Sunday, June 22, 2008 - Page updated at 12:00 AM



Area teen studies while deported mother struggles
When her mother was deported, Julie Quiroz followed her to Mexico. But while the family's benefactors have brought Julie north, her mother is struggling.

By Lornet Turnbull

Seattle Times staff reporter


KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Julie Quiroz, 13, is living with Joe and Jo Ann Kennard as she continues her studies. She wasn't attending school in Mexico.
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Outside Julie Quiroz's bedroom window in an Edmonds home, there's an awesome view of Puget Sound. But she barely seems to notice it.

Up by 7 a.m., dressed and in front of her laptop by 8, Julie is trying to cram a year's worth of seventh-grade studies into a few short months after missing much of the past school year.

The U.S.-born 13-year-old, who joined her deported mother in Mexico a year ago, has returned to the Seattle area, where she's following a strict home-schooling routine, hoping to be ready for eighth grade by fall.

She is living with Edmonds real-estate investor Joe Kennard and his wife, Jo Ann, whose efforts to help the girl's family resettle along the U.S. southern border at Juarez have unraveled.

Earlier this month, courtesy of the Kennards and under legal arrangements authorized by her mother, Julie returned to the Seattle area, which she considers her true home.

"It was raining the night we came in, and the first thing I thought was, 'Oh yeah, the rain,' " Julie joked. "This is where I was raised, and I was glad to come back. But at the same time, I wish my family was here and happy, too."

The Kennards extended their help to the girl's mother, Ana Reyes, and the rest of Reyes' children after reading a Seattle Times article about their lives following her deportation.

Unable to find work in Mexico City, the 42-year-old Reyes had shuffled between the homes of family members in dangerous city barrios.

Julie, who finished at Seahurst Elementary School in Burien the day of her mother's arrest, wasn't attending school in Mexico because, she said, she didn't read or write Spanish well enough to keep up.

The Kennards had hoped to use Reyes as a model for how they might help other deported parents of U.S.-born children live and find work in Mexican border towns while their children attend school on the U.S. side.

They have been working to establish a network of churches on either side of the border whose members could help the families settle.

In April, the couple relocated Reyes, her four children and her boyfriend, Arturo Hernandez, to the Mexican town of Juarez, where they'd hoped the adults would find work and where Julie and her younger sister, Sharise, might attend school in El Paso, Texas.



But that plan didn't work out.

Taking "a detour"

Reyes' two adult sons, whom she had first brought to the U.S. with her 18 years before and who were also deported last year, have both been deported again.

One used his Washington driver's license to cross illegally into the U.S. at El Paso, but he was arrested in Benton County on an old drug-paraphernalia-possession charge and turned over to immigration authorities, who deported him earlier this month.

His younger brother was arrested, detained and subsequently deported after he tried to use the same driver's license to cross.

And their mother, unable to find work in the increasingly violent city of Juarez, has returned to Mexico City with her younger daughter. Her boyfriend has gone back to the town of Aguascalientes, where he had been unemployed and living with his parents.

Kennard said he understood why the family left Juarez, but he wanted to ensure his primary goal: seeing that Julie continues her education.

"We've just taken a detour, that's all," he said, adding that he and his wife might consider other, less-dangerous border cities in their efforts to help families.

"We're still in contact with churches and trying to find families in similar situations," he said. "We want people to step up and do something biblical: take care of kids who have been damaged."

This summer the couple will relocate to Texas, where Kennard grew up. The plan, for now, is to have Julie live with them there during the school year and to travel to Mexico City on holidays to visit her mother. Meanwhile, Kennard has asked a Seattle immigration attorney to review Reyes' case.

Joe Kennard said he wants Julie to become a voice for other kids like her, to use her experience to draw attention to the effects of deportation on the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

And Julie likes the idea. "I'd be able to talk firsthand about what they're going through."

Long road back home

A pretty, outgoing brunette, Julie was living the life of a typical American kid in Burien just a year ago — hanging out at the mall and the library with friends and going to the park some weekends with her family.

After Reyes was deported, she persuaded Julie to join her, telling her it would be only a short vacation. Julie traveled with her younger sister to Mexico City.

But Julie hated it there; the streets around where the family lived were so dangerous she and her younger sister weren't allowed outside by themselves.

"The one good thing about it was that I got to spend time with my grandparents and see relatives I'd never met."

When Kennard moved the family to Juarez, Julie said she was grateful for the chance to resume her education and try to make up for the year she lost.

But Juarez was a difficult place for her mother, she said. "We didn't go out at night; it was really dangerous."

Drug gangs have escalated the violence across Mexico and particularly in border cities like Juarez.

Julie spent weekdays in El Paso, at the home of friends of the Kennards, where the wife, a teacher, began helping her catch up on math, language arts, social studies and science — the same work she's continuing in Edmonds with assistance from a local teacher.

"Right now, I'm more focused on math and science because that's where I have the most trouble," she said.

She had worried that being home-schooled wouldn't allow her to make any friends. But she did in El Paso and already has in Edmonds, where the Kennards' granddaughter has become one of her closest friends.

And she's contacted her old Burien pals from a year ago who, one by one, had stopped e-mailing her after she moved to Mexico City. Now, "I'm hoping I could go and see them."

Julie talks to her mom regularly and knows the pain of separation she must feel.

"The last time I talked to her, she sounded a little happy," she said. "And my brother told me he was happy for me that I'm back up here and that I should be happy how things have worked out."

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company





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