Pittsburg mom's deportation suddenly looms after decades

By Matt O'Brien
Contra Costa Timescontracostatimes.com
Posted: 03/19/2012 02:10:56 PM PDT

As she raised two sons and ran a Pittsburg hair salon, Nancy Beyan heard almost nothing from the immigration authorities who had ordered her back to Liberia nearly two decades ago.

Then came a letter late last month. Her son, Joseph Wiles, sifted through the mail and handed over the brief, shocking message.

"It is now incumbent upon this Service to enforce your departure from the United States," wrote a field officer from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Bring your luggage -- no more than 40 pounds -- the letter told the 50-year-old widow and mother of two who has lived in the United States for 27 years. Beyan must report to her scheduled deportation on Wednesday.

Her sons are devastated.

"She's my mom. I can't lose her. I already lost my dad. I can't lose my mom," said Joseph Wiles, his voice breaking.

He turns 23 this week and was born in the United States. His younger brother, Jeremy Wiles, 19, attends Ohio's Grinnell College on a football scholarship. Their father, Beyan's husband, was a Liberian immigrant who died in 2002 after a long illness.

Beyan and her lawyer, Andrew Taylor, filed an emergency request Monday asking immigration authorities to let her stay.

Beyan came to California on a tourist visa in the 1980s. Although an immigration judge denied her appeal for political asylum and ordered her deported in 1994, Taylor said Beyan sought other legal means to remain in the country with her family.

Her husband fought a decade-long battle to win a green card but died before he could sponsor Beyan as his wife.

Later, she successfully applied to delay her deportation because of Liberia's protracted civil war, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives between 1989 and 2003.

"She reported to them: 'Here I am, I'm living at this address,'" Taylor said.

In 2003, however, Beyan failed to file the $80 form to renew that protection, known as Temporary Protected Status. Taylor suspects immigration authorities finally decided to pursue Beyan's deportation this year after updating some of the technology they use to keep track of cases.

But Beyan deserves to stay in the United States, he said. Family members and friends at Beyan's church, the International Christian Ministry in Antioch, are hoping the Obama administration's new policy to halt some deportations of upstanding illegal immigrants will apply in this case.

"The entire time, Nancy was raising her sons, taking care of her husband, working to support the family," Taylor said.

"If the government won't help Nancy under this prosecutorial discretion initiative, then who will be helped?"

Pittsburg mom's deportation suddenly looms after decades - San Jose Mercury News