Thread: Family's fears of deportation quelled

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Family's fears of deportation quelled

May 27,2006
Travis M. Whitehead
Monitor Staff Writer

HARLINGEN — A Starr County family fearing deportation breathed a sigh of relief Friday morning after it learned documents to begin the proceedings had not been filed in U.S. Immigration Court.

Ruben and Maricela Gloria and their six children — four of them U.S. citizens — were featured in the May 21 issue of The Monitor.

The family has lived in the Rio Grande City area for 14 years; no family member has a criminal record and the children do well in school.

However, they have been here without legal documentation, and a routine trip the two oldest children took to the grocery store last month turned into a legal nightmare when Starr County Sheriff’s deputies stopped them on suspicion they were involved in an immigrant smuggling operation. Border Patrol agents became involved and learned of their undocumented immigrant status.

They were scheduled for a hearing Friday morning at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Immigration Court in Harlingen. But when Ruben and Maricela Gloria and their two older children, Ruben Jr. 15, and Blanca, 17, showed up, they learned the court had no documents on their case.

"They are not in proceeding," Judge E. Tovar told Seferino Treviño, an attorney who works with the South Texas Immigration Council, a non-profit organization that helps people with immigration problems. Treviño is representing the Glorias.

Blanca Gloria said her parents didn’t expect this turn of events.

"They were very surprised and very happy that nothing happened," said Blanca Gloria. "My plans are to work and finish school, if I can."

Treviño said the charges may have been withdrawn, but DOJ spokeswoman Susan Eastwood said she had been told the Department of Homeland Security had simply not yet filed charging documents with the Immigration Court.

"When the court receives the charging documents from the Department of Homeland Security, the court will send (the Glorias) a notice when to appear," Eastwood said.

Both the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are part of DHS.

Outside the court in Harlingen, Ruben Jr. seemed unsure what to think about the whole situation. He just knows he likes the only home, the only community, he’s ever known.

"I don’t want to leave school," said the recent graduate of Ringgold Middle School. He works with at-risk sixth-graders in his spare time.

"I want to keep trying," he said.

Treviño said had the case been heard Friday, he would have asked the court for time to prepare. He only recently met the Glorias and wanted to investigate the matter further.

At the second hearing, he would have asked the court for a cancellation of removal, but chances were very slim the judge would have granted the request.

"There has to be an extreme hardship if a U.S. citizen is removed, like if a child or husband is sick," Treviño said.

The only other real option, he said, would have been voluntary departure, which he said a judge usually grants if the individuals in question have no criminal history. This would give the family up to 120 days to leave.

Benigno Peña, executive director of the South Texas Immigration Council, said earlier that the Glorias deserve some consideration for their conduct and length of time in the United States.

"First of all, if they’ve been here more than 10 years, and they have children here," Peña said. "They are consumers; they pay taxes like anybody here. They are part of the economy."

Treviño indicated it could take months, or even years, before they have to appear in court. By that time, new immigration laws may have taken effect to change the family’s situation one way or the other.

For now, Treviño is no longer the Glorias’ official representative, because there is no case against them. Trevino told the Glorias to contact him if they receive a notice of a new court hearing and he would begin investigating the case.

"They were happy as hell" when they found out there were no proceedings Friday, Treviño said.

"They came in with frowns and everything, and then as soon as it happened, got out there and told them it was finished, everybody was happy."

———

Travis Whitehead covers features and entertainment for The Monitor. You can reach him at 683-4452.

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May 21,2006
By Travis M. Whitehead
Monitor Staff Writer

Clinging to Freedom



RIO GRANDE CITY — Maricela Gloria cradled the two-month old child resting quietly in her arms.

She wondered what would happen to the young American, Litzy Jamilet Gloria, after a hearing before an immigration judge scheduled for May 26.

Maricela Gloria and her husband, Ruben Sr., immigrated here 14 years ago without getting legal paperwork. Four of their six children, Litzy; Daiyanara, 3; Keven, 6; and Larry, 11, are American citizens because they were born in the United States. They’ve never known any other life. Ruben Jr., 15, and Blanca, 17, although born in Mexico, were so young when they immigrated with their parents that they have no memory of that country.

