http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/ ... 854831.htm

Posted on Sun, Oct. 09, 2005

Supporters rally to prevent deportation of immigrant

ALAN SCHER ZAGIER

Associated Press


MARSHALL, Mo. - From the Little League fields to the Habitat for Humanity boardroom, everyone in this central Missouri town seemed to know Manuel "Paco" Lopez.

A devoted father and civic volunteer, the Mexican immigrant served as a translator at the local hospital, schools, crime scenes and anywhere else people asked.

So when police asked for help interrogating a Spanish-speaking murder suspect, he dutifully agreed - even though it meant revealing he was actually an illegal immigrant named Francisco Xavier Inzunza.

Once Marshall police reported him, immigration officers made the 43-year-old an offer: work as a confidential informant for the federal immigration agency in exchange for an annual work permit.

But his informant career was a spectacular flop. Drug dealers and fake identification peddlers didn't want much to do with a church leader and school volunteer. Soon after the murder suspect's conviction in 2002, Inzunza was informed he faced deportation from the place he has called home for a dozen years.

The Marshall mayor, police chief, school superintendent - even the prosecutor who Inzunza helped - pledged to support a man who for years hid his true identity.

"Most of the illegal aliens stay in the background. They don't get out," said Chuck Hird, a retired Marshall meatpacking plant manager. "Paco was different. That's what got him in trouble."

Sixteen supporters appeared at a Kansas City immigration hearing in September, prepared to ask a federal judge to let Inzunza stay. The judge instead postponed the hearing until February 2007 because of a case backlog, but Inzunza's supporters suspect judicial sympathy played a role.

"Paco is not only an asset to our school, but to the city of Marshall as well," wrote Derek Lark, an assistant principal at the middle school where Inzunza works as a custodian, in a letter to the immigration judge. "We would be worse off without him here. He is the type of person we need more of in America."