http://www.bellevueleader.com/site/tab3 ... 9851&rfi=6

06/20/2006
Officials deport Bellevue woman
Midlands News Service

Rina Chica and her young son were sound asleep when federal immigration agents knocked on the door at their Bellevue home.

"You know why we're here," one investigator told the 24-year-old Salvadoran woman who has been in the United States since age 7.

Chica, a certified medical assistant, was aware that immigration officials had denied her most recent work permit renewal. But she said she was hoping to fix the matter and was not prepared for what happened next.

The agents advised her to make arrangements for her U.S.-born son. They fingerprinted and jailed her. She awaits deportation to a Central American country she hasn't set foot in since fleeing, with her mother, from its civil war 18 years ago.

"My life has been American," Chica said during an interview at the Pottawattamie County Jail. "I worked Monday through Friday. I have a son who is a U.S. citizen. I have a house. I don't think I'm a bad person. I can't believe this is happening."

Her case stems from a deportation order issued in 1988 after Chica crossed the border illegally with her mother and brother. She was too young to know it then, but failure to comply made her an immigration fugitive - one of an estimated 590,000 living in the U.S.

Immigration fugitives are a small part of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, most of whom haven't been named in deportation orders.

With the federal government's recent crackdown on absconders, Chica became a target.

"Operation Return to Sender" netted 2,179 foreigners, including 15 in Nebraska and seven in Iowa, during a three-week period ending last week. Its focus on criminals, gang members and fugitives reflects the latest interior enforcement strategy of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Nebraska and Iowa last month formed their first fugitive team dedicated solely to tracking down foreigners with pending deportation orders, said Tim Counts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement's regional spokesman.

Nationwide, he said, the number of five- to eight-member fugitive teams is expected to rise from about 20 last year to 52 by the end of this fiscal year. Next year's Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget request calls for 70 teams.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said fugitives caught in the Operation Return to Sender "threatened public safety in hundreds of neighborhoods and communities across the country."

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement national press release highlighted captured criminals such as a 25-year-old Salvadoran gang member in Boston with a lengthy criminal history that included helping MS-13 gang members paralyze a teen by stabbing him in the spine with a stake.

Counts said Chica's association with local gang members elevated her case, although he declined to be more specific.

For Chica to be grouped in the company of hard-core criminals seemed absurd to Omaha attorney Jason Finch.

"I have a 24-year-old single mother who has put herself through school," he said of his client. "Certainly she doesn't fit that profile."

Chica, a 1999 Bryan High School graduate, said she may have "hung around the wrong crowd" sometimes, but was never part of a gang.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that she had no felony convictions. Omaha police records show three misdemeanors while in high school: shoplifting under $100; disorderly conduct, and failure to appear in court for a driving without a license ticket.

Her family's illegal entry into the United States came when El Salvador's 12-year civil war was raging.

"The guerillas had killed one of my mom's brothers," Chica said.

On the way to join her father, who already was in Los Angeles, Chica, her mother and brother were caught by the Border Patrol. Her mother agreed in an immigration hearing to voluntarily leave the country, Counts said. But the family didn't leave. Staying caused the deportation order against Chica to take effect, he said.

The family moved to Omaha when laborer jobs became scarce because of the immigrant influx in California.

At Bryan High, Chica was a founding member of the Latino Leaders club. She enrolled in the Omaha College of Health Careers and became certified in 2000 as a medical assistant.

Chica said she worked in that field for the next five years at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, often translating for Spanish-speaking patients.

"I still owe on my student loans," she said.

She thought she was protected from deportation in the past because her mother's pending asylum application cited her as a dependent. That paperwork was filed in the early 1990s, Finch said.

For years, Chica was granted annual work permits by the immigration service, Finch said.

Blanca, Chica's mom, said she doesn't fully understand what happened. Blanca was the adult when the deportation order was issued, but today she has legal status while her case makes its way through the system, Finch said.

Rafael, the father, also has temporary legal status and a pending residency case.

The parents said they are worried because their daughter knows so little about the country to which she is to return.

"I'm just a stranger there," Chica said.

Finch said his client's only chance to remain in the United States is if Los Angeles-based federal officials agree to reopen her 18-year-old deportation case. If so, she could seek a different route to legal status.

In the meantime, Chica, who also has a brother, a sister and seven nieces and nephews in Omaha, said she must decide what to do with the Bellevue home she bought in 2003. Her 4-year-old son, Ezekiel, is staying with his grandparents and is about to start pre-school.

She cries over the thought of separating from him.

When immigration agents arrested her June 1, Chica roused Ezekiel to tell him she had to go. She said he didn't understand then, and doesn't understand now.

"He told me, 'Mom, why are they taking you? Why are you letting them? Mom, you should have said 'please.' "