Thread: As deportation orders loom, many illegal immigrants remain

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Buying time

As deportation orders loom, many illegal immigrants remain

01:14 AM PDT on Sunday, October 30, 2005

By SHARON McNARY / The Press-Enterprise


Ruben Martinez Cruz is not the sort of undocumented immigrant the federal government generally bothers with.

Deported to Mexico in 2004, the college-trained accountant sneaked back that year, but he had no criminal record to attract the attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Yet in June, a squad of Fugitive Operations officers filled the house on Shirley Lane in Montclair where he was renting a room with his wife and nephew. The federal agents were looking for a fugitive, Mexican baker Francisco Huerta, who once lived there but had already left the country.

They arrested Martinez. But rather than detain him or swiftly deport him to Mexico, they released him on his promise to attend deportation hearings. He broke that promise in September, was ordered deported and is now a fugitive.

Martinez, 41, is a target of Endgame, a 10-year strategy by the ICE Detention and Removal Office to clear the nation of all 350,000 to 465,000 people who have been ordered deported, but whose whereabouts are unknown.

"I'm not afraid," Martinez said in Spanish during a mid-September interview in an Ontario park, standing beside a tiny white Ford Festiva missing its rear license plate. He has no driver license but has an apartment, a cell phone, and a job at a nearby computer packing plant.

His wife, Antonia, sat in the passenger seat, her blue sweater matching the chipped blue lacquer on her fingernails. He wore a white soccer jersey embroidered with the word "America."

"I felt bad when they arrested me, and when they put me in handcuffs, but I don't feel bad now," Martinez said. "I'll spend the winter here working and maybe in the spring I'll go to Oregon."

He plans to work in construction and save money to open a liquor store in Mexico.

If he gets arrested, it just advances his return to Mexico. He said he faces no real penalty for ignoring the deportation order. By defying it, he can gain months or years to work at jobs that pay far more than he could earn in Mexico.

'I Crossed the Line'

On the June morning of the raid, Martinez told the officers he was illegally in the country, not realizing they were deportation agents.

"I wanted to tell the truth. I thought they were federal police, drug agents," he said later.

His wife, who is also in the country illegally, claimed to have legal status and was left alone, Martinez said.

Within the austere concrete block walls of the ICE booking office in San Bernardino, Martinez put his thumbprint on an electronic scanner and watched glumly as the computer pulled up his photo and the name of his cousin, Rafael Martinez Cruz.

Border Patrol officers caught Ruben and Rafael about six miles west of Temecula on New Year's Day 2004 and mixed up their names, Martinez explained.

"I crossed the line and was caught," he said of the 2004 arrest. He was deported, signing a promise not to return illegally, but he came back a few months later.

'Very, Very Cheap Work'

Martinez justified his illegal presence in the U.S. as an economic necessity. To make a decent income in Mexico, he said, "I would need to get a job in the government, or own a business or be a criminal."

With his three years of college, he can make about $120 per week in Mexico doing accounting work, but his unskilled packing plant job pays about $340 a week, he said. He sends money to Mexico for his three children living with relatives there.

"It's very, very cheap work," he said of his $8.50 hourly wage. "We don't need the residency or citizenship, just permission for one year or two years. We just want the opportunity to work here."

Martinez said he expected to be deported the afternoon of his arrest or the next day. But the officers, obeying a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, released him without bond.

The November 2004 ruling gives an immigrant the right to go before an immigration judge to challenge the immediate reinstatement of a pre-existing deportation order, even if the immigrant had illegally re-entered the country.

The ruling bought Martinez time and freedom. He signed a promise to appear for deportation hearings and went home to his wife in Montclair.

Few Detainee Beds

Martinez became one of about 20,000 people on the nondetained docket in the region that includes Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and several other counties.

It is essentially an honor system. Locking them up is not an option.

There are not enough beds in the immigration system to keep so many people in custody, said Virginia Kice, the ICE spokeswoman. The government is using various technologies to track some non-citizens facing deportation proceedings, experimenting with ankle bracelets and telephone voice-recognition systems, but most detainees are released without bond and without supervision.

