Novato family near deportation, leaving one behind

Set to be deported from Novato to Guatemala in nine days, Salvador Mejia and Elida Perez had one final mission: help their 18-year-old son, Gilbert Mejia-Perez, avoid the same fate.
The couple, who crossed the Mexican border illegally with Gilbert more than 17 years ago with dreams of escaping a country ravaged by civil war, had staved off an earlier deportation order so that they could testify on Gilbert’s behalf.

They did just that this week, but they will have to wait more than nine months to find out if it did any good. After a nearly three-hour hearing Thursday in which Mejia-Perez himself did not get a chance to testify, an immigration judge continued the matter until July 28, 2010 – the next available date on her calendar.

Barring unforeseen intervention from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has reviewed the family’s case and so far declined to get involved, Mejia and Perez will be deported Nov. 2. They will take with them their two daughters, 13-year-old Helen and 4-year-old Dulce, both of whom were born in the United States and are U.S. citizens.

Because Mejia-Perez’s status has been pending since before he turned 18, he has no legal documentation of his existence in the U.S., but he also cannot be deported until his next hearing.

“I’m just here like a ghost for another year,” he said dejectedly after the hearing, realizing his ongoing legal limbo. “I’m right back where I started.”

What preceded his realization were his parents’ lengthy declarations of their worst fears. “It would break my heart for him to go back down there,” Perez said in Spanish through a court interpreter, although she speaks English. “He doesn’t know anything about what life is like down there.”

The hearing was before Judge Miriam Hayward, the same judge who granted Perez and Mejia a “cancellation of removal,” or the ability to stay in the U.S. legally, in October 2007. That decision was overturned by the Board of Immigration Appeals in March 2008, kick-starting the parents’ deportation.

Gilbert Mejia-Perez is seeking asylum to stay in the U.S. To get it, his attorney Carol Dvorkin is trying to show that his life would be in danger if he returned to Guatemala, a country she said was ruled by corrupt police, rampant gang violence and the remnants of civil war. Because of that, the bulk of the hearing focused on life in Guatemala, as opposed to Mejia-Perez’s life in Novato, where he was a 2009 graduate of Novato High and now attends Santa Rosa Junior College, with the hopes of one day becoming an architect.

His parents said that the crux of the danger in Guatemala facing Mejia-Perez lies in both his age – he’d be a likely target as a gang recruit and would be at risk if he declined to join, as he said he would – as well as his family history.

“Gilbert has a lot of gumption and is very decisive and I have no doubt that when he shows up down there that some gang will call him over, and if he refuses to join them, then he will be in danger,” Mejia said. “If he doesn’t join them, he will be killed. That’s my fear.”

As the grandson of indigenous farmers, Mejia-Perez would be arriving five years after his 68-year-old grandfather abandoned farm land when he was beaten badly by a group of men who then took ownership of that land.

“Because of what my family has suffered through, (Gilbert) could be a victim if he goes down there,” Elida Perez said. “He is the type of person who wants to help other people and doesn’t like to see injustice. In Guatemala, that is dangerous. If he tried to help, he’s going to get himself into trouble.”

According to Dvorkin, in order for Mejia-Perez to garner asylum, he must show that he is in more danger than the average person in Guatemala, either because of his age, family ancestry, or an “immutable characteristic or something you shouldn’t have to change.”

Both parents described several other incidents in which family members were subjected to violence. Mejia said his cousin, a cab driver, was recently shot to death and left in a desolate area for no apparent reason.

In her cross-examination of the parents, Kathleen Taylor, assistant chