Thread: Illegal immigrant fights to get her children back, Rhode Isl

http://www.projo.com/news/content/projo ... bfbb1.html

Illegal immigrant fights to get her children back

A 20-year-old woman who made a long, hard journey from Mexico faces the possibility of being sent back alone.

01:43 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 1, 2005

BY MICHAEL CORKERY
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- When Rosalia Lopez-Navor sneaked across the Mexican border in August 2003, she carried her 2-year-old son and the dream of starting a new life in the United States.

Lopez-Navor ended up in Rhode Island, and within months of getting here, her dream unraveled.

Lopez-Navor, 20, was convicted of neglecting her son by failing to protect him from her boyfriend, Raul DeRosas-Quintero, who the Providence police said hit and bit the boy and bound his ankles with rope.

Lopez-Navor lost custody of the boy and now the state Department of Children, Youth and Families is seeking to terminate her parental rights to her 11-month-old daughter.

Lopez-Navor also faces deportation and the prospect of returning to Mexico without her children.

Rosalia Lopez-Navor, in Family Court with her mother, Epigmenia, has been convicted of child neglect. Her lawyers say she was the victim of an abusive former boyfriend.

The latest trial over Lopez-Navor's right to her daughter ended May 13. Lawyers are expected to make their final arguments in writing. Family Court Judge Gilbert T. Rocha is presiding over the case.

The case is a window into the secluded world of an illegal immigrant -- one of thousands living in Rhode Island today.

It also raises questions, the woman's lawyers say, about how a Rhode Island state agency removes children from a citizen of another country. Lopez-Navor's son was born in Mexico. Her daughter was born at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence.

"Given her age and lack of experience and that she didn't understand what was happening to her, she should have been given a second chance," said Virgen Palermo, a Boston lawyer who was referred to Lopez-Navor by the Mexican Consulate.

Lopez-Navor testified last month in Family Court that she has changed from a shy woman who spoke no English and was afraid of confronting her controlling boyfriend to a mother who has done everything the government has asked in trying to get her children back.

The DCYF has declined to comment on the case, pending a ruling by the judge. In court papers, the department has argued that Lopez-Navor should no longer have custody of her children because of her failure to protect her son from serious abuse.

In court proceedings, the DCYF's lawyer has suggested she's not as vulnerable as her lawyers have portrayed her to be.

LOPEZ-NAVOR took the stand May 12 and testfied that she met Raul DeRosas-Quintero in Mexico when she was 15 and he was about 22.

DeRosas-Quintero left Mexico in January 2001 for the United States, while Lopez-Navor remained in Mexico, pregnant with his child. The couple had known each other for about six months when he left.

In August 2003, Lopez-Navor prepared to follow her boyfriend, who had ended up in Rhode Island. She testified that she didn't tell her mother because she knew she would not approve.

"But you came anyway?" her other lawyer, Milan Azar, of Johnston, asked Lopez on the stand.

"Si," Lopez-Navor testified.

With her son, she took a plane from her home in Ixtapaluca, near Mexico City, to the Arizona border.

DeRosas-Quintero had paid "coyotes" -- people who lead illegal immigrants over the border -- to take Lopez and the boy across. They walked through the hills for 24 hours before reaching Arizona, according to court documents.

The coyotes took Lopez-Navor and the boy to a house in Arizona, where she waited for several days. She then climbed into a van with about a dozen other people and rode from Arizona to Rhode Island, stopping only for food. They slept in the van. It took three to four days, she said.

Lopez-Navor testified that the van dropped them off in Providence on Aug. 28, 2003. DeRosas-Quintero met them there.

"I had many illusions of having a family of my own and being with the father of my children," Lopez-Navor testified.

THOSE ILLUSIONS, according to court papers and testimony, were quickly shattered.

The couple lived in an apartment at 119 Sumter St. in the Elmwood section of Providence. They shared the apartment with another couple for about a month.

Lopez-Navor said she left the apartment only to shop at a nearby pharmacy or to buy groceries at the supermarket, where DeRosas-Quintero worked.

"He gave me a specific time to go out and do the shopping," she testified. "If I was going to be late, he told me he would hit the child."

Two months after her arrival in Rhode Island, Lopez-Navor became ill and was admitted to Women & Infants Hospital. She was 10 weeks pregnant.

Her son came to visit her at the hospital. The nursing staff noticed bruises on the boy's face.

The boy was taken to Hasboro Children's Hospital for observation. DeRosas-Quintero told the staff that he had tripped and fallen on the boy, the police said.

According to the police report, "the child had bruises on his buttocks, legs, gums, and face, along with lacerations on his right ear and inner lip. He also had bite marks on his buttocks . . . and rope marks around his ankles."

The police said they went to 119 Sumter St., seized a rope and took photographs of bloodstains in the apartment.

According to a Family Court document, the boy used to get up and start playing early in the morning. DeRosas-Quintero wanted to sleep, so he put the boy in a box with a band around his feet.

