Deportation News And Stories

[zuluweta 250]

Deported Mexicans Find New Life At Tijuana Call Centers

22 August 2014, Seattle Times

Some excerpts:

"TIJUANA, Mexico Henry Monterroso is a foreigner in his own country. Raised in California from the age of 5, he was deported in 2011 to Mexico, a land he barely knew.

But Monterroso, 34, a Tijuana native, feels right at home as soon as gets to work at cubicle-crammed Call Center Services International, where workers are greeted in English. Monterroso supervises five employees who spend eight hours a day dialing numbers across the United States to collect on credit-card bills and other debts.

He is among thousands of deported Mexicans who are finding refuge in call centers in Tijuana and other border cities. In perfect English some hardly speak Spanish they converse with U.S. consumers who buy gadgets, have questions about warrantees or complain about overdue deliveries."

Read the entire article at the link below:

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2024370840_callcentersxml.html

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An Undocumented Immigrant's Dream Deferred

By Eli Saslow, Washington Post (25 October 2014)

Javier Flores awoke again to the raspy ring of a water-damaged phone, and he lifted himself out of the hammock that had become his bed. He splashed river water on his face and pulled on his only pair of pants, designer jeans he had been wearing when two U.S. immigration officers stopped him on his way home from work. Now it was a few weeks later, and the jeans were stiff with sweat and caked in mud from the lime groves. They hung off his waist.

He stumbled toward the phone in predawn darkness, stepping over a chicken before answering on the fifth ring. The call was from the family he had left behind in Akron, Ohio. On the other end of the line he could hear his wife and children eating breakfast.

Nineteen days since he had been deported to Mexico, and each one had begun like this.

Very long article. Here's the link to the full story:

http://tinyurl.com/lwoz2eb

Edited October 27, 2014 by sjk&cjj

[elmcitymaven 9,711]

Please also post some stories about non-Hispanic deportees. It would be good to hear different types of narratives.

[zuluweta 250]

100 Saudi Students Deported Annually From The US

Arab News, 26 October 2014

Excerpt:

"Marital disputes, immigration issues, poor academic status and class attendance are among the main problems encountered by Saudi students but they account for less than 100 cases a year," Al-Eissa explained.

Link to the full story here:

http://www.arabnews.com/saudi-arabia/news/650756

Edited October 29, 2014 by sjk&cjj

[zuluweta 250]

http://www.albertleatribune.com/2015/02/proving-himself-worthy-of-life-in-the-u-s/'>Proving himself worthy of life in the U.S.

by Colleen Harrison, Albert Lea Tribune (February 20, 2015)

A mistake made over 20 years ago almost got an Albert Lea High School graduate kicked out of the U.S.

James Shaman was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada. When he was 2, he and his family moved to Houston, Texas. They moved to Albert Lea in 1987 — when Shaman was 12 — and he graduated from Albert Lea High School in 1992. He said he and his family have been in the country legally the entire time, and that he has had his permanent green card since he was 2.

When Shaman was 18 or 19, he was arrested, charged and pleaded guilty to possessing stolen property and aiding and abetting burglary. He said he helped steal and then transport stolen cigarettes. He was in jail for 35 days, on probation for two years and paid restitution. Shaman said his closest run-in with the law since was a speeding ticket in 1996.

Shaman, now 40, said the experience changed his life.

“The first five minutes I was locked up, that was it,” he said. “I knew I had to change. … The 34 days, 23 hours and five minutes left that I had after was punishment, pure punishment.”

Afterward, Shaman said he thought that was the end of it and moved on with his life. He got into radio, working at Power 96 in 2001 and 2002 before becoming a program/music director and radio host on 103.7 The Fox in Mason City. He got married and had a daughter.

On May 3, 2011, or the day after Osama Bin Laden was killed — as Shaman remembers it — he was traveling back to the U.S. after going to Winnipeg for his uncle’s funeral. When he was stopped at the border for a typical border check, Shaman said he was asked if he had ever been arrested before.

