http://www.thedailyitemoflynn.com/news/ ... leid=13137


Deportation controversy for Lynn man
By Greg Skinner
Monday, September 18, 2006

LYNN - This weekend hundreds of Guatemalan immigrants celebrated their homeland's independence with a parade, two days of food, dancing, sports and folk music. They did so with one of their leaders noticeably missing.

Against a federal judge's order, Eustaquio Juarez was deported earlier this month.

"It's a grand injustice," said Carlos Rivera, a leader in the Lynn Guatemalan community for 24 years. Rivera said that Juarez is a "good family man and a hard worker." He said Juarez is the treasure of the Guatemalan community group and an organizer.

One day last June at 6:30 a.m., Lynn police, along with other agencies, went to Juarez' Marion Street home and arrested him. As Juarez was shipped from one local jail to another then to El Paso, Texas, a Boston lawyer began working to stop his deportation.

Since his arrival in the U.S., Juarez has lived in Lynn, working and raising his American children with his wife, Mary. Rivera said that Juarez generally lived free from the fear that thousands of local Guatemalans experience.

"We know that some people are being taken," said Rivera.

Juarez came into the U.S. illegally in the late 1980s with a flood of Central American refugees escaping what would be later called genocide. Trapped between rebels and national army troops in the Guatemalan highlands, the people in Juarez' village had a choice to join either side or flee, according to Rivera.

One million Central Americans came to the U.S. and settled throughout the country. Rivera says that over seven thousand now call Lynn home.

Juarez came to Lynn to find work and to find peace, said Rivera.

No one disagrees that Juarez entered the U.S. illegally. According to his attorney, Juarez' legal status slips into a fuzzy area as a refugee. President Bill Clinton signed into law the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act in the fall of 1997, allowing certain Guatemalans relief from deportation.

Jeff Ross, a Boston lawyer, says that Juarez came to the U.S. to escape a genocide perpetrated against people of Mayan ancestry during the civil wars plaguing Central America in the 1980s. Ross said that Juarez applied for asylum in Cambridge in 1991 after returning from El Paso.

Juarez' arrest in June stems from a charge of failing to appear before a federal judge on immigration issues in 1991. He was caught in El Paso on his way back to Lynn after visiting family in Guatemala, said Ross.

Ross says an immigration court sent Juarez' notice to appear before the court that December to the wrong Lynn address. With that, Ross says, the government failed Juarez' right to due process. Juarez was ordered deported "in absentia."

Both Ross and Rivera believe that Juarez was arrested this year after applying for a driver's license. Mike Gilhooly, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security Customs and Immigration Enforcement (DHSCIE) in Boston, wouldn't say if immigration officials are using Department of Motor Vehicles records to find illegal immigrants.

On Aug. 29 of this year, federal immigration Judge Thomas Roepke agreed in a legal brief that the government failed to provide Juarez proper notice to appear and reopened immigration proceedings.

With the reopening of his case, Juarez was granted an automatic stay of removal, said Ross.

Seven days after a Texas Judge ordered Juarez' deportation halted and case reopened, an officer with the DHSCIE in Dallas sent Juarez back to Guatemala.

"It's in plain violation of the law," said Ross. He claims that the man responsible for the action is Steve Heide.

Spokespeople from the Boston, El Paso, and Washington, D.C., DHSCIE offices would not answer questions regarding Juarez' arrest and subsequent deportation.

"What we have now is a national hysteria over terrorism and immigrants have become the scapegoat," said Ross.

Ross claims that Heide said, "We get so many people coming through here we can't check them all." Heide did not return several calls seeking comment.

A phone call to an 800 number would have told Heide of Juarez' stay of deportation. Heide told Ross, "We don't do that."

The Item was able to confirm Juarez' status in less than three minutes with the 800 number.

Ernestine Fobbs, spokeswoman for DHSICE in Washington, D.C., would only say that if a judge ordered Juarez' removal stopped, "We are charged with the responsibility of carrying out that decision."

Ross is confident that Juarez will be returned to Lynn sometime within 60 days, but said the DHSICE has not given anything specific.

Carmen Rivera worries for the Juarez family while they wait for his return.

"The trauma is not only to him," said Rivera. She says the youngest of Juarez's children doesn't understand what happened to their father and keeps asking for him.

Carlos Rivera explains that the damage done by the deportation goes beyond Juarez' family alone. It damages a slowly growing relationship between the Guatemalans of Lynn and the police, said Rivera. During the past three years, said Rivera, the Guatemalan immigrant community slowly came out of the shadows and began working for legal status.

"Something like this breaks the foundation," said Rivera.