Many insist that the borders must be secure to protect American jobs and sovereignty; they believe anyone who violates the United States’ immigration laws puts a strain on American public schools and health care systems and should, therefore, be prosecuted and deported. Amnesty, they claim, will only encourage more people to immigrate illegally because they know that if they stay here long enough they’ll get legal residence.

On the other side of the argument, some have said that immigrations laws discriminate against Hispanics. They believe immigrants like the Glorias, who have been in the United States for years, have broken no laws, and demonstrated a willingness to be productive members of society, should be allowed to stay. President Bush, in his address to the nation May 15, said it is unrealistic to deport people who have been here for years. Instead, he said they should be allowed to pay a penalty and remain here.

The Glorias, who were featured in The Monitor’s 12 Days of Christmas series in 2003, would like to stay, as would their children. However, a simple trip to the grocery store April 25 has plunged the family into a legal quagmire for the family.

Blanca Gloria, a junior at Rio Grande City High School, says they were driving home from a nearby store when they passed a Starr County sheriff’s deputy. Blanca Gloria says the deputy, who had caught several undocumented immigrants, stopped the two teenagers and accused them of being part of the smuggling operation. The youths didn’t have any identification; they were taken to their home just a few yards down the road, and the Border Patrol was called. Agents questioned them for several hours and learned the family was not part of the smuggling operation but were in the country illegally.

Sheriff Rey Guerra said his deputies had been called to the area earlier in the day in reference to an undocumented immigrant who was unconscious on the side of the road. Deputies took the man to the hospital, where he told him there were more immigrants where he had been picked up. The deputies, Guerra said, returned to the area where they found more illegal aliens and U.S. Border Patrol agents who took custody them into custody.

“About that time, deputies saw a car and a young kid driving it,” Guerra said, stating that 15-year-old Ruben Jr. was the driver. “They stopped it and saw there was a passenger inside,” Guerra continued. “Bear in mind, this was the area where this man was picked up and these people were picked up.

“They asked the kid for his driver’s license and he didn’t have one. They asked them for an ID and ultimately they said they were from Mexico.”

Roy Cervantes, supervisory Border Patrol Agent, said the Border Patrol learned that Ruben Sr. crossed the border in 1991 with a card that allowed him to visit or do business on a temporary basis. One of the conditions of getting such a card is that the holder must return to Mexico when the card expires.

“When the agents arrested him they were dealing with an illegal overstay,” Cervantes said.

Agents wanted to detain Ruben Sr. but learned there was no room at the detention facility in Port Isabel, so he was released.

Guerra said law enforcement officials must have probable cause in order to stop someone; people cannot be randomly stopped and asked for their immigration papers. In this case, he said, the probable cause was the age of the driver and the fact that several undocumented aliens had been picked up in the same place earlier in the day.

After the sheriff’s department called the Border Patrol, agents picked up the children’s father, Ruben Sr. and his son, Ruben Jr., and took them to the Rio Grande City Border Patrol Station in Alto Bonito where they were questioned for several hours. Blanca Gloria said her father and brother didn’t come home until 2 a.m. the next day. Blanca and her mother were picked up the following day at 5 p.m. and returned about six hours later.

“I’m not scared, I’m confused,” said Blanca Gloria, a junior at Rio Grande City High School.

“My life is here,” she said. “My friends, my school. I want to get a degree or something, go to college. I want to be a doctor or a teacher.”

There is no law that decides specifically where children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants will live if their parents return to their native country. Nina Pruñeda, spokeswoman with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency in San Antonio, said children can stay with a relative in the United States or return with their parents to their mother country. If the children have been abused, other measures apply, she said.

Child Protective Services will only get involved to ensure the children are either with their parents or with a trusted relative or friend, said Sandra Orta, investigator for CPS. Orta said CPS makes sure that if the parents decide to leave the children in the U.S., those taking responsibility for them have no criminal history or CPS history. The parents can also choose to take the children back with them.

The Glorias met last week with an immigration attorney, Benigno Peña, who thinks they have a good case. Peña said he could not recall the specific case during a phone interview. However, upon being told some of the details, he said the length of time the Glorias have spent in the United States would weigh in their favor.

