http://www.chinapost.com.tw/i_latestdetail.asp?id=30917

Man deported after receiving bad legal advice killed in Mexico


2005/9/21
CORNELIUS, Oregon (AP)

A man who had gotten national attention for his efforts to return to Oregon after he was deported to Mexico was killed in a shooting, his wife said.

The death of Rogelio Gallegos derailed plans by U.S. Rep. David Wu, an Oregon Democrat, to introduce a private bill in Congress to return him to Oregon.

Gallegos and three passengers were shot by several suspects as he drove his truck home from a celebration Sept. 11 near his hometown of Chupio in a rural region in the Mexican state of Michoacan, where he was raised.

Three men, including Gallegos, died at the scene, said Jose Valdez, a representative with the homicide division of the Michoacan justice department.

His wife, Cheryl Gallegos of Cornelius, had fought to bring her husband back to Oregon for the past two years after bad legal advice led to his deportation.

Cheryl Gallegos, 43, urged lawmakers allow her husband to return because a Seattle immigration attorney had mistakenly advised him to re-enter the United States illegally. The attorney has since fled the country and been disbarred.

Illegal immigrants who live in the United States more than a year, leave and then re-enter face deportation and a permanent ban on re-entry under a little-used federal law. Those banned can apply for a waiver after 10 years, but there is no guarantee it will be granted.

Rogelio Gallegos first entered the country in 1991, later left and returned in 2001.

"I want people to know he wasn't just an illegal alien that got kicked out," Cheryl Gallegos said. "He was such a good person who wanted to do things right."

Her attorney, Philip Smith of Portland, had launched a new case on behalf of her husband, trying to get a non-immigrant visa to bring him home and continue to fight for a waiver.

"It's tragic," said Smith, president of the Oregon chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

"I don't think we can blame immigration law directly, but at the same time, if the law would have been a little more humane, he would have been with his family in Oregon, not in Mexico," Smith said.

A spokeswoman for Wu said the congressman also was saddened by the news of the death.

"They were victims of bad legal advice. They were trying to do things right and suffered by being a divided family," said spokeswoman Jillian Schoene in Washington, D.C.

Cheryl Gallegos said she will keep fighting to change immigration law. She said her husband wanted to help other families affected by the law.