“Years and years and years I’d gone back and forth across the border since I was 18 or 19 years old and had a criminal record,” he said. “They had never asked me that before.”

Shaman told the border guards the truth, and told them the circumstances behind his arrest all those years ago. He said they asked him to please pull ahead into a garage bay, which Shaman said wasn’t out of the ordinary for border checks.

He said he sat there, along with his brother, for about 30 minutes before the guards came back to him. They had the two men sit aside while the car and their bags were searched. Eventually both of the brothers were separated, and Shaman’s brother was told he was free to go as he had been born in the U.S. and was a citizen. Their parents were traveling separately from the brothers, and they picked Shaman’s brother up when they went through the border and he filled them in on the situation.

“What I was told then was that there was a new law that had been put into effect,” said Shaman. “The new law stated that anyone with a permanent green card, if they had a criminal record they were deemed unsavory.”

According to Shaman, the guards basically told him that he wasn’t going to be allowed back into the country.

“I went into panic mode,” he said. “This wasn’t right, I did everything I was supposed to do.”

He said he was fortunate enough that the guards looked at his paperwork and realized Shaman committed his crime six months before a line that had been drawn on a calendar. Shaman said he was able to be “paroled” into the country.

“It was a different situation in that I was guilty of committing that crime,” Shaman said. “It wasn’t a case of being innocent until proven guilty. It was guilty and proving yourself worthy.”

He said if he hadn’t been paroled in, Shaman would have still been incarcerated awaiting trial.

They allowed Shaman back into the country — after cutting up his green card in front of him, fingerprinting him and taking his mug shot.

“It was awful,” he said. “It was like going through it all over again.”

When Shaman got back home he contacted Dan Donnelly, an immigration attorney based in Austin. Donnelly helped Shaman start the paperwork and the process, telling him that the entire process would take a good deal of time — around four to five years, at least. Shaman said Donnelly was able to have a number of Shaman’s past charges dropped and dismissed. His felony was then dropped down to a misdemeanor.

Shaman thought that his no longer having a felony background meant that the immigration issue would be dropped, but he found out that wasn’t the case. He and Donnelly were told they couldn’t fix the situation that way because it was done out of “immigration hardship.”

“If I had done this before I had immigration hardship they would’ve accepted it,” he said. “Since I did have immigration hardship … it didn’t count.”

It was in 2012 that Shaman found that out, and a judge told him then that his immigration trial would be April 1, 2015.

“That meant that nothing was going to happen over the next three years,” said Shaman.

During those three years, Shaman was on parole, meaning that any minor infraction would have him deported. If he left the country, it would have been considered a self-deportation and he wouldn’t be allowed back in and wouldn’t be able to apply to come back for another 10 years.

“There are far worse places to be stuck than the United States of America, don’t get me wrong,” he said. But not being able to visit his family in Canada and overseas was tough, he said.

On Feb. 6, Shaman got an email from Donnelly that said he had good news and for Shaman to call him. The two had been in contact over the past months getting documentation and testimony together for the upcoming trial.

Donnelly had Shaman come in at 8 a.m. the morning of Feb. 8 — a Sunday. Donnelly handed him a paper saying that his trial had been canceled, with no other date listed. Not knowing what that meant, Shaman looked to Donnelly for answers.

“He said, ‘If it’s good — it’s really good, and if it’s bad — it’s really bad.”

Donnelly then told Shaman that there was a new prosecuting attorney for the state of Minnesota working in Bloomington who had been tasked with granting immigration relief to deserving cases. Shaman said he then sat in Donnelly’s office for about an hour and a half giving testimony for an affidavit that they then submitted to the U.S. attorney for immigration relief. That was the possible good news.

The possible bad news was that if there was a government shutdown, it could postpone the entire process for another couple of years.

Shaman said the paperwork was filed around 8 a.m. the morning of Feb. 10, and around 9:30 a.m. that same morning he got a call from Donnelly. He had received relief.

He said he should receive his green card in six to eight weeks, and when he gets his hands on it Shaman plans to apply for U.S. citizenship that same day.

