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KANSAS-DEPORT Dec-15-2006 (1,010 words) With photo. xxxn
Do the children go or stay behind? Deportation orders split families
By David Myers
Catholic News Service
LIBERAL, Kan. (CNS) -- Thirteen-year-old Jonatan Delgado, a native of Los Angeles, might soon find himself learning Spanish to survive in a country he has never even visited.
From his mother's mobile home in the western Kansas community of Liberal, a few miles from the Oklahoma border, Jonatan explained that next year he wants to play soccer, if he can maintain his high grades and balance it with his job in the school library and his activities at St. Anthony Church.
His mother, Veronica Delgado, wiped away tears as she listened. It's likely that by early 2007 the life that her boys -- Jonatan, Saul, 12, Alexis, 8, and Alan, 5 -- have known since birth will come to a crashing end.
Veronica and her husband, Saul, are among hundreds of Kansas immigrants whose encounters with unscrupulous attorneys may mean an end to the lives they've built in the United States. The attorneys convinced the Delgados and others that to stay in the country they could apply for political asylum -- they didn't qualify for it but they didn't know that. The lawyers charged hundreds of dollars to file the paperwork.
Now Saul Delgado has been deported to Mexico and his wife could be next. They and other parents agonize over whether to leave their U.S. citizen children in this country, or take them to Mexico, where they will likely face impoverished conditions.
"The children have never been to Mexico," Veronica Delgado told the Southwest Kansas Register, newspaper of the Dodge City Diocese. "They don't know Mexico. They don't read or write Spanish well. They want to stay in school and be with their friends. Their life is here." Like Jonatan, Saul was born in Los Angeles, and their two younger brothers were born in Kansas.
Redemporist Father Mike McAndrew, pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Liberal, is part of the Redemptorist Hispanic Missionary Team in the Diocese of Dodge City. In 2004, when a Liberal man with three U.S. citizen children was deported after falling victim to what Father McAndrew called a local attorney's "asylum scam," he organized a meeting for others who might have had problems with the attorney.
"We expected 15 or so people to come forward," he said. "That evening we had 47 people. We found that (among them) they had 53 U.S. citizen children, several of whom were already teenagers. In the next few months, more than 100 victims of the scam came to our attention."
And that's just in Liberal. Father McAndrew believes there may be thousands of victims in Kansas.
"The scam was to have people who did not qualify apply for political asylum," Father McAndrew explained. "They charged $1,500 or more to begin each application. Most of those scammed had been in this country for more than 10 years, waiting and hoping for relief from their immigration status. The temptation to try to come out of the shadows of the 'undocumented' overcame the fear that this was too good to be true."
Saul Delgado had been in the United States 18 years when he met attorney James Phillips and his wife, Alicia Morales-Phillips. After waiting nearly 13 years for immigration red tape to clear, he turned to Phillips.
Saul Delgado soon found himself in a "hardship hearing," trying to convince an immigration judge that deporting him and his wife would cause undue hardship to their four citizen children. He was deported to his hometown of La Soledad in the state of Durango in October. He is ineligible to apply to return to the U.S. for 10 years.
Phillips and his wife have been arrested and charged with multiple counts of filing forged documents. Phillips pleaded innocent at his first court appearance Dec. 8 in Wichita. Morales-Phillips is also being sued by the Kansas attorney general, alleging that she took advantage of her clients' lack of English skills to file documents that contained errors.
Of 10 hardship hearings with which Father McAndrew has been involved, none has resulted in a cancellation of deportation orders. He attributes that to what he sees as the court's incorrect assessment of the current social and educational climate in Mexico, as well as its misinterpretation of "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship."
"It would be hard to find any hardship that would satisfy the court that I witnessed," Father McAndrew said.
"We're talking (about) separating children from their parents," he continued, "or sending them to live in poverty conditions, where there may be no education at all, or at the very least, a system that's far inferior to our own."
At Veronica Delgado's Sept. 29 hardship hearing in Kansas City, she raised concerns about Mexico's poor educational system. Paula Davis, assistant chief counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, countered with a State Department report that read, in part, "Education is one of Mexico's greatest priorities." Davis said enrollment in public schools in Mexico had increased in recent years.
In upholding the deportation order, Judge Jennie Giambastiani concluded Delgado's claim of substandard education was "unsubstantiated."
Since the hearing, Father McAndrew has found a 2005 Rand Corp. report that notes: "Many of the schools (in Mexico) lack basic infrastructure equipment such as bathrooms, cement floors, student desks and blackboards. Teachers often have to work with very limited resources and few schools have libraries, copier machines, and computers with Internet access."
Veronica Delgado's deportation order has been appealed. Father McAndrew said he hopes the appeal is not only granted, but immigration courts will revise their understanding of "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship."
"The inability of the judge in this case to find on behalf of the respondent is unbelievably cruel," Father McAndrew said. "While Congress struggles with the complexities of our immigration law, it is urgent that the most vulnerable victims of the harshness of our broken immigration system be protected.
"It should be considered the right of citizen children to have their parents granted legal residency. It is the least we can do to protect these children," he said.
END
Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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