s legislation would establish the following guidelines for dealing with children who have been separated from their parents:
* Require enforcement authorities to inform state and local authorities of enforcement actions so they are aware of the children involved;
* Allow child welfare agencies to screen detainees to identify parents and locate at-risk children;
* Permit parents to conduct confidential phone calls to find care for their children;
* Protect children from seeing their parents interrogated;
* Entitle parents to have daily calls and "regular visits" with their children.
The bill is supported by the First Focus Campaign for Children and the Women’s Refugee Commission and co-sponsored by Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin. A similar bill was introduced in the House last July but has so far failed to clear committee.
Lauren Knobbe is an intern in MinnPost's D.C. bureau.
http://www.minnpost.com/derekwallbank/2010/06/22/19145/when_parents_are_detained_in_immigration_raids_who_thinks_of_the_children
MinnPost.Com
Published Tue, Jun 22 2010 4:09 pm
WASHINGTON — Sen. Al Franken today introduced a bill aimed at helping the children of those swept up in immigration raids to avoid falling through the cracks as their parents face possible deportation.
The bill would require the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to create guidelines for dealing with children who have been separated from their parents and consider the children’s best interests in proceeding. Franken emphasized that immigration laws must be followed but enforcement has consequences for the children of illegal immigrants that also need to be addressed.
"Four million U.S. citizen children in our country have at least one undocumented immigrant parent," Franken said, with 40,000 of them in Minnesota. "They should not have to live in fear that one day their parents will simply not come home. They deserve much better than being abandoned without explanation."
The measure is a response to raids like a 2006 one at a Worthington meat-packing plant. Following that December raid, a second-grader and 2-year-old were left by themselves for a week until their grandmother arrived to care for them. Their parents had been detained.
According to Franken's office, more than 100,000 parents of U.S. citizen children were deported in the last 10 years. Upon deportation, these children have no way to find their parents and frequently experience neglect.
Franken’s legislation would establish the following guidelines for dealing with children who have been separated from their parents:
* Require enforcement authorities to inform state and local authorities of enforcement actions so they are aware of the children involved;
* Allow child welfare agencies to screen detainees to identify parents and locate at-risk children;
* Permit parents to conduct confidential phone calls to find care for their children;
* Protect children from seeing their parents interrogated;
* Entitle parents to have daily calls and "regular visits" with their children.
The bill is supported by the First Focus Campaign for Children and the Women’s Refugee Commission and co-sponsored by Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin. A similar bill was introduced in the House last July but has so far failed to clear committee.
Lauren Knobbe is an intern in MinnPost's D.C. bureau.
http://www.minnpost.com/derekwallbank/2010/06/22/19145/when_parents_are_detained_in_immigration_raids_who_thinks_of_the_children
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, February 9, 2010
Paterson mother of soldier killed in Iraq fears deportation
By Tomas Dinges
The Star-Ledger
February 01, 2010
Eugenia Galdos mourns her son, Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, 25, at the family home in Paterson. Bueno-Galdos was killed along with four other soldiers in May 2009 by a mentally disturbed U.S. soldier at a clinic in Baghdad. On Tuesday morning, Eugenia Galdos visited her son’s grave at the Totowa Cemetery to ask for help.
When he was alive, Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos had helped his father attain permanent residency and was doing the same for his mother.
But when Bueno-Galdos, 25, was killed along with four other soldiers in May 2009 by a mentally disturbed U.S. soldier at a clinic in Baghdad, his mother’s path to citizenship apparently halted.
Months have passed without an official explanation of the delay in processing her immigration papers. The uncertainty has led Galdos, of Paterson, to fear deportation despite recent encouragement from staffers in the office of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), she said.
“I don’t want to go because I have my son buried here,” Galdos said. “My son gave his life for this country.”
Bueno-Galdos and his family arrived from Mollendo, Peru, when he was 8. He received his citizenship while in the U.S. Army, which he joined in 2002. Bueno-Galdos specialized in the detection and analysis of lethal chemicals.
By December 2008, Bueno-Galdos was in the final stages of securing permanent status for his mother and the application for permanent residency had been approved, said Amada Espinoza, a U.S. Army family counselor who is helping navigate Galdos through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement paperwork.
But shortly after her son’s death, Galdos said she was informed the process had been halted and was being re-evaluated. Despite the approval, Galdos was told by immigration authorities a deportation order filed for her years before was being investigated again, Espinoza said.
Galdos sought out the Newark veterans advocacy group G.I. Go Fund, which was able to set up a meeting with staffers in Menendez’s office.
After Bueno-Galdos’ death, the family decided to bury him in the United States, a country he loved, said his mother, and where he developed a vast network of friendships.
Chris Rhatigan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, could not speak specifically to Galdos’ case, but noted that situations involving citizenship and the military can be reviewed separately.
“There are certain discretions available to a district director, but they have to do this by a case-by-case basis,” she said.
Immigration law does not waive all factors or circumstances that might make an applicant like Galdos ineligible for a green card, like illegal entry or a false claim to citizenship, said Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer who assists military members and their families.
“So some parents of deceased soldiers are not eligible for benefits under this law. It creates a narrow remedy for some parents only,” she said.
There have been few deportations of parents of deceased service members, she said. But, immigration authorities cannot legally grant permanent residency to these applicants and instead are given a year-toyear residency permit.
“They get to live in the U.S. at the whim of the U.S. government and at any time it can be revoked,” she said.
Recent legislation Menendez co-sponsored seeks to automatically grant permanent residency for parents and spouses of family members who die in war.
After visiting her son’s grave at the cemetery Tuesday, Galdos had yet another of a series of inconclusive interactions with immigration authorities.
“If this case only had to do with me, I understand,” said Galdos. “But I have something here that I can’t leave behind, and that is my son.”
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/02/paterson_mother_of_soldier_kil.html
The Star-Ledger
February 01, 2010
Eugenia Galdos mourns her son, Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, 25, at the family home in Paterson. Bueno-Galdos was killed along with four other soldiers in May 2009 by a mentally disturbed U.S. soldier at a clinic in Baghdad. On Tuesday morning, Eugenia Galdos visited her son’s grave at the Totowa Cemetery to ask for help.
When he was alive, Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos had helped his father attain permanent residency and was doing the same for his mother.
But when Bueno-Galdos, 25, was killed along with four other soldiers in May 2009 by a mentally disturbed U.S. soldier at a clinic in Baghdad, his mother’s path to citizenship apparently halted.
Months have passed without an official explanation of the delay in processing her immigration papers. The uncertainty has led Galdos, of Paterson, to fear deportation despite recent encouragement from staffers in the office of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), she said.
“I don’t want to go because I have my son buried here,” Galdos said. “My son gave his life for this country.”
Bueno-Galdos and his family arrived from Mollendo, Peru, when he was 8. He received his citizenship while in the U.S. Army, which he joined in 2002. Bueno-Galdos specialized in the detection and analysis of lethal chemicals.
By December 2008, Bueno-Galdos was in the final stages of securing permanent status for his mother and the application for permanent residency had been approved, said Amada Espinoza, a U.S. Army family counselor who is helping navigate Galdos through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement paperwork.
But shortly after her son’s death, Galdos said she was informed the process had been halted and was being re-evaluated. Despite the approval, Galdos was told by immigration authorities a deportation order filed for her years before was being investigated again, Espinoza said.
Galdos sought out the Newark veterans advocacy group G.I. Go Fund, which was able to set up a meeting with staffers in Menendez’s office.
After Bueno-Galdos’ death, the family decided to bury him in the United States, a country he loved, said his mother, and where he developed a vast network of friendships.
Chris Rhatigan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, could not speak specifically to Galdos’ case, but noted that situations involving citizenship and the military can be reviewed separately.
“There are certain discretions available to a district director, but they have to do this by a case-by-case basis,” she said.
Immigration law does not waive all factors or circumstances that might make an applicant like Galdos ineligible for a green card, like illegal entry or a false claim to citizenship, said Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer who assists military members and their families.
“So some parents of deceased soldiers are not eligible for benefits under this law. It creates a narrow remedy for some parents only,” she said.
There have been few deportations of parents of deceased service members, she said. But, immigration authorities cannot legally grant permanent residency to these applicants and instead are given a year-toyear residency permit.
“They get to live in the U.S. at the whim of the U.S. government and at any time it can be revoked,” she said.
Recent legislation Menendez co-sponsored seeks to automatically grant permanent residency for parents and spouses of family members who die in war.
After visiting her son’s grave at the cemetery Tuesday, Galdos had yet another of a series of inconclusive interactions with immigration authorities.
“If this case only had to do with me, I understand,” said Galdos. “But I have something here that I can’t leave behind, and that is my son.”
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/02/paterson_mother_of_soldier_kil.html
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