“First of all, if they’ve been here more than 10 years, and they have children here, it would be a cancellation of removal,” Pena said. “If they have children, they should be able to legalize the parents.”

Peña said if the Glorias have consistently held employment of any kind, that could also persuade the judge to grant them some sort of legal status.

“They are consumers, they pay taxes like anybody here,” he said. “They are part of the economy.”

Maricela Gloria said law enforcement has maintained a regular presence along the stretch of road where her family lives.

“Immigration knows us,” she said through an interpreter. “They work this road. The lawyer asked us to take a letter from the sheriff’s department. The lawyer wants the letter that says why the police stopped us, because Immigration hadn’t stopped us before.”

When The Monitor featured the Glorias 2 1/2 years ago, the young family was living in a shack made of plywood, corrugated tin and plastic, but even then they preferred their life in Starr County to what they left behind in Mexico.

After the story ran, members of the Rio Grande City Rotary Club and Hope Masonic Lodge built the family a nice cinder block house. Since then, Maricela Gloria has worked to make a home here. In the large clearing in front of the house, lantana and other flowers bloom in a large circle; young Mexican wild olive trees grow near the north side of the house. Two large, very well-worn swings, gifts from a good Samaritan, stand on the property of Mrs. Gloria’s brother, adjacent to her family’s.

“I feel very, very worried, more for my kids that will be taken, especially the ones that were born here,” said Maricela Gloria. “The type of education they are going to receive, the ones that come back will have a different language, different education. They are U.S. citizens.

“I’m already used to living here. What are we going to go back to? If we have to go back, we’ll go back with my father, which was like we lived before. We’ll have to start all over.”

“I’m very sad for the kids, living here all the time,” said Ruben Sr. “That’s all they know.”

Suddenly, a big yellow school bus stopped and out jumped a young boy in a red shirt and blue jeans, laughter dancing in his eyes, a big smile on his face as he ran eagerly across the yard toward his mother. It was Keven, one of the Glorias’ U.S.-born children.

The children’s teachers give them high marks. Ruben Jr. is in Xavier Margo’s Valued Youth Program where he helps at-risk students in the younger grades.

“He’s a very quiet young man,” Margo said. “He has maintained an A/B average. In my class, he has an A average. We do mentoring. He worked well with the sixth-graders.”

Margo expressed dismay over the family’s situation.

“They are afraid of being forced to stay over there and not allowed to cross the international bridge,” he said. “I am an American citizen. I believe in our Constitution. I believe in the way our government is run. However, there are a couple of items I think we will disagree with.”

Sam Ramos, a member of the Rotary Club who helped get the Glorias’ home built, said he is normally strongly conservative. However, he was angry about the plight of the Gloria family.

“The U.S. government is incompetent, ineffective and inefficient, but not inexpensive,” he said. “These are hard-working people, these are the people we want here.

“I can think of a lot of people that were born here that are just sucking off the system. That’s a liberal comment.”

———

Travis Whitehead covers features and entertainment for The Monitor. You can reach him at 683-4452. For more on this and other local stories, visit www.themonitor.com. Miriam Ramirez contributed to this story.

They believe immigrants like the Glorias, who have been in the United States for years, have broken no laws, and demonstrated a willingness to be productive members of society, should be allowed to stay. President Bush, in his address to the nation May 15, said it is unrealistic to deport people who have been here for years. Instead, he said they should be allowed to pay a penalty and remain here. ...

Roy Cervantes, supervisory Border Patrol Agent, said the Border Patrol learned that Ruben Sr. crossed the border in 1991 with a card that allowed him to visit or do business on a temporary basis. One of the conditions of getting such a card is that the holder must return to Mexico when the card expires. ...

if they’ve been here more than 10 years, and they have children here, it would be a cancellation of removal,” Pena said. “If they have children, they should be able to legalize the parents.” ....

he was here on a 'temporary' basis and never returned, but he hasn't broken any laws ....

a child cannot naturalize a parent --

I am sorry for their situation, however they are here illegally and knew that when they came here. They must go and their anchor babies go with them. There are consequences to your actions if you break the law.