New York Times
By John Eligon and Damien Cave
March 19, 2014
KANSAS
CITY, Mo. — The cellblock intercom awoke Josue Noe Sandoval-Perez at 1
o’clock on a frigid January morning at a detention center in northwest
Missouri: Get your
things, get ready to go. Immigration officials were preparing to whisk
him away.
A day earlier the government denied an appeal of his deportation order, but no one told his family, nor was he allowed to call.
So
while Mr. Sandoval-Perez, 41, an illegal immigrant with a previous
deportation on his record, was beginning his journey back to his native
Mexico, his family was clinging
to hope at a rally in a park here. Holding signs, they argued that he
had been in the country for 16 years, had no criminal record, paid taxes
and was the primary breadwinner for his children — one an American
citizen, the other an immigrant who is here legally.
He
was dropped off that night in Matamoros, a violence-ridden Mexican
border town. When he called his wife, Josefina Aguilar, from outside a
bus station to tell her what
happened, gunshots could be heard.
“I was just crying a lot, like my world was over,” Ms. Aguilar, 40, recalled.
Mr.
Sandoval-Perez’s case — as described by him, his family and court
documents — previews the difficulties President Obama will face in a
review he ordered last week,
asking the Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson, to come up with a
more “humane” deportation policy.
Like
Mr. Sandoval-Perez, many immigrants here illegally might qualify for
protection from deportation if strong ties to family and community and
steady work records were
taken into account, but they also have past immigration violations that
could count heavily against them.
The
review comes too late to help Mr. Sandoval-Perez. But his case was
among dozens that immigrant advocates presented to the White House last
Friday as an example of
how Mr. Obama’s enforcement policies had torn apart generally
law-abiding families, separating breadwinning parents from children who
have known no other country but the United States.
“Josue
is a perfect example of a case that they should have exercised
prosecutorial discretion on,” said Richard Morales, the detention
prevention coordinator at the PICO
National Network, an organization of faith-based community groups. “We
welcome the news from the president, but we need to see details.”
In
an interview at an apartment that he shares with his sister-in-law in
Mexico City, Mr. Sandoval-Perez was more pointed about what he wanted
from Mr. Obama.
“He
has the power to end this discrimination, to change this,” said Mr.
Sandoval-Perez, holding a blue plastic folder with all his deportation
documents. “Families have
to stop being separated.”
Immigration
officials declined to comment on the specifics of their decision not to
grant Mr. Sandoval-Perez leniency. A spokeswoman for Immigration and
Customs Enforcement
said in a statement that the agency’s deportation priorities included
“convicted criminals, immigration fugitives and those apprehended at the
border while attempting to unlawfully enter the United States.”
She
added that the agency had begun to take a hard look at whether it could
further align its enforcement policies with the “goal of sound law
enforcement practice that
prioritizes public safety,” which could mean more leniency for some
immigrants with prior deportations.
A
study released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that federal
court convictions of immigrants who returned illegally after
deportation — like Mr. Sandoval-Perez
— had increased 28-fold over the past two decades, from 690 in 1992 to
19,463 in 2012. That rise accounts for nearly half the growth of all
federal convictions over that time span, the report said.
But
for now, as immigration overhaul efforts have stalled in Congress, the
Obama administration has found itself having to adjudicate cases that
present compelling arguments
for and against deportation.
Mr.
Sandoval-Perez, whose shaved head and hulking frame appeared
intimidating until he cried at every mention of his daughter,
acknowledged that he first tried to cross
the border illegally with a green card that belonged to someone else in
October 1998.
But
he barely set foot into the country then. American officials stopped
him at the border entrance to El Paso and did an expedited removal,
which is legally a deportation.
Two days later, he successfully crossed, meeting his wife and infant
son, Erik, who had also entered illegally a few days earlier.
