Thread: Mother on slope to deportation

Mother on slope to deportation
By DANIEL GILBERT
Special to the News & Messenger
Sunday, November 25, 2007



Olga Marilu Lopez-Mejia sits for an interview in a no-contact visitation room at the Adult Detention Center in Manassas on Oct. 11. Ana Pimsler/News & Messenger
Marilu Lopez admits she deserves no "mother of the year" accolades.

But after six months in a cell block, the stony-faced 29-year-old remains incredulous that "an accident" has upended her life.

Lopez, a native of Guatemala who immigrated illegally 14 years ago, is accused of abusing her 9-year-old daughter; a felony offense that resulted in immigration charges and could mean long-term separation from her five American-born children - even if she is acquitted of the child abuse charge.

With Prince William authorities poised to enforce a rigorous measure cracking down on illegal immigrants, Lopez's case is an example of how a brush with the law has become a slippery slope to deportation for the county's undocumented population.

Prince William supervisors say the resolution they unanimously passed on Oct. 16 is primarily a public safety initiative, designed to rid the county of people who commit crimes while here illegally.

Corey Stewart, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors chairman who championed the policy en route to winning re-election on Nov. 6, said during his campaign: "It is meant send the message that, 'If you're here illegally, you better keep your nose clean.' "

Except for a traffic violation in 2002, Lopez largely did just that - remaining off the radar of the law since she arrived here. She worked at a McDonald's, cleaned houses and bore five kids from two boyfriends.

"Maybe I haven't been the best mother, but I never mistreated my children, I never abused them," said Lopez, speaking in Spanish in a recent interview at the Prince William Adult Detention Center. "They are accusing me of being a criminal, a funny thing to me because I'm not. Someday it will come to light."

The disputed incident occurred a year ago, in the basement apartment in Woodbridge that Lopez rented.

In the version she and her attorney tell, Lopez went to fetch towels while two of her young daughters, Evelyn and Maria, were showering. Evelyn turned off the cold water, and the resulting cascade of hot water burned Maria, who is mentally retarded. Lopez applied a cream for diaper rash to the angry red area on Maria's back, and kept her home from school for two days.

"It wasn't serious," Lopez recalled of the burns.

But staff at Maria's school noticed the burns and contacted Prince William authorities, setting in motion the police inquiry that eventually led to Lopez's arrest and subsequent immigration charges.

A General District Court judge on July 16 dismissed the child abuse charges against Lopez. But instead of releasing her to federal custody, the prosecutor issued a direct indictment, setting up a jury trial.

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Amanda Coman declined to comment on the pending trial. Myron Teluk, Lopez's defender, said the case had been thrown out earlier for lack of evidence of criminal intent, and described the incident in question as "simply an accident."

Even if the jury set to convene on Dec. 5 finds Lopez innocent, an acquittal "doesn't necessarily spare you from being removed from the U.S.," said Ernestine Fobbs, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson.

The prospect of returning to the rural community in Guatemala where Lopez grew up - where she tended livestock with five younger siblings whom she last saw as a teenager - is dizzying to the green jumpsuit-clad woman.

The intersection of federal and local law

When Lopez was first arrested on child abuse charges last May, Prince William jail officials say they had not yet begun checking the immigration status of inmates. The jail began cooperating with ICE in July through the 287(g) program, fielding five officers and two supervisors specially trained to run checks on a federal database.

But Fobbs said that Lopez's immigration charges grew out of the local charges in Prince William.

After she posted bail on May 6, Lopez was booked on federal immigration charges on May 22, and ICE placed a detainer on her.

The collaboration of local and federal law enforcement in Prince William has focused national attention on the county, as it tackles an area of law long considered to be an exclusively federal domain.

In January, county police are slated to begin checking immigration status of suspects who commit misdemeanor offenses when an officer believes there is probable cause that the person is in the country illegally. The department is creating a series of guidelines to inform its approximately 540 officers, who will undergo training before the resolution goes into effect in 2008.