During an initial interview with the Providence police, Lopez-Navor said she saw her boyfriend strike the boy once in the buttocks. In her second interview with the police, she told them that, for a period in September and October 2003, he hit the boy almost every day.

The DCYF also said that Lopez-Navor told one of its investigators that the boy's injuries were sustained from a fall and that he bruised easily. The DCYF found her statements to be inconsistent and not credible.

DeRosas-Quintero was charged with second-degree child abuse. An illegal immigrant, he was deported to Mexico on Feb. 12, 2004, before he could be prosecuted by the state.

Michael Healey, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, said immigration officials were aware of the abuse charge against him.

"Evidently their concerns about his immigration status were pretty significant, so they deported him," Healey said.

Lopez-Navor was charged with neglect of a child and detained by immigration officials for about a month.

The DCYF took temporary custody of her son and put him in foster care. According to court documents, the foster mother said that when the boy arrived he could not sleep and cried often.

"I FEEL like her punishment doesn't fit the crime," said Melanie Bueso, a former intern at the Mexican Consulate in Boston who has assisted in Lopez-Navor's case as a paralegal.

Bueso said there are reasons why Lopez-Navor was unable to stop DeRosas-Quintero from abusing the boy.

"She was constrained by Raul, who would punish the child if she didn't do what he told her to do. She was constrained because she was an illegal immigrant," Bueso said.

Lopez-Navor testified that she tried to leave DeRosas-Quintero and take her son away, but she got lost after leaving the apartment.

She also testified that DeRosas-Quintero had told her, "If I talked to the police, they would remove my child and deport me."

Through questioning, the DCYF's lawyer, Martha Diamond, pointed out that Lopez-Navor lived in a largely Spanish-speaking area around Broad Street, suggesting that she could have easily communicated to someone that her son was in danger.

Her parental rights to her son were terminated on Oct. 22, 2004. Lopez-Navor is appealing that ruling, Azar said.

A jury found her guilty of child neglect on March 16. Her sentencing is scheduled for later this month.

Her immigration status is a separate matter. Federal immigration officials are allowing Lopez-Navor to work through the Family Court process, trying to recoup her children, before they decide whether to deport her to Mexico.

While Lopez-Navor plans to petition to remain in the United States, she faces the probability of being sent back.

Her lawyer, Palermo, says she has proposed that Lopez-Navor be allowed to return to Mexico with her children, under supervision by the Mexican equivalent of the DCYF.

Palermo said the DCYF has not agreed to that proposal. Azar, Lopez-Navor's other lawyer, said he wondered whether, "if they had been from Ireland, England or Canada, if they might have sent them back."

Last week, Palermo sprang out of her courtroom seat with frequent objections. She snapped at the translator for not translating every word spoken in the courtroom, and admonished the DCYF lawyer for referring to the United States as simply "America." "South America is America, too," she said.

Diane Martel, an assistant professor of social work at Rhode Island College, said there are state and federal guidelines that determine whether the DCYF seeks to terminate parental rights.

A primary question is whether a parent can provide "adequate care" to the child, Martel said.

"Who can know? We are not reading the file," Martel said. "Child welfare can't say a word because they are protecting the confidentiality of the children. I know that must be frustrating."

Lopez-Navor's mother, Epigmenia, traveled to Rhode Island to help her daughter and, if necessary, take the children back to Mexico. She obtained a visa and rode a bus for five days to get here, said Palermo.

Mother and daughter have been living for a year in a women's shelter in Providence, while Lopez-Navor's cases move through the court system.

Lopez-Navor says that if she goes back to Mexico with her children, she can live in another part of the country, away from DeRosas-Quintero. She said she's had no contact with him since he was deported.

She testified that he did call her mother's house in Mexico. "My mother told him she didn't want to talk to him anymore," she said.

The child abuse case against DeRosas-Quintero remains open. Healey, the spokesman for the Rhode Island attorney general's office, said that if he's ever arrested in the United States again, DeRosas-Quintero would be prosecuted.

The case is a window into the secluded world of an illegal immigrant -- one of thousands living in Rhode Island today

This so-called "secluded world" is the same if they're here ILLEGALLY or back home LEGALLY. It has not one wit to do with being illegal!!!
It's how they live no matter where they live

It also raises questions, the woman's lawyers say, about how a Rhode Island state agency removes children from a citizen of another country. Lopez-Navor's son was born in Mexico. Her daughter was born at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence.

This is enough to make me violent. WHICH IS IT............Constitutional rights or NOT? It's CONTSTITUTIONAL to receive housing, education, medical, legal and every other damned freebie the US gives out but NOT WHEN the LAW BREAKER ABUSES THE CHILDREN???

Take the kids away and DEPORT HER.............what about the mother??
I'll make a wager that she's ILLEGAL also. Where was the mother while her grandchild was tied up and abused?? Hmm?

quote:
Lopez-Navor also faces deportation and the prospect of returning to Mexico without her children.
Unfair! I think we can pay for the kids to go back as well. Let some nice Mexican agency take care of the kids.