In mid-July, a few days after attending an Independence Day fireworks show with his wife and nephew, Martinez attended his first immigration court hearing. Federal immigration Judge John Walsh urged him to get a lawyer and set the next hearing for Sept. 7.

Change in Identity

The odds that he would show up are not good, and the federal government knows it.

In its 2002 report, the Department of Justice's inspector general said that 30 percent of those released during proceedings will flee and that 70 percent of those who get a final deportation order fail to comply.

People with no money or property at stake have little incentive to comply with a deportation order, said Jorge Field, supervisory deportation officer for the region's Fugitive Operations unit.

In August, Martinez left his rented room in the Huerta family's Montclair house for an apartment in Ontario. He said he plans to change his identity so that he can stay longer in the U.S., moving to Oregon to earn money for his family.

'We Will Come Anyway'

On Sept. 7 Judge Walsh called Ruben Martinez Cruz. No answer. He sent a Spanish interpreter out to check the hall.

"Mr. Martinez is not outside," Walsh said. "He shall be ordered removed and deported to Mexico."

In mid-September, Martinez contemplated his future. As an illegal immigrant who speaks little English, his accountant training means little. He looks for the job that pays the most, regardless of the type of work.

"We will do work that very few people will do," he said. "People like us are looking for opportunity. If (the government) doesn't give us permission to live here for two or three years to work and then return, we will come anyway."

Defiance of our Law, our deportation Orders, our System, our Courts, our Justice, our Protection, our Defense.

And if anyone believes this "attitude" rests just with the Mexicans, then you better "think"again.

It's world-wide...invade those stupid Sucker Americans, take over their country and eliminate them as a power or force in the world.

Anyone who doesn't see this isn't looking.

Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.
Will Rogers
US humorist & showman (1879 - 1935)

Will Rogers knew it all the way back then!!

Great Quote COI!!

I'm from Missouri originally and we always loved going to Oklahoma to drive on the Will Rogers Turnpike!

I'm still waiting for an Annie Oakley Freeway.

I enjoy reading his works. The man was brilliant.


You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Will Rogers

From Charlesoakisland:

You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Will Rogers

This will undoubtedly become one of my favorites.

Can you imagine setting up a little two man dinner with Mark Twain and Will Rogers and having a microphone record that verbal intercourse of one-liners?

That would make a good play script for Broadway!! It would draw all the midwesterners and southerners to New York...might be good for their business.

Throw a little surprise visit in by Annie Oakley and it might be a big hit.

Well, some pleasant things to think about if we can EVER get this illegal immigration thing resolved and be free to turn our attention and energy back to nice things again.

Damn These Politicians!

Originally Posted by Judy

Throw a little surprise visit in by Annie Oakley and it might be a big hit.

Originally Posted by Judy

From Charlesoakisland:

You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Will Rogers

This will undoubtedly become one of my favorites.

Can you imagine setting up a little two man dinner with Mark Twain and Will Rogers and having a microphone record that verbal intercourse of one-liners?

That would make a good play script for Broadway!! It would draw all the midwesterners and southerners to New York...might be good for their business.

Throw a little surprise visit in by Annie Oakley and it might be a big hit.

Well, some pleasant things to think about if we can EVER get this illegal immigration thing resolved and be free to turn our attention and energy back to nice things again.

Damn These Politicians!

if I have to go to New York to see it, I'll just wait for it to come out on DVD.

An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.
Will Rogers

COI-- Now why does that not surprise me? The Broadway shows tour and come to Raleigh so you could wait until it goes on the road.

Brian--I love the poster of Annie Get Your Gun!! I would love to see that play. When I had the New York marketing territory in one of my jobs, I'd make a point to see a couple of plays each trip and enjoyed them so much. Haven't had a chance recently and never got to see that one. But it was a big hit. Did you ever see it?

Actually that is the movie version on DVD. Best I could come up with on a short notice.