Posted on 06/17/2002 10:34:12 AM PDT by skeptic1801
Freedom fighter
INS law seems to leave no room for allowances
4:45 a.m. 6/17/2002
By Paul Eakins The Capital-Journal
For seven months, Mexican immigrant Maria Flores has been waiting for the day she will be reunited with her family, her American-born husband and son. For seven months, she has languished in jails in Kansas and Missouri as the wheels of U.S. justice slowly turn. For seven months, she has wondered whether armed guards one day may enter her cell, put her in a plane and send her to Mexico with the admonition to never return.
Over the past seven months, 22-year-old Maria has seen her husband, David Flores, only three times and her son only twice -- and then only through the glass barrier of a jail's visiting room for a mere 30 minutes.
Maria could have returned to her native Mexico when she was first arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in November 2001, but she has stayed in the United States, in jail, to fight for her rights and her son's future.
A mother jailed
In October 1998, when Maria was 19 years old, she attempted to cross from Mexico to the United States by claiming to be an American citizen, even using a copy of a U.S. citizen's birth certificate, according to the INS. The border guards stopped her, discovered her real name and sent her back south.
A short time later, she sneaked into the United States, moving to Garden City, where her sister lived. For Maria, the benefits of living in the United States were worth living illegally in a country and culture she didn't know, where she didn't speak the language and was at risk of being arrested again.
"There is much more work here," Maria said during an interview this month at the Shawnee County Jail. In Mexico, "There isn't opportunity for everybody, only for those who have money."
She met David Flores while living in Dodge City for a time. They were married May 29, 2000. Shortly after their wedding, they returned to Garden City. A few months later, Maria gave birth to their son, Anthony David Flores.
For 1 1/2 years, Maria lived, worked and raised her son in Garden City, a western Kansas community where a booming Hispanic population now makes up almost half of the town's residents. But like the approximately 8.7 million other undocumented immigrants the U.S. Census Bureau estimates are living in the United States, Maria couldn't take advantage of the benefits of being a legal resident.
So, she went to the INS office in Kansas City, Mo., to apply for residency under a law that has helped numerous immigrants become legal residents. Under Section 245(i) of the Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act passed by Congress in December 2000, undocumented immigrants can pay a $1,000 fine and apply for residency under special circumstances, such as when they are the spouse or relative of an American citizen or permanent resident with a valid visa.
"I went to get residency, and they arrested me and they wouldn't let me go," Maria said.
David, a Mexican-American born and raised in the United States, was with his wife when she was taken away. It was only after she had paid the $1,000 fine and filled out an application for a change of status that INS agents took her away, he said.
At first, neither David nor Maria knew why she was being arrested, and the INS wouldn't tell the couple.
Maria soon learned that because of her record of misrepresenting herself as a U.S. citizen three years earlier, she would be deported. No hearing. No questions asked.
She was distraught.
"The first thing I thought about was my son, that he was only 1 year, 2 months old and he was very tiny, and that I would be separated from him," Maria said.
But unlike others who have been arrested for similar reasons, accepted their fate and been deported, Maria decided to take the issue to court.
Fighting for a future
Alicia Phillips, an attorney who with her husband, Jim Phillips, is representing Maria, believes her client has a chance. The lawsuit against the U.S. government says that despite whatever policy the INS has regarding Maria's previous arrest, she had applied for a change of status to become a legal U.S. resident under 245(i) before being arrested. Therefore, the application should be considered before a judge, the lawsuit says, and Maria should be granted legal residency.
Phillips said Maria has never been given due process and been allowed to give her side of the story, either when she was arrested at the Mexican border or after her arrest in Kansas City. In the past, a hearing before a judge was required when an undocumented immigrant arrested. Changes in immigration laws in recent years did away with that, giving the INS the power of expedited deportation.
In other court cases, federal judges in other court circuits have indicated their concern about the interpretation of the immigration laws by the INS that would require someone in Maria's situation to be deported, Phillips said. And she hopes U.S. Magistrate Judge Catherine A. Walter also will question the INS policy. A decision is expected within a couple weeks, she said.
Fighting the system hasn't been easy for Maria. The INS has denied her request for bond so that she may await the court's decision with her family. So, Maria has been moved among area jails -- including Atchison County, Jefferson County, Platte County, Mo., and Shawnee County -- as she is held by local authorities for the INS.
"She has no criminal record, she's just a mother. She deserves to be with her son," Phillips said. "And yet we're paying here, the taxpayers, for her to be in jail like some vicious criminal."
In the eyes of the INS, however, someone in Maria's position is a criminal, said Michael T. Jaromin, deputy district director of the INS in Kansas City, Mo.
Although he wouldn't talk specifically about Maria's case, he said the U.S. government takes it very seriously when a non-U.S. citizen misrepresents herself as an American.
"If the birth certificate was of a United States citizen and she falsely claims that she was United States citizen, that's a permanent bar," Jaromin said. "There's not a lot of flexibility under the Immigration and Nationality Act."
