Thread: Many illegal immigrants deported in 'a cloud of uncertainty'

Many illegal immigrants deported in 'a cloud of uncertainty'
Sunday, November 08, 2009
By Jerome L. Sherman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

HIDALGO, Texas -- Pablo "Paul" Peralta-Cruz stepped up to the U.S.-Mexico border just as the sun was falling to the horizon last month, casting a dull light over one of the busiest international crossing points in southern Texas.

Before traversing the invisible line, marked by a plaque on a bridge over the murky waters of the Rio Grande, Mr. Cruz looked back.

He was one of 107 Mexican men who had started out that morning in shackles at the York County Prison and had been placed by immigration officials on a chartered plane at Harrisburg International Airport for a flight to the border. The journey was part of a now daily exodus that has made the south-central region of Pennsylvania a critical hub in the federal government's efforts to deport undocumented immigrants.

Now 37, Mr. Cruz had not been in his native country since crossing illegally more than two decades before. He was leaving behind his parents, siblings, a young daughter he hardly knew and a seven-year prison stint in Virginia that followed a 2002 night of binge drinking and a hit-and-run crash. He had no clothes except his brown prison jumpsuit and a pair of blue slippers.
PG VIDEO

In a series of four videos, take a journey with illegal immigrants as they're returned to their native land.

A few steps ahead were Danyel Montes, a 30-year-old house painter who spent five months in New York City's Rikers Island prison after a fight with his girlfriend, and David Solis, 23, who was arrested at the Applebee's restaurant in Ross last month and charged with presenting false identification to police.

All three men had passed through the nation's vast detention and removal system for immigrants, with more than 32,000 beds at sites across the country, including York's prison, the Allegheny County Jail and 11 other county lockups in Pennsylvania.

On Oct. 6, the Obama administration announced tentative plans to overhaul the detention system, which last year held nearly 380,000 people and continues to grow. Also last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the largest agency within the federal Department of Homeland Security, removed 369,211 immigrants from the country, a 27 percent increase from 2007.

The agency is on pace to reach a new high this year. By Aug. 31, it had already deported 256,957 people.

Behind those numbers are complex stories of immigrants who came to the United States in search of economic opportunities and headed home in a cloud of uncertainty, often while family members remained here. Many will try to return, both legally and illegally.

Mr. Montes' infant daughter is in New York with her mother, and he said he had no idea how he would earn enough money in Mexico to help support them. Mr. Solis' father is still in Pittsburgh, but he is eager to go back to Mexico City, where he grew up.

And Mr. Cruz, who became a devout Christian during his time in prison, plans to continue his religious studies and spread the word of God as a Mennonite missionary in his homeland.
Searching for a new life

When Mr. Cruz crossed the border as a teenager in the 1980s, it was "kind of easy," he said last month while awaiting deportation. The United States had far fewer border patrol agents than it has today.

His parents were already living in Los Angles, and Mr. Cruz wanted to join them. Most of his four brothers and three sisters would make similar journeys.

After a decade living on the west coast, the family decided to move to Harrisonburg, Va., to get away from the growing dangers of gangs and crime in Los Angeles. In Virginia, Mr. Cruz found work in a poultry factory, where he put turkeys on hooks before they were slaughtered.

By then, Mr. Cruz's older brother had developed a drinking problem. Mr. Cruz, a regular churchgoer, initially resisted such temptations. But he soon started drinking with his brother.

"It was just little by little," he said. "Then I was an alcoholic."

The pair also smoked marijuana, despite admonitions from their parents. Mr. Cruz attended rehabilitation programs, but he didn't have any success until he left his family to live on his own in Phoenix.

There he met Rosario Mendoza, a devoted Christian who helped him recover from his addictions. She also persuaded him to reconcile with his parents and return to Virginia. Mr. Cruz brought Ms. Mendoza with him, and the couple had a daughter named Paula.

Mr. Cruz also reconnected with his old group of friends, and he again started drinking and using drugs.

In November 2002, an intoxicated Mr. Cruz tried to drive home after watching a boxing match. He struck a woman's car and kept driving before crashing again. He woke up in the hospital with a broken shoulder and neck and chest injuries. He later learned that the woman in the car had been pregnant and suffered a miscarriage.