“I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” Shaman said of what the past few years have been like. For over three years he couldn’t make any plans past April 1.

“As 2015 arrived, it became really daunting,” he said.

In the midst of the whole situation, Shaman and his wife got divorced. If he had been deported, their 14 year-old daughter, Hope, would live in the U.S. while he would be in Canada.

When Shaman got off the phone with Donnelly after finding out he had been granted relief, he said he just got up and walked out of work.

“I left,” he said. “I told everybody that it was over, and I got relief and that I would be back.”

He said he emailed his parents, who were overseas at the time, from his truck. He then called his sister and brother to share the news. After driving around a bit to calm himself down, Shaman said he drove right to Hope’s school and had her pulled out of class. After talking to Hope, Shaman then called his boss at the radio station.

Shaman said everyone where he works has been incredibly supportive. He said he told his boss right away when the situation first came about, especially since for the time being he would no longer have a green card.

“I give huge credit to Jim Coloff,” said Shaman. “He didn’t have to keep me employed, but he did.”

For the three years that the legal process went on, Shaman said he kept the situation relatively quiet. He told his closer friends and family, as well as his co-workers. He said that was simply because there wasn’t much to do at the time.

He said he went public with his situation in December 2014. He turned on his microphone at the radio station one day and was upset that he had to go down to Des Moines yet again to be fingerprinted. Shaman explained to his listeners what was going on.

“Almost 200,000 people were kicked out of this country in 2013 for the exact same reason I was almost kicked out for,” he said. “200,000 people that were here legally, made a mistake and were forced to leave.”

Shaman’s not saying that all of those people didn’t deserve to be kicked out — he agrees with career criminals not being allowed to stay in the country.

He said the public reaction to his situation was extremely positive. The only negativity was coming from Shaman himself, and the frustration he felt with the entire process.

“To have that mistake come back all these years later,” he said. “That was half a life ago. And that half a life since has been much improved.”

Shaman said he has told his daughter that if he could go back in time, he doesn’t think he would change what happened when he was a teenager.

“It made me the person I am today,” he said. “It’s given me a profound respect for the law, no matter how screwed up it can be at times. … I own my mistakes and I know that made me a better man in the long run.”

While he doesn’t have any travel plans in the immediate future, Shaman said his daughter has talked about wanting to travel to France and he has considered a trip to Mexico.

“It’s nice to have plans beyond April 1,” said Shaman. “That feels really good.”

[zuluweta 250]

Deported To Cambodia, Former Gang Member Gets A Second Chance

by Kristi Eaton, NBC News

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - When Tuy Sobil was deported to Cambodia from the U.S., it was the first time he had ever stepped foot in the Southeast Asian country.

Born in a Thai refugee camp as his parents escaped the communist Khmer Rouge, and raised in Long Beach, California - home to the largest Cambodian community in the U.S. - Sobil joined a gang and later spent years in and out of prison for various crimes and violations.

Once in Cambodia, though, Sobil, who goes by the name KK, decided to turn his life around by starting a non-profit organization teaching kids living in poverty how to

At age 8, Sobil learned to breakdance, but he later joined a gang as a way to protect himself and his family, he said. At 18, he was convicted of armed robbery, and soon found himself in and out of the prison system for parole and immigration violations.

By the time immigration officials deported him to Cambodia in 2004, Sobil said he couldn't wait to leave the U.S. Though thousands of refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia were allowed into the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s under special status, a treaty was signed between the U.S. and Cambodia in 2002 allowing for the deportation of Cambodians from America. Nearly 400 men and women were deported from America to Cambodia in the first decade, according to the Returnee Integration Support Center, a nonprofit organization that helps deported Cambodian-Americans acclimate to their new life. In Fiscal Year 2014, 75 people were deported from the U.S. to Cambodia, according to federal statistics.

Full story here:

http://tinyurl.com/q93a2lf

[mymarley 14]

any story about filipino..

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Have you read about this???