That means deportation for Maria, and not with the expulsion of up to 10 years that is applied to some deported immigrants, but for life.
The INS has the power to grant residency to immigrants who otherwise would be deported, weighing factors such as whether the immigrant has family legally living in the United States, a job here or a criminal record, Jaromin said.
"If the one negative is that they re-entered the United States after being deported, and they have a bunch of positives, there's a 99 percent chance that we're going to grant them residency," he said. But, he said, "identity theft is a big issue these days. Was she just trying to enter the United States illegally, or was she trying to steal someone's identity?"
Few options
If the court rules against Maria and the INS deports her, she and her family will have few options. She and her husband could live separate lives in different countries, he could move to Mexico or she could return to the United States illegally, likely to live the rest of her life here as an illegal immigrant.
But her husband says leaving his good job at a southwest Kansas oil field and living in Mexico is an unrealistic option.
"I can't live in Mexico. I can't read Spanish. I don't know how to live there," David said. "And my wife told me they don't pay much over there."
Waiting the past seven months has been frustrating, he said. Holidays such as Christmas and New Year's have come and gone, and he struggles to work and raise his son on his own.
Anthony, the couple's son, hardly seems to recognize his mother, David said, but he seems to know that someone important was taken from him. When David leaves, Anthony cries as if afraid his father isn't coming back. In the days after Maria was arrested, David had his hands full with Anthony.
"I didn't know what to do, 'cause I don't know how to raise him by myself," David said. "And he was crying every night. He was just crying and crying and crying."
Maria said her son needs his mother, but he also would have a better future in America.
"I am fighting for my son," she said. "I would like for him to grow up in this country. He was born here."
David said he can't understand why his wife still hasn't been released and wasn't granted residency. He knows of people with drug convictions who have been given green cards by the INS, he said, so how is what Maria did any worse?
"It's all messed up," David said. "What did she do? One lie. She paid her fine. They should let her go."
Paul Eakins can be reached at (785) 295-1186 or peakins@cjonline.com.
The 245(i) immigration law
On Dec. 21, 2000, Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act went into effect as a way to help undocumented immigrants who had been living in the United States on or before that date to become legal residents. The provision allows a person who qualifies for permanent residency, but is ineligible to adjust status in the United States because of an immigration status violation such as illegal, to pay a $1,000 penalty to continue processing in the United States. Those eligible under the law include undocumented immigrants who are the spouse or relative of an American citizen or a permanent resident with a valid visa. Eligible people must have had either an immigrant visa petition filed on their behalf with the INS, or a labor certification application filed on their behalf with the Department of Labor, by April 30, 2001. They may apply for Section 245(i) adjustment of status at a later time.
This is how the media uses issues and situations to promote their socialist agenda, and no borders policy.
If Big Brother can't get their crap together after seven months, turn her loose.
We tossed the other King George on his butt because of indeterminate detention. Speedy trial.
I'm sure the INS employees, especially those in the Fed Emp Union, are enjoying lovely salaries and perqs while they drag this on.
I've got a better idea. Let's arm the Boarder patrol and Issue "Shoot on site" Orders to ANYTNING attempting to enter this country Illegally. Then we won't have to listen to them whine after being deported twice, then being arrested and having some Left wing Idiot write a opus for her!
Freedom fighter my @ss.
But for now, how about me hiring sharpshooters to protect my friends from Mexicali walking across the border to join my family for dinner?
This is a ludicrous assertion.
Feds are more interested in getting their career back to someplace with trees and malls.
You might see it differently from up there in San Jose. Helluva' border town.
So... the tendancy to make goofy assertions depends upon one's proximity to the border?
War, women, surface of the moon, and other such important topics.
I'm sure the border at downtown Tijuana is relatively solid, but southern Arizona is still laughing at our INS / CUSTOMS / FEDS assigned to the Nogales area. Like many, they enjoyed the McDonalds just north of the Nogales downtown crossing. They ate there often. Including while coyotes were tunneling underneath the McDonalds parking lot. Including eating there while the tunnel below was heavily trafficked.
Our fine guardians finally got a clue, after a long time, when the tunnel collapsed thus sinking part of the parking spots. Then our protectors sprang into action! Might not have made the San Jose news.
Nope, I don't have confidence in big government.
You don't have to close the border, just knock off the welfare crap that attracts the scum.
If we really want to stop illegal immigration we would do both. And stop it would.
BTW you may be surprised to learn that illegals have been seen eating at McDonalds in San Jose, too.
Would anyone bet me the goverment or INS employee alerted the media to this 'sad' story.
I am always amazed that people say we can do nothing because we can't do it all. We can never 'do it all'. We just do the best we can and we are certainly not doing it.
Now we have always had a better economy and we have always had jobs and employers that would like to employ these people. It has only been the last 30 years, they have flooded this country. Some people are too young or did not live in a border state, but we did have a fairly secure border at one time and we could again.
Its not big brother. She filed in federal court and big brother cannot legally move her.
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