During his first night in prison, Mr. Cruz tried to hang himself with a sweater. Guards put him under suicide watch.

At the prison health clinic, a nurse gave him a Bible and told him, "I'll be praying for you."

Her words provided comfort. Mr. Cruz resolved to change. He pleaded guilty to criminal charges and accepted a 10-year prison sentence and the loss of his visa to stay in the United States, which his parents had helped him get a decade before.

At Green Rock Correctional Center in Chatham, Va., Mr. Cruz immersed himself in Christianity, attending Bible study and theology classes sponsored by Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. He served as a translator at weekend services for other Latinos in the prison.

"I was free in the street, but when I went to prison I found a real freedom -- the freedom in my life, the freedom in my spirit," said Mr. Cruz, who speaks English with a soft voice and just a hint of an accent.

His devotion impressed Green Rock's pastor, Lee Harris.

"Paul is an extraordinary young man," Pastor Harris said last week. "I have great faith that God is going to use him in great ways. He will remain strong and true to the word."

A teacher from Liberty University offered to find scholarship money for Mr. Cruz if he attends Bible school in Mexico. He and Ms. Mendoza haven't spoken since he was incarcerated, but Mr. Cruz hopes to get in touch with her soon and reconnect with his daughter.

During Mr. Cruz's time in prison, the undocumented Mexican population in the United States continued to grow at a brisk pace, jumping from 4.8 million in 2000 to 7 million in March of last year, according to a recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center.

The trek north also became more difficult.

In 2004, Mr. Montes made four attempts to cross the desert near Agua Prieta, a Mexican town on the border with Arizona. Each time he was picked up by border patrol agents. He eventually scaled a wall in Nogales, Ariz.

"If it had taken 20 times, I was going to come here," he said.

Mr. Montes, of Cuernavaca, a city south of Mexico City, desperately wanted to get a good job in the United States to cover the medical bills for his son, who has autism. Two days of work in New York City would earn him a month's salary in Mexico, he said.

A neighbor in Brooklyn called 911 after overhearing a loud argument between him and his girlfriend this year, he said. At the time, he had just started his own house painting business.

"I feel broken," he said during his flight home on Oct. 29, wearing cuffs on his arms and legs. "I don't even have one dollar."
The journey home

When Mr. Solis came to Pittsburgh last year, he found an affordable apartment in Garfield and work in several local restaurants. On the night of Oct. 1, while cleaning the Applebee's in Ross, he accidentally triggered an alarm, he said. Police came. They arrested Mr. Solis and turned him over to ICE officials.

He then started the winding path to deportation. Mr. Solis spent several days at the Allegheny County Jail and the Cambria County Prison, both facilities that have contracts with ICE to hold immigrant detainees.

"I'm happy because I'm going home to see my family, but I feel sad because they arrested me for doing nothing," he said in Spanish. "What bothers me the most is that I lost my job because of a mistake."

The federal government pays Allegheny County a daily rate of $64.60 per immigrant, according to Assistant Deputy Warden William Emerick. The number of ICE detainees in the jail can vary from a dozen to 30 or 40.

Mr. Cruz, Mr. Montes and Mr. Solis eventually were all taken to the York County Prison, the largest detention facility for immigrants in ICE's Philadelphia "area of responsibility," which covers West Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

The prison, in Springettsbury Township, held 2,175 inmates on Oct. 28, and about 700 were immigrants, Warden Mary E. Sabol said. It also houses two immigration courtrooms, and a third is being built at a cost of $1.2 million.

Some immigrants remain there for several years, but most pass through quickly. ICE officials emphasize that the detention system is focused on removing immigrants, not holding them, and the average length of custody has fallen from 90 to 30 days over the last five years, officials said.

That isn't enough for some advocates.

"I think the detention facilities they're submitting them to are not appropriate," said Jacqueline Martinez, a Pittsburgh immigration attorney who argues that too many immigrants are held in the same prisons that house violent criminals.

The Obama administration is in the early stages of creating new policies and procedures for detaining immigrants who haven't committed any crimes, or are accused of nonviolent crimes. But those plans may have little impact on York's prison, where 95 percent of immigrant detainees have a criminal record, Ms. Sabol said.