FILIPINA ON HER WAY TO ATTEND DAUGHTER'S US WEDDING, HELD, DEPORTED

by Matikas Santos, Inquirer (October 8, 2013)

{Link here - http://tinyurl.com/ng5wxnb}

MANILA, Philippines—An elderly Filipino woman who was on her way to her daughter’s wedding in the United States was detained for six hours, berated, and threatened to be jailed by US immigration authorities before being deported back to the Philippines.

Carina Yonzon Grande, 63, a cancer survivor and a Philippine citizen who previously worked for the Asian Development Bank and has travelled to many countries, recounted her experience when she arrived in Seattle International Airport last October 1, which was her 13th travel to the US.

In an emailed statement from Ken Shaw, the fiancée of Steph Grande, she recalled how everything went fine with the arrival procedures until she was asked to go to a room where people were held for additional questioning.

“I was confined in that small room for six long hours. Questions about the purpose of my visit to the US were asked repeatedly by Officer Keavid Mam in a very arrogant manner,” Grande said.

The immigration authorities did not provide her with food or water the entire time she was detained, she recalled.

"I was asked to give names and corresponding contact numbers. I gave the details of my daughter Steph and my grandson Josh, 21 years old. I was asked for more names, so I gave the name and number of my Aunt Nerissa, who is nearly 90 years old and the sister of my late mother,” she said.

The immigration authorities went to a separate room to call up Grande’s relatives but she was not allowed to hear the conversations that took place.

“But Officer Keavid Mam came back into the room saying that I was a liar. He says my aunt told him that I will be taking care of her as a caregiver and will be paid $9 to $10 per day. I, of course, categorically denied this,” Grande said.

“While Officer Mam kept on repeating his questions about why I was in the US, a fellow officer by the name of Chang, joined and shouted, calling me a liar. He even searched my purse where I had wedding cards with money for my daughter and future son-in-law, and a birthday card for Joshua also with money and other stuff,” she said.

One officer who was passing by had asked his fellow officers “who is she, a TNT?” referring to illegal immigrants, Grande recalled.

The immigration supervisor, a certain Mr. Caldwell, then came and threatened to put her in jail if she kept lying.

“He even showed me the jail cell. I said, I am telling the truth, and that they can put me in jail because I will never ever admit doing the things I am wrongly being accused of,” she said.

Caldwell then went to another room and again called up Grande’s aunt Nerissa, whom he said admitted that Grande was working as a caregiver.

“Again, I categorically denied this because it is simply not true. I have never had any intention to work in the US,” she said.

After that, Grande recalled that Caldwell gave her two options after he supposedly met with higher officials. First was for her to be deported back to the Philippines on the flight the next day and second was for her to be put in jail and barred from entering the US for five years.

“Exhausted, hungry and sleep deprived, I chose option one. I knew that these people, who were accusing me without solid evidence, and who were relying on statements purportedly made by my Aunt Nerissa, would not accept any explanation from me,” she said.

“It is disheartening that at my age, I didn’t receive any respect from these officials. I was treated like a criminal. I was not allowed to talk to my daughter and grandson and my cellphone was taken away from me. Even after the interrogation concluded, they did not give it back to me,” Grande said.

She was able to talk to her aunt later who said that the immigration officers did not introduce themselves nor did they say they were calling form the Seattle International Airport.

“When the first officer called her, he told her he was a friend of mine. He didn’t tell Aunt Nerissa he was calling from the Seattle International Airport Immigration Office. Aunt Nerissa asked him if she could talk to me and he said: ‘Yes, later’ but it never happened,” Grande recalled.

“She also said the officer put words in her mouth,” Grande said.

Shaw said that his fiancée is heartbroken for her mother no longer being able to attend their wedding. He also said that he tried to get the full names of all the officers involved in her future mother-in-law’s ordeal.

“My fiancée is now heart broken – not only for her mother having to miss her wedding but also for the cruel treatment she was forced to endure by the government of the country she now calls home,” Shaw said.

“I have tried a couple of times since then to get the full names of the individuals who handled my future mother-in-law’s case, but apparently they are special and do-not-need-to-disclose information to the American public,” he said.

