Thread: IA-Judge reopens case of deported Ankeny restaurateur Ochoa

Judge reopens immigration case of deported Ankeny restaurateur Ochoa
By LEE ROOD • lrood@dmreg.com • June 6, 2009

A New York immigration judge has reopened the case of an Ankeny restaurant owner who was deported to Ecuador by a new Des Moines fugitive unit.

The judge's move provides some hope to family that Riggoberto Ochoa, an owner of Yanni's Grill & Vineyard, could someday return to his wife, three children and business in the Des Moines area.

Ochoa, 38, who was deported last month, is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing in New York City on Aug. 21, according to Susan Eastwood, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Executive Office for Immigration Review. "There must have been some compelling reason for the judge to re-open," she said. "We generally don't have jurisdiction once someone has been removed."


Michael Said, Ochoa's immigration attorney, said he will try to have the case moved to an immigration court in Omaha and fight to have Ochoa returned for a trial.

But Ochoa's fight to return to Iowa is still uncertain, one of the heads of a national immigration lawyers organization said Thursday.

"Once someone has been physically removed from the country, it becomes a complicated question as to what happens when a case is reopened," said David Leopold, national vice president of the Washington, D.C., American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Tim Counts, a spokesman for ICE, said he was unaware of any case being re-opened after someone was already deported from Iowa.

Ochoa — arrested in April and deported in May — is among the people who have been picked up since U.S. Immigration and Customs opened a fugitive unit in Des Moines late last year. Efforts by fugitive units are part of a years-long attempt to round up thousands of illegal immigrants but are different from the workplace raids in places like Marshalltown and Postville.

Leopold said that while the Obama administration has shown some signs of beginning "a more humane" era of dealing with people like Ochoa, who entered the nation illegally but have been otherwise law-abiding, such immigrants continue to be deported in record numbers.

"On paper, the priority is supposed to be the bad guy," he said of ICE's fugitives operations teams. "But in reality, ... hardened criminals know how to avoid the law.

"What is happening in Des Moines is going on all over the country."

However, Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national reform group, said although numbers may not be dropping yet, the Obama administration has made it clear by recent policy decisions that it intends to focus primarily on criminals and arrest fewer illegal immigrants overall.

That's unfortunate, he said.

"If someone has an outstanding deportation order, it needs to be executed," he said. "We need to make it clear we intend to enforce these laws."

Ochoa was arrested crossing the U.S. border into California at age 16. After being released from jail, he went to New York, where his siblings lived. He went to one immigration hearing there but never made it to a second one in 1988 aimed at helping determine his fate.

Later, Ochoa applied three times to become a citizen and was denied each time. Lawyers and family members believe it's because a judge ordered him to be deported after he failed to leave the nation voluntarily.

Brother Oswaldo Ochoa — who is keeping Yanni's eateries in Ankeny and West Des Moines open — said scores of Iowans have tried to help the family since an article about his case first appeared last month in The Des Moines Register.

"It's amazing how many people have tried to help us, but they can't do anything," Oswaldo Ochoa said.

There were a number of circumstances that made Ochoa's case unique.

Family members said one of them was that he didn't receive notice of his second immigration hearing in 1988 because his family's apartment in New York City burned in a fire.

Des Moines immigration lawyer Jim Benzoni said the fact that Ochoa never received notice of that hearing may be grounds to challenge the deportation based on violation of due process.

The difficulty, he said, would be getting the restaurant owner back to the United States because he currently has no right of entry into the country.

Ochoa is living with an uncle in Ecuador whom he'd never met before his deportation. Oswaldo Ochoa said his brother is having difficulty finding work in Ecuador because the government there has no record of his working in that country as an adult.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/articl ... 60323/1011

Family members said one of them was that he didn't receive notice of his second immigration hearing in 1988 because his family's apartment in New York City burned in a fire.

Des Moines immigration lawyer Jim Benzoni said the fact that Ochoa never received notice of that hearing may be grounds to challenge the deportation based on violation of due process.

BULL! It would have been his responsibility to let immigration know of his new address. His immigration lawyer would have known that.

I don't want this guy back in our country. He obviously can't follow instructions or the law. Good riddance.

I'm sure the only reason his case has been reopened is because he threw some money at the right attorney who went to the right judge.

Dixie