On Oct. 29, that figure included Mr. Cruz, who spent a sleepless night on a metal bunk bed in the prison's M block, awaiting his flight back to the border. Hours before sunrise, prison officials awoke all the deportees so they could change into their street clothes and sign paperwork, including final orders of removal and warnings against returning to the United States.

Mr. Cruz was told his bag of clothing had gone missing and he could postpone his trip home for several weeks while officials searched for it. He declined the offer.

About noon, the immigrants filled a bus and headed for the Harrisburg airport. A second bus came from Batavia, N.Y., a four-hour drive, carrying another load of deportees.

On the tarmac at the airport, security guards from a private contractor searched the immigrants before they boarded "Molly," a white MD-83 aircraft based in San Antonio and also owned by a private company.

The federal government pays about $700 to send an immigrant home on a chartered plane, a significant savings from the cost of sending deportees on commercial flights. ICE's Flight Operations Unit transports 4,200 immigrants from more than a dozen U.S. airports every week.

Flights leave Harrisburg at least once each weekday.

"For the most part these go rather smoothly," said Roland Pastrano, a supervisor of flight operations who is also based in San Antonio, a main transportation hub for ICE. "We take safety very seriously."

As Mr. Cruz's plane prepared to take off last month, a steward advised them in Spanish to "enjoy the flight." A chorus of laughter erupted.

Once in the air, some passenger craned their necks to see the massive towers of Three Mile Island. Many had never been on an aircraft before.

Three hours later, the plane landed at a small airport in Harlingen, Texas. As the deportees stepped outside, a blast of humid air and strong winds swept over the runway and the flat surrounding terrain. The group boarded buses with metal bars, and a caravan of vehicles set off toward the Hidalgo "Point of Entry," an hour away on the border.

Customs officials waved the buses through a row of toll booths. In groups of 10, the immigrants stepped down, and security guards removed their shackles and handed over property bags. ICE agents accompanied each group to a pedestrian walkway over the Hidalgo bridge. At the midway point, the agents turned back. The deportees were on their own, mixing with the busy foot traffic on the bridge.

A blue sign announced, "Bienvenidos a Mexico."

Welcome to Mexico.

"I'm free after so much time!" shouted one young man with thick black hair.

Another man shouted "Adios!" He waved at no one in particular.

Mr. Cruz walked ahead of a middle-aged woman who was pushing a television in a shopping cart. He hoped to find his way to Monterrey, a major city just a few hours drive from the border, to see his 95-year-old grandmother. She didn't know he was coming home.

A few hours earlier, he had said he planned to get on his knees once he reached Mexican soil.

"I'm going to thank God for giving me this opportunity in my country," he said.


http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09312/1011375-454.stm

Why aren't the family members being deported, too?

Deport the family unit!

How is he going to support his family in Mexico?

Probably on food stamps and welfare, Our government will take care of them all!
health care, feed them and house them..

Alright,York County Prison!
Get them illegals the hell out of York County and out of Pa! DEPORT!
The last couple of sentences. If they were so damn happy to be in their own country and wanted to kiss the ground. Why the hell did they venture here in the first place? OH,I forgot.......JOBS! social benefits!

Pablo "Paul" Peralta-Cruz stepped up to the U.S.-Mexico border just as the sun was falling to the horizon last month, casting a dull light over one of the busiest international crossing points in southern Texas.

Before traversing the invisible line, marked by a plaque on a bridge over the murky waters of the Rio Grande, Mr. Cruz looked back.

How touching! Who gives a damn that this convicted felon and illegal invader looked back at the Rio Grande. Just don't come back!

And BTW... how about deporting his entire illegal invader family while we're at it! His entire family is squatting illegally in this country apparently!

The real tragedy is the innocent victim of the drunken hit and run who this low life doesn't even mention any sorrow for. Some Christian. Only self absorbed.

He's also been taking jobs that should have gone to Americans. Not to mention his family members.

Dixie

Originally Posted by vmonkey56

Why aren't the family members being deported, too?

Deport the family unit!

YES!! Deport the family unit!

The Obama administration is in the early stages of creating new policies and procedures for detaining immigrants who haven't committed any crimes, or are accused of nonviolent crimes. But those plans may have little impact on York's prison, where 95 percent of immigrant detainees have a criminal record, Ms. Sabol said.

95%! Geeze that says alot.