Note: this was their headline story for Mothers Day.


--

A mother's desperation
For many immigrant families, deportation forces agonizing decision

By ESTEBAN PARRA • The News Journal • May 10, 2009

Diana and Ana RamÃ*rez don't know how much time they have with their mother.

Carmen Irineo, 38, is fighting deportation. Her husband, Herón RamÃ*rez, was deported in February. Diana, 11, and Ana, 13, are U.S. citizens and do not have to leave the country.

This leaves Irineo with a heartbreaking decision if she loses her deportation fight: Leave her daughters here with friends, in a culture they know, in a place where they can get a good education; or, take them with her to her small town in Mexico, where they don't speak the language fluently and where there are limited educational opportunities beyond sixth grade.

"I don't have any family here I can leave them with," Irineo said. "[But] I worry about taking them to Mexico. There's nothing there for them, especially where I'm from."

Irineo grew up in an isolated part of Hidalgo, a central state in Mexico. The nearest town to her house was Maravillas, about a 30-minute walk. There, people attend the town's sole church or school, which goes up to the sixth grade. Anyone wanting more education has to travel well beyond the town or take classes on television.

Choices made by Irineo and others like her who illegally entered the United States are coming to a head as the recession thins job prospects and more frequent raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement force them to seek out a living in the shadows of the economy.

Caught in the middle are the children, many of whom are U.S. citizens by birth, yet face few good options: They either leave the United States with their parents or are left behind with whomever is willing to take them in.

D "It's extremely disruptive," said Rick Hogan, a Wilmington immigration attorney who estimates that in about 75 percent of deportation cases involving a family, someone is in the country legally. "The kids end up being the victims of bad decisions made by their parents years and years ago."

A study released last month by the Pew Hispanic Center highlights the growing dilemma. Illegal immigrants' children born in the United States are American citizens, yet they struggle in poverty and uncertainty with parents who fear deportation, toil largely in low-wage jobs and face layoffs and ICE raids.

The study by Pew, a nonpartisan research organization, estimated that 11.9 million illegal immigrants lived in the U.S. in March 2008. Roughly three out of four of their children -- about 4 million -- were born in the U.S. In 2003, 2.7 million children of illegal immigrants, or 63 percent, were born in this country.
Advertisement

Immigrant couples are more likely to have children than U.S. citizens, 47 percent of unauthorized households compared with 35 percent of legal immigrants and 21 percent of U.S.-born households.

As deportations and job losses hit these households, immigrant mothers are more often left to care for children on their own -- more often, the fathers are deported first -- and to make critical decisions about their future. This Mother's Day, "the share of adult women living with their children (64 percent) is substantially higher than the share of men (38 percent) among unauthorized immigrants."

Advocates for immigration enforcement say these children should leave the country with their parents.

"Before they are Americans, they are minors in her [mother's] custody and instead of abandoning her children, it would be preferable for her to take her children with her," said William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, a group that advocates for reduced immigration. "At the age of 18, if they chose to return to the U.S. and employ their birthright citizenship, then they may so under current law."

Gheen said Congress needs to change the interpretations of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born in the United States. "It was never intended to be exploited by illegal aliens," he said. "The intention of the 14th was to give citizenship to descendants of slaves."

Others said the federal government needs to review immigration laws, especially those dealing with people who are already here to avoid splitting families.

"Ignoring people who are here does not benefit anyone," said Guillermina González, executive director of Voices Without Borders, an Hispanic advocacy group in Wilmington.
(3 of 6)

President Barack Obama is expected to address immigration reform later this year, including a proposal to give illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
Advertisement

Any solution may not come soon enough for Irineo, who has an immigration hearing in July to decide her fate.

Her daughters, who attend Georgetown Middle School, hope their mother will be allowed to stay in the country. Neither looks forward to the alternative.

"My mom said there aren't many opportunities for school," Ana RamÃ*rez said of Mexico. "I like school."

Her younger sister worries about her future.

"Sometimes you hear stories that some kids don't get to go to school, because they drop out to help their family," Diana said.

When asked of the chances her mother will be deported, she was not optimistic. "I know it's going to happen someday."
A family torn apart

There were few options for Irineo growing up in Mexico, other than to leave and find work.

At 24, she left Mexico and crossed illegally into the United States.

She arrived in Delaware 14 years ago after hearing of work in the poultry industry, where she met Heron.

The two dated and, within a matter of months, were living together. A year later, Ana was born. Her sister, Diana, arrived two years after that.

The couple moved to a mobile-home park outside Georgetown.

"Until 2008, everything was good, everything was calm," Irineo said. "But in 2008, that's when all the problems started with immigration and the roundups, people were left without jobs, many people have to return to their countries with their children."

Starting in November 2008, Irineo said, there wasn't a day she didn't hear about someone being arrested by ICE agents.

Arrests of fugitive immigrants in the region went up by 23 percent for that last fiscal year, said Mark M. Medvesky, a spokesman for ICE in Philadelphia. Medvesky attributed the increase in raids to the 6-year-old agency growing.

That November, her then-16-year-old nephew called her. He had been arrested by ICE agents and he needed her to pick him up at the federal agency's Dover office.
(4 of 6)

When Irineo got there, agents asked for her paperwork.
Advertisement

"As they were telling me this, they were arresting me," she said.