Holding
Mr. Sandoval-Perez’s previous deportation against him violates the
spirit of the system, argued David Leopold, a Cleveland-based
immigration lawyer, because the
guideline is intended to target “somebody who serially re-enters the
country, who doesn’t have any ties to the United States.”
“They need to use their common sense,” Mr. Leopold said of immigration officials.
If
the immigration bill that passed the United States Senate last year
were law, Mr. Leopold said, Mr. Sandoval-Perez could have been eligible
for amnesty.
But
Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for
Immigration Studies, a group that advocates less immigration and opposes
the Senate bill, said that
Mr. Sandoval-Perez’s case bolstered the argument for focusing on
tougher immigration enforcement.
“To
me it shows the importance of having other programs in place that deter
illegal settlement so that fewer people are able to stay here for that
long a period of time
and build a life here before being ordered removed,” Ms. Vaughan said.
Mr.
Sandoval-Perez’s son, Erik, now 17, has a legal deportation reprieve
under a 2012 Obama administration program. Erik, a high school junior,
avidly plays the video
game Call of Duty, fixes cars (which he learned from his father) and
works at a clothing store. Mr. Sandoval-Perez’s daughter, Nayelly, 12,
who was born in the United States, is a blossoming basketball star who
learned the game from her father.
Both
fought back tears as they recently spoke about their father, in the
white trailer decorated with images of Jesus and Our Lady of Guadalupe
where they live on the
eastern edge of Kansas City. Nayelly recalled playing a basketball game
the night she found out her father had been deported.
“Every time I would get the ball, I couldn’t even dribble,” she said. “I couldn’t even, like, make a shot.”
Mr.
Sandoval-Perez and his wife say they came to the United States because
they could not make a living wage in Mexico. They settled in Kansas
City, where Mr. Sandoval-Perez
worked in cabinet factories and, most recently, at a scrap yard. Last
April, he said, he took coins from some of the cars in the scrap yard to
a machine at a grocery store that converts change into bills. The
machine jammed, police officers approached him
and asked him for identification and where he worked. He told them
everything, he said. They did not take any action against him.
But
in January, officers showed up at the scrap yard and arrested him on a
misdemeanor theft charge for using damaged currency in the machine.
Mr.
Sandoval-Perez was one of several people arrested after an
investigation by the department’s fraud unit, a spokesman for the Kansas
City Police Department said. Mr.
Sandoval-Perez had several pieces of identification with different
names on them, the spokesman said, so they called immigration officials
to verify his identity, which led to his being placed on a hold.
Mr. Sandoval-Perez denied that he had multiple identifications and described the arrest as “discriminatory.”
After
about a week in the city’s custody during which he did not have access
to a shower, he was sent to an immigration detention facility about an
hour north of Kansas
City. On the outside, Communities Creating Opportunity, a faith-based
community advocacy organization aligned with PICO, rallied members of
the local clergy, got Representative Emanuel Cleaver II, Democrat of
Missouri, to write a letter in support of Mr. Sandoval-Perez’s
release and got a lawyer to file for a stay of deportation.
Inside,
Mr. Sandoval-Perez believed he would soon be released. But, he said, in
the early hours of Jan. 31 — after the stay was denied, but before any
of his supporters
were notified — he was awakened by the message on the intercom in his
immigration cell. Immigration officials said he was awakened early to
prepare for his deportation but was allowed to return to sleep before
being transported.
The
night before, he said, the authorities pressured him to sign a final
deportation document, but did not give him a copy. He initially refused
and said he wanted to
talk to his lawyer, but the officers told him not to worry about it.
“Sign first,” he recalled their saying, “then you can talk to your
lawyer.”
After about 10 hours in a holding area, he was flown with about 40 others to Brownsville, Tex., he said.
The
authorities separated him from the group. He was sent across into
Matamoros, after the other deportees, with just a brown paper bag
holding his meager belongings —
his wallet, a belt, his wedding ring and his cellphone, dead from days
without a charge.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment