By Karen Lee Ziner
InsideCostaRica.Com
Boston – Gustavo Cabrera, one of 31 janitors arrested last year in a high-profile raid on state courthouses, yesterday won the right to remain permanently in the United States, based on a 1997 law that legal experts say has provided relief to fewer than 200,000 people.
U.S. Immigration Judge Francis L. Cramer granted Cabrera’s permanent residency based on the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Relief Act, which provides relief from deportations to certain Nicaraguans, Cubans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans and other foreign nationals. The judge said he was persuaded that Cabrera and his family — his wife, a legal permanent resident; and their four children who are U.S. citizens — would face “considerable hardship” should Cabrera be deported to Guatemala, a country he left 25 years ago.
Cabrera, 49, the subject of a September 2008 Providence Journal article, is now eligible for a green card and, eventually, citizenship.
He is believed to be only the third courthouse detainee to have won the right to stay in the country. Earlier this year, one woman won asylum based on years of extreme domestic violence she was fleeing in Guatemala. According to Cabrera, another detainee recently won a family-based petition. but that could not be confirmed.
A look back . . .
His whole family is here, but he may be sent back
8.31.08: Suspected illegal immigrant waits to see if he�s deported
Gallery: The Cabrera family in crisis
8.31.08: Hispanics deplore climate of fear
Video: Others speak out on the impact of the illegal-immigrant crackdown on Rhode Island's communities
8.31.08: Cases proceeding against suspected illegal immigrants
9.01.08: Carcieri finds immigration an issue that people are talking about
7.16.08: Dozens arrested in raids at R.I. courthouses
East Providence lawyer Roberto Gonzalez cited Cabrera’s medical condition, the emotional and economic stresss on the family since Cabrera’s arrest on a civil immigration violation on July 15, 2008, and the threatened disruption of the family if he were forced to leave.
Cabrera suffered a near-fatal diabetic coma last year. He also said his family has also been in financial free-fall.
“We were looking at the potential of a family that was going to be torn apart,” Gonzalez said, “a man with a medical condition who would not be able to adequately treat it in his home country. He was going to be sent to live in a country he hasn’t seen in 25 years,” and where ageism and illness would probably prevent him from finding work.
After a brief trial during which the government offered no contest, Cramer told Cabrera, “Congratulations, sir.”
When Cabrera thanked the judge on behalf of his family, Cramer said, “Don’t forget to thank your attorney.” Cabrera replied, “Right now, I’m not even able to speak.”
Afterward, Cabrera, his wife, Elena Marin, and their daughter Melissa, a freshman at Classical High School in Providence, expressed relief.
“Now, I am going to go home and have a good, deep sleep,” Cabrera said. “I haven’t been able to sleep.”
He said he wants, and needs, to find a job.
He said after his daughter Cindy’s scholarship was unexpectedly cut in half at the University of Rhode Island, “They didn’t cover all the expenses, so we’re worried about making up the difference. I had to stop injecting insulin. I don’t have the money [to pay for it],” so his insulin levels are dangerously high. He said friends and strangers alike have helped the family stay afloat. One of Melissa’s teachers has sent money every month.
Asked if he planned to become a citizen, Cabrera replied, “Como se dice en America [as they say in America] – ‘Of course.’ ”
MARY GIOVAGNOLI, director of the Immigration Policy Center, a research arm of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that the NACARA Act applies to a “very, very tiny group of people” of roughly 500,000 across the country. “Altogether, about 200,000 of those cases have been filed since the program opened for business,” Giovagnoli said. Though the grant rate “is extremely high” within that pool, she said it nonetheless represents “a very small piece of the [immigration] puzzle.”
Hardship petitions under the NACARA Act “essentially applied to a small category of people who came to the U.S. as part of civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador,” she said. [Qualifying Soviet bloc petitioners generally filed for political asylum]. “Most of the folks who are here illegally today, the 11 to 12 million we talk about, they have no shot at a program like this.”
Gonzalez, the lawyer who represented Cabrera, said he discovered both that Cabrera’s wife had won permanent residency through NACARA, and that Cabrera had once applied for asylum within the eligible time period. Based on that, Gonzalez pursued relief for Cabrera under the NACARA Act.
CABRERA told The Journal last year that he left Guatemala in 1984 for political and economic reasons, and crossed the border in a car trunk stuffed with four other men.
“That was the worst time in my country, because of the civil war,” he told the judge yesterday. “There were kidnappings, and no work, so it was bad, really bad.”
In Rhode Island, he worked menial jobs: packing fish, butchering chickens, sorting recyclables at the landfill; and shaking vermin out of industrial laundry.
In February of 2007, he got a janitor job through a friend who worked for Falcon Maintenance, LLC, a former Johnston employment agency. He kept his job after Falcon’s state contract ran out that December and TriState Enterprises of North Providence took over. The companies previously held contracts to clean more than four dozen state buildings, including the courthouses. (Falcon’s owner, Vincent D’Elia, later served six months in a half-way house for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants).
Cabrera scrubbed toilets and mopped floors in the holding cells at the J. Joseph Garrahy Judicial Complex in downtown Providence until his arrest. He was charged with a civil violation of being in the country illegally, fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet and sent home with the knowledge he might be deported.
He waited, while the cases began dragging through the backlogged U.S. immigration courts. Of the 31 detainees, 3 agreed to return to Mexico voluntarily in January, and 15 are believed to have cases pending.
Four were charged criminally for identity theft and/or document fraud; of those, 3 were deported and a fugitive warrant was issued for the fourth.
After the judge granted his petition yesterday, Cabrera walked out into the hallway, wiped his hand across his forehead and said, “Phew.”
Outside the courthouse, he began calling friends and family with his good news.
http://insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2009/october/04/centralamerica-091004-04.htm