When an officer determines probable cause, he will run a suspect's information through a national crime database to see if any immigration violations surface. If such a violation comes up, a suspect who previously might have been released with a court summons could be detained, Prince William police Chief Charlie T. Deane explained at a community meeting in September.

Whether the new policy will curb crime in the county remains a bone of contention between local officials and immigrant activists - who contend that the resolution has eroded any remaining credibility that police had with the undocumented population.

And though Deane stresses that victims and witnesses of crimes will not be asked about their immigration status, the new policy reflects local authorities' efforts to probe deeper into the shadows in which the undocumented population has existed for years.

Out of the shadows

When Lopez was arrested last May, it was the first time she had seen the inside of a prison. Lopez is one of about 170 Prince William inmates facing immigration charges, a population that has shot up by approximately 460 percent since jail officials began cooperating with ICE.

"Some of the people would normally have been bondable, but now that they have a detainer, they're waiting for a court date, they're going to be here," said outgoing Superintendent Charles "Skip" Land, who will step down at the end of 2007.

"Farm-outs," inmates who are held at neighboring facilities for an average of $50 a day, have increased threefold from a year ago, and lately have been fluctuating between 180 and 200.

The detainer on Lopez keeps her in prison until her local charges are resolved. At that point, an immigration judge will decide whether to deport her, and a family court judge will rule on the fate of her children, who range in age from 1 to 10 years old.

According to Maria Pshak, a close friend of Lopez who is in weekly contact with her children, the youngest child is with a former boyfriend, the three middle children are with a foster family in Prince George's County, Md., and the oldest, Maria, is in a separate foster home in Baltimore.

A spokesperson for the Prince George's Department of Social Services would not confirm whether the children were in the county's system, citing privacy restrictions.

Lopez moved to Maryland with her children last March, following a five-hour interrogation at a police station, but before an arrest warrant was issued. When Lopez returned to Prince William for a court date, she left her children in the care of a "distant relative" in Prince George's. Pshak - whom Lopez describes as "like a grandmother" to her children - was visiting relatives in Spain at the time.

"I thought maybe things would go better [in Maryland]," Lopez recalled. "They already had everything planned out to take the children away from me."

www.manassasjm.com

Having 5 kids when your here illegally should, in itself, be considered child abuse.

and doing it with two boyfriends...out of wedlock...doesn't strike me as being a great mother. What kind of example is she setting? Break the law, don't marry the men you have intercourse with...what else does she do?

"...what else does she do?"

Gets deported and leaves 5 kids behind (including one "mentally challenged") for the taxpayers to raise?

Originally Posted by CitizenJustice

"...what else does she do?"

Gets deported and leaves 5 kids behind (including one "mentally challenged") for the taxpayers to raise?

What are the chances that the taxpayers have been supporting the kids all along? 100%.

How many more women like her are out there? She has 5 kids and we pay for them. Why doesn't she take them with her? If she can raise them in the U.S., she can raise them in her own country.

Interesting Comments on the Topix Forum:

Showing posts 1 - 9 of 9

SGD
5 children....
How does a woman working for mcdonalds and cleaning houses afford to pay for 5 children? Oh that's right, she doesn't...the American Tax payer foots the bill for them all. Deport her and her anchor baby rugrats.

T_LC
Chicago, IL
At which point of the story are we supposed to burst into tears? I think that I must have missed the punch line because my eyes are still dry........I cant help but notice that at the beginning of every one of these bleeding heart stories they always begin with how many kids the woman has by how many men and which minimum wage paying job she hold's but never at the end of the story does it mention daddy being with the kiddo's (this story one of the five is).

Kulturkampf
Weehawken, NJ
Granted that you have to some kind of green card everywhere you go when you are not a citizen because you really don't have anything else, Prince Williams County DID NOT HAVE TO DO THAT. Also, deportation following an encounter with the criminal justice system is for those who end up incarcerated. These fleabags will call only you just because your last name doesn't sound anywhere near the name Jones, or simply because you are not white. Simple as that. It's becoming more obvious every day that rednecks will simply have to be removed from law enforcement (and kept away from Tasers) before this country can finally have respect for other people's civil rights. Like the woman said, they had already planned what they did to her.

SGD
Owings Mills, MD

Kulturkampf wrote:
Granted that you have to some kind of green card everywhere you go when you are not a citizen because you really don't have anything else, Prince Williams County DID NOT HAVE TO DO THAT. Also, deportation following an encounter with the criminal justice system is for those who end up incarcerated. These fleabags will call only you just because your last name doesn't sound anywhere near the name Jones, or simply because you are not white. Simple as that. It's becoming more obvious every day that rednecks will simply have to be removed from law enforcement (and kept away from Tasers) before this country can finally have respect for other people's civil rights. Like the woman said, they had already planned what they did to her.

And? She's illegal isn't she? Regardless of if they planned this or not, she is an illegal alien and should be deported with her 5 kids.
If the "rednecks" are getting the job done, why complain about the method it is done in?

CitizenJane
ISP Location: Puyallup, WA
She is in the country illegaly, has yet to discover birth control, like a fat hen laying golden eggs. Deport her ass. I don't care HOW she got caught up in the system, how she was found out. And what about the child that was scalded?? Was that not worth checking into?
She is just the type of invader that this country does not need and does not want.
Buh-bye!

JTR
Fort Worth
ISP Location: Fort Worth, TX

Kulturkampf wrote:
Granted that you have to some kind of green card everywhere you go when you are not a citizen because you really don't have anything else, Prince Williams County DID NOT HAVE TO DO THAT. Also, deportation following an encounter with the criminal justice system is for those who end up incarcerated. These fleabags will call only you just because your last name doesn't sound anywhere near the name Jones, or simply because you are not white. Simple as that. It's becoming more obvious every day that rednecks will simply have to be removed from law enforcement (and kept away from Tasers) before this country can finally have respect for other people's civil rights. Like the woman said, they had already planned what they did to her.

Why would one be classified as a redneck for simply classifying an illegal immigrant as an illegal immigrant?

Kulturkampf
Weehawken, NJ

JTR wrote:
<quoted text>
Why would one be classified as a redneck for simply classifying an illegal immigrant as an illegal immigrant?

A redneck will stop someone on Sunday morning and assume that he got drunk on Saturday night. Also, if you want to classify immigrants, you go to work for the federal government; not some jerkwater sheriff's department.

butt out mex

Kulturkampf wrote:
<quoted text>A redneck will stop someone on Sunday morning and assume that he got drunk on Saturday night. Also, if you want to classify immigrants, you go to work for the federal government; not some jerkwater sheriff's department.

MADD would also stop you in the morning, so what. Can you define a jerk water sheriff's department?
As American citizens we are ALL responsible for reporting crime, unless you feel that the "no snitch" rule only applies to inner city crime.

RoboTech
RoboVille, USA
ISP Location: Grant, AL
Well, she's out of the shadows now.
Five new auto citizens from 2 boyfriends.
Why do they do this?
I just don't get it.
Back to Guatemala with her and see if she has any more children. I bet she won't as there's no "bennies" for her there.
This Anchor Baby has to stop.
We have a 2 Million cap on legal immigration. But they don't count Anchor Babies. Either stop legal immigration or stop Anchor Babies. We CAN'T take both.

BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO MORALES!!!!!!!!!! PRETTY SAD WHEN YOU CONSIDER THEY ARE SUPPOSEDLY GOD-FEARING CATHOLICS. AND THIS IS WHAT THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY SUPPORTS AND DEFENDS????????

Originally Posted by 1_paint

Having 5 kids when your here illegally should, in itself, be considered child abuse.

How dare she come here illegally and then drop 5 kids!! THAT, in and of itself is a crime! WHY do we stand for this in our country???