Enron critic faces deportation for felony

Houston Chronicle ^ | June 24, 2002 | By EDWARD HEGSTROM

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Jose Lazo overcame a childhood as an illegal immigrant, an education in alternative schools and the collapse of Enron Corp.

But Lazo, 21, a nationally known spokesman for displaced Enron workers, may not be able to overcome a specter from his past.

After rising from a life of poverty to a $40,000-a-year job straight out of high school, Lazo now faces deportation back to his native El Salvador because he impregnated a 13-year-old fellow student when he was 17. The girl insisted the sex was consensual, and the two are now married, but that did not prevent him from being charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child, a felony, to which he pleaded guilty in 1999.

Supporters of Lazo say they are amazed that a young man who rose so fast now risks an equally precipitous fall because of a mistake they believe originated out of a difference in cultures.

"It shocks our American notion of how kids should behave" when children have children, said Jacob Monty, Lazo's attorney. "But it's normal in Central America and Mexico."

Monty compares the case to that of Pedro Sotelo, a Mexican living in Houston who was 22 when he got his 14-year-old wife pregnant. Sotelo was charged with sexual assault of a child in 1996, though the charges were later dropped.

In the Lazo case, fellow ex-Enron employees also question the unusual timing of the government's decision to deport him. His deportation comes at a time when he has become well known for his role in criticizing Enron. Instead of deporting him directly after his plea agreement in 1999, as would normally be done, the Immigration and Naturalization Service waited more than two years, when his case was brought to the INS' attention by his probation officer.

An e-mail widely circulated among ex-Enron employees over the weekend pleaded for money to help Lazo's family. Copies were sent to the media.

Lazo, who is being held a detention center near Bush Intercontinental Airport, has a team of lawyers working for him for free, including the current and past chairmen of the Harris County Republican Party, and Monty, who is the local head of the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans.

Still, it remains uncertain what the lawyers can do. The law clearly states that a noncitizen convicted of an aggravated felony must be deported back to his country of origin.

The attorneys have taken the unusual step of asking the judge in the sexual assault case to allow Lazo to withdraw his guilty plea, which could result in a new trial. A hearing before Harris County District Judge Mark Kent Ellis is scheduled for Wednesday.

If Lazo doesn't win his case, he will be sent back to a country where he has no close relatives and where he has not lived since he was 8.

"He has always lived with me," said Lazo's mother, Cristela Avila. "All of my family is here now."

Lazo escaped to the United States with his mother in 1988 and got a green card granting permanent residency in 1996.

The two moved to Houston, where Lazo eventually started classes at Bellaire High School. But he had problems, and he wound up in the Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program, a school for kids who have gotten on the wrong side of the law.

It was there that he met Christina Villanueva, another student. In court records, Villanueva has confessed that she told Lazo she was 16, even though she was 13.

Villanueva became pregnant and gave birth to a son, Anthony, in August 1999. After the birth, Villanueva's parents made her tell Lazo her true age, then 14, Monty said.

The two young parents were outside a friend's house in Pasadena with their son one evening when they started to argue, and the police were called. The police noted that Villanueva was 14, and Lazo was booked on charges of sexual assault of a child.

On the advice of his attorney, Lazo decided to plead guilty in exchange for deferred adjudication, which meant he would be on probation for eight years. This saved him from going to jail, but Ellis also made it clear that it meant Lazo could face deportation. Lazo and Villanueva were married two months after his plea agreement.

But Lazo was not deported, and he began to turn his life around. He wound up at the George I. Sanchez Charter High School, where he entered a technology training program and found he had a knack for computers.

When he graduated in 2000, three companies fought for Lazo's services. He chose Enron, where he eventually went to work for the senior director of the database development team.

Two days after being laid off from Enron, Lazo started EnronX.org, along with a friend. He became the spokesman for the organization, and he was quoted frequently in a number of publications, including the Houston Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal.

Lazo also landed on his feet, taking a job for Distributed Network Service Corp.

He has excelled there, as he did at Enron.

"There isn't a project we've given him that he hasn't been able to handle," DNS President Joseph Trahan said.

All this time, Lazo was on probation as a sex offender. His name and picture appeared on the state sex offender list. Lazo now acknowledges that he did not handle his relationship with his probation officer well, according to his attorney. Tensions developed between the officer and Lazo.

Lazo missed a couple of meetings with his probation officer, a violation of his probation. But instead of notifying the judge, the probation officer sent the case file straight to the INS, knowing that this would almost certainly get him deported.

A representative of the Harris County Community Supervision and Corrections Department said the probation officer would not be able to comment on an active case. But INS spokeswoman Luisa Aquino confirmed that Lazo first came to the attention of immigration authorities after the case was sent over by the probation officer earlier this year. Lazo was taken into custody May 2.

Aquino characterized the probation officer's handling of the case as normal.

"If he violated his probation, it's not strange for the probation officer to pick up the phone and call us," Aquino said.

[Sweet_Sunflower29]

Instead of deporting him directly after his plea agreement in 1999, as would normally be done...

What is that old saying...Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on ME.