They took her fingerprints, asked her a series of questions and let her go with her nephew.

Illegal immigrants with a criminal record or those who have been deported before are usually not released after ICE agents arrest them. Those who have no record are usually released to either voluntarily leave or stay and fight deportation.

As Irineo prepared to fight her deportation, her husband was picked up in February as he left their home.

"When he didn't answer the phone," she said, "it was a given that he'd been arrested."

He was taken to Wilmington, where he spent the night in Young Correctional Institution. The next day, he was taken to York, Pa., where he was processed, then deported to Mexico.

"The following week, he was calling me from Mexico telling me he was there," she said. "It was sad and a surprise. I never thought that after so much time here, something like this would happen to us."

It was about that time that Irineo's decision began to take shape.
Putting children at risk

People facing deportation aren't the only ones who suffer. Family members who are here legally suffer, too, said Brother Chris Posch, director of Hispanic ministries for the Diocese of Wilmington.

When a family is split up, the children often lose touch with their parents.

"Often the children of immigrants, living in a country other than the father or mother, they go through all this stress and pain and depression," he said. "Then when they become adolescents, they become high-risk youth.

"If this isn't terrorism, I don't know what is."

When ICE raids began last year, officials at Indian River School District, with an 18 percent Hispanic population, said some students became very emotional and upset at their home situation, said Renee Jerns, supervisor of secondary instruction for the district.

"Our counselors and our teachers found themselves having to intervene and help these kids emotionally get through this," she said.
(5 of 6)

Hogan, the Wilmington immigration attorney, said he has a client who legally stayed in the states with his American-born son after the wife was deported to Mexico. She took the two younger children, who were also born in the states.
Advertisement

Because of the separation, school counselors have told Hogan's client, the older boy is acting out.

"The father is beside himself that the family is split up, that he's trying to work and he's trying to raise the child on his own," Hogan said. "The alternative is for the father and son to go back to Mexico, but they are going to go back to a situation where they are not going to have a job that's going to fully allow him to support the family."
Helping those left behind

Julie Quiroz, then 12, was supposed to graduate from elementary school in Burien, Wash., the day her mother, Ana Reyes, was arrested by immigration officers. Julie, who was born and raised in Washington state, knew her mother was in the country illegally and could be arrested at any time.

"I knew this day was probably going to happen, but I wasn't expecting it then," she said. "When they told me they were going to take my parents, I started crying and I said, 'You can't take my mom. Why are you going to take her?' "

One of the agents told her she could go to Mexico with her parents, to which she said she responded with: "No. It's easy for you to say, because you're not the one going to be down there."

Julie lived with friends after her mother and brothers were deported. Her young sister, who was born in the states, also went with their mother. She eventually joined the family and started going to school in Mexico. But unable to read or write in Spanish, she dropped out.

That's about the time her case came to the attention of Joe Kennard, a philanthropist who formed a group called Organization to Help Citizen Children. The group works with churches to provide support of U.S.-born children whose parents have been deported to Mexico. Since founding the group almost 1 1/2 years ago, Kennard said, he has been able to help 20 citizen children stay in their country after the parents are deported.
(6 of 6)

Kennard and his wife, JoAnn, took in Julie more than a year ago.
Advertisement

"How can you not be motivated when you see this kind of suffering?" said Kennard, who lives in the Dallas area.

People have no idea how serious the problem is, he said.

"These people don't complain," he said. "Who are they going to complain to? Who is going to listen?"

Julie said that, at first, she didn't want to live with Kennard and his wife. But after assurances from her mother, Julie agreed. Her mother handed her over at the border between El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico.

"It was really hard for me to let her go," said Julie, now 14. "I felt like my heart dropped down. I felt weak. I couldn't even turn around and look back at her."
Fighting for family

Irineo said there are several women in her situation, living alone with children and unable to work, many facing a decision no mother should have to face. Providing food has not been a problem yet, as many of the women are able to get nourishment for their families from charities. Those with U.S.-born children are able to get food stamps.

"Hunger is not a problem, but money for rent is a problem since there are a lot of people without work," she said, adding that they try to help one another.

"All that's left now is to see what can be done to help the women who are left alone," Irineo said. "Sometimes, there are people who can't pay the rent, so we try and find a way to help."

González, of Voices Without Borders, said there are many people in these situations throughout the state.

"The community is living in fear," she said. "They worry about being out in the streets."

These are always difficult times for families, González said. "The sad reality exists that families may have to be split up and this doesn't benefit anyone."

Although she still is stressed about her future, Irineo said, she is resigned to accept whatever the immigration judge orders.

"I've been in bad moods, desperate because I don't know what to do," she said. "It's as if they are forcefully removing you from somewhere. I've not done anything wrong. Well, yes, I've come illegally to this country, but that's it.

"I don't consider myself a criminal. There are a lot of people who come here for the same thing -- to work and build a new life, which can't be built in their own country," she said.

"My worry, right now, is for my two daughters," she said, adding that if they return to her hamlet in Mexico, they will have few options available to them. "They would no longer study."

She also worries about her daughters' unwillingness to go to Mexico.

"When I told [Diana] we may have to leave, she said to me, 'No. I was born here. Why do I have to leave?' " Irineo said as she wiped tears from her face.

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs ... s=d&page=8