Thread: Crackdown on immigrants splits family

Gervais Nouanounou knows he cannot follow his wife back home if she is deported. He doesn't want to raise their children in a land hobbled by political tumult, bandit militias and disease.

Originally Posted by opinion

Gervais Nouanounou knows he cannot follow his wife back home if she is deported. He doesn't want to raise their children in a land hobbled by political tumult, bandit militias and disease.

They should have come here to make a better life, not to make children if they were illegally.

This is what everyone of them do, have children so if they are caught they have the children as an excuse.

Originally Posted by opinion

Originally Posted by opinion

Gervais Nouanounou knows he cannot follow his wife back home if she is deported. He doesn't want to raise their children in a land hobbled by political tumult, bandit militias and disease.

They should have come here to make a better life, not to make children if they were illegally.

This is what everyone of them do, have children so if they are caught they have the children as an excuse.

Many American women have gone to jail being pregnant, and when they give birth the baby goes to a foster home, or families, some of them don't see the baby anymore, they have to pay the price for the crime they committed, what makes these people different? Coming here to have children should be a crime.

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/523084.html

Published: Dec 19, 2006 12:30 AM
Modified: Dec 19, 2006 02:33 AM

Congo woman gets a respite
Deportation halted in nick of time

Toby Coleman, Staff Writer
FUQUAY-VARINA - Noellie Nouanounou's first Christmas project was to get her 17-month-old daughter to recognize her again.

"This is what Christmas is all about," she said Friday as she bounced little Gervelie on her lap, "second chances, starting up, hope, a new life."

Nouanounou, 31, emerged this week from the bleak life of an illegal immigrant being held for deportation and returned to the Fuquay-Varina home her legal immigrant husband and American-born children have kept during her five-month absence.

She considers her release from an Alabama jail a holiday miracle. During her last days in confinement, she said, she told God in a prayer that "if you can make me go home for Christmas I'll serve you forever."

Her lawyer and a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement say there are more mundane, bureaucratic reasons for her release, too. Among other things: Immigration authorities could not get Nouanounou's native Republic of Congo, a small country of 3.7 million snuggled next to the larger Democratic Republic of Congo, to completely cooperate in her deportation.

Nouanounou (pronounced new-AH-new-new) learned about her release last week, after spending hours in an Atlanta holding cell with other people tagged for deportation. She had figured those moments were her last in America. Nobody told her otherwise until she called her husband and left him a tearful message urging him to take care of their kids.

She returned to her two-story Fuquay-Varina home and found the people inside changed by her long absence. Her husband, Gervais, has more gray hairs than before. Her 6-year-old son, Jason, now knows about immigrants and green cards. Gervelie hums a steady stream of gibberish.

"Yeah, this is a special Christmas to remember," she said.

Not in the clear yet

This Christmas also may be her last in the United States.

Immigration authorities still want to deport her. She ruined her chance of winning political asylum in the U.S. years ago by altering medical records she submitted to an immigration judge.

Gervais Nouanounou is still searching for a way to keep his wife in the country permanently. Without her, he spent his days taking care of their kids and his nights working at a pharmaceutical plant in Clayton. He barely slept. There were times he found himself dozing off at stoplights.

"I don't know how I made it," he said. "Just by God, I guess."

He was still exhausted Friday as he sat on his living room couch. But he could smile, because across the room his wife was bouncing their daughter on her lap. Gervelie had not said "ma-ma" yet, but she was getting there.

Now that the family was back together, they began to talk about Christmas. Noellie Nouanounou wanted a tree and decorations.

Gervais Nouanounou shrugged as Christmas carols played softly on the radio. Knowing that his wife must walk a thin line to keep her freedom, he had just one wish.

"We're going to stay home," he said, "and be out of troubles."
Staff writer Toby Coleman can be reached at 829-8937 or toby.coleman@newsobserver.com.

Its a regular Christmas story yuck.