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My Family Was Collateral Damage In The War Against Immigrants

A single illegal border crossing broke apart my family for good

On November 20, 2014, President Obama gave a historic speech on immigration. Despite how profoundly personal this issue is to me, I didn’t watch. For the past decade, I have deliberately avoided any mention of immigration reform—hearing or reading about it causes my chest to tighten and my stomach to churn.

The topic inevitably brings me back to a window in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico in 2004. The five minutes I spent there damaged my life irrevocably. With the swipe of a pen, a blank-faced clerk denied my husband’s application for a marriage visa and shattered our family.

We got married in 2002, then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, so I could earn a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University. We had a beautiful, irrepressible baby boy. On the weekends, we’d go to the park and I would watch my husband do cartwheels and make faces for our giggling baby. At night, we would pile into the cheap black futon in our one-bedroom apartment. We were happy and grateful.We had met four years earlier, working as food servers at a Mexican restaurant in a small town in Southern California. We became fast friends, then fell in love, spending hours talking after the restaurant closed and until the sun came up. He told me about how his mother had died when he was young, and his father descended into depression and debilitating alcoholism. He and his nine brothers and sisters had to fend for themselves. He arrived in the U.S. at 17, finished high school, and got three jobs to support his younger siblings in Mexico. And because he had entered the country illegally, he did all this without documents.

But we knew we couldn’t build a stable life for our son without regularizing my husband’s immigration status. So we applied for a marriage visa and, about one year later, were relieved to get the letter approving us for a visa and setting an appointment at the American Consulate in Ciudad Juarez on April 17, 2004. We had to leave the country for our appointment because anyone applying for a visa at that time had to have legal standing to receive an appointment inside the U.S. Since my husband did not have legal documents to be here in the United States, he was required to accept an appointment in Mexico. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) knew he had entered illegally, and an official representative informed me that because of his illegal presence, there would likely be a fine and a waiting period of a few months before he would be issued his visa.

So we flew to California, left our son with family, and hopped a bus to Ciudad Juarez. The morning of our appointment we found the waiting room of the American Consulate filled with couples like us. I had a thick packet of paperwork, including letters attesting to my husband’s good character from his high school teacher, city councilman, and the local police department. He had done his physical evaluation. We were as ready as we could be.

The clerk called us to the window. My husband raised his right hand and promised to tell the truth. She never looked at our documents. She only asked one question: Have you ever crossed illegally besides your initial entrance? Yes, he answered. He had returned to visit his ailing grandmother before she passed away. The clerk then shoved a piece of paper at us and informed us that my husband was barred from entering the United States for life. He was not coming home with me and never would. We were in utter shock. Can we appeal? No. In 10 years you can request a waiver, but it isn’t something many people get. It has to be special circumstances, like you have a child who is dying. She called the next couple. When I returned to Cambridge without my family, my expectant friends were bewildered. This man was my husband, he had no criminal record, and we had an American child! Didn’t that mean he could legalize? The answer was no.

There had been no way I could care for a toddler alone while studying and working two jobs, so I left my son in Mexico, too. I came back to an empty crib and an empty bed. My husband did not come home late after his shift at a restaurant and crawl into bed, pulling me to his warm chest. My son did not cry out for chocolate when we walked past our corner bakery. I felt as though my limbs had been torn from my body. My family was gone.

I was forced to relive my trauma every time I told my story to anyone I thought could help me. I managed to find a top immigration lawyer who agreed to see me pro bono. He delivered the bad news. The permanent bar was because of the second illegal crossing. There was absolutely nothing he could do.

There is a legal principle called proportionality, which says the punishment should fit the crime. My husband had not broken any criminal laws. By visiting his grandmother, he had violated immigration regulations. For that, he was given a life sentence with no parole.

My family became collateral damage in a war against immigrants. My marriage seemed worthless in the eyes of the law—a law that left my innocent son with parents broken apart against their will. It was cruel. Draconian.

Our justice system is weighted heavily toward keeping families together. Children are sent back to abusive homes on a regular basis on the principle of the sanctity of family. But this was not the case with my family. In my son’s adoring eyes, his father is a superhero. Yet for over a decade now,my government has thrown up roadblock after roadblock to keep them apart.

I know that there are thousands of children like my son all over the country who have lost a loving parent as a result of our immigration laws. The damage—trauma, depression, anxiety—is permanent. Such losses poison their childhoods and affect them into adulthood.

Months later, I finally read President Obama’s speech on immigration. His executive order prevents people from being deported if they have American children. It’s designed to protect kids like my son until Congress passes something more permanent. But a federal judge in Texas has put the executive order on hold; an appeals court heard oral arguments on April 17 and will rule soon, but the case may eventually go to the Supreme Court. In the meantime I think of these children, and my son, as I pray for a ruling that will keep other families from suffering as we have.

Rebekah Rodriguez-Lynn studied politics at UCLA and public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She lives in Southern California with her son and her chihuahua. She wrote this forThinking L.A., a partnership of UCLA and Zocalo Public Square.

Link here - http://time.com/3830021/immigration-law-unrelenting-heartbreak/

Edited May 5, 2015 by sjk&cjj

[Boiler 43,359]

Always interesting what is left out.

Sounds like he went the I 601a route but was 9C with a lifetime bar waiverable after 10 years so not eligible for I 601a

Somebody did not do their homework..

[Boiler 43,359]

Hmm can not be 601a too long ago.

[zuluweta 250]

Charges: Man Smashed Into Governor’s Gate, Wanted To Be Deported

Minnesota CBS, 21 September 2016

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Authorities say a man crashed his car into the gate of the governor’s mansion Monday night in hopes of speaking with the state’s top elected official about his possibly being deported for religious purposes.

Forty-two-year-old Wondu Seifu, of St. Paul, is charged with one count of damage to property, according to documents filed in Ramsey County. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine.

{snip}

He explained that he moved to the United States from Ethiopia in 2003, and bought a home in St. Paul that later became a sort of prison, subject to constant “spiritual warfare attacks.”

He suspected that his house was under such attacks because the address is equivalent to 666, a biblical reference to the devil.

Link to full story ---> http://tinyurl.com/jsl4b4k

Edited September 22, 2016 by zuluweta

[zuluweta 250]

SHE FOUGHT TO KEEP IMMIGRANTS FROM BEING DEPORTED. NOW SHE FACES THE SAME FATE.

by Michael Miller, Washington Post (29 September 2016)

“What are you doing here?” the guard asked.

“I’m not a U.S. citizen,” Uruchi answered. “And I got a DUI.”

“I can’t believe it,” he said.

Uruchi’s sudden fall — from immigrant advocate to undocumented inmate — has stunned many who knew her. At Casa, the immigrants rights organization where Uruchi worked, colleagues were caught by surprise. Two weeks before pleading guilty to drunken driving, she had led a demonstration outside the Supreme Court urging the justices to support undocumented immigrants, but she never hinted she was one of them. She had spent three years helping others fight deportation. Now she faces that very fate.

Her arrest has exposed her husband’s undocumented status and upended her children’s lives. Any day now, Uruchi, 33, could be sent back to Spain. Under Obama administration guidelines, her DUI conviction makes her a priority for deportation. And under the visa waiver program she used to enter the country 14 years ago, she forfeited her right to legal appeal. Her only chance is a plea to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials for a stay of deportation, citing her otherwise clean record, community service and two American-born kids.

Full story here ---> http://tinyurl.com/gmhbeet

Edited September 29, 2016 by zuluweta

[Boiler 43,359]

Community Service?

ROFL

[RobertM54 36]

I'm trying to have sympathy for this woman. In the country illegally since age 5 with a felony conviction for forgery. Drives a BMW and does not pay a traffic ticket.

They think they are untouchable whilst people in family immigration cannot get family members or fiances with squeaky clean records past the relationship police in Department of State.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-immigrants-with-criminal-convictions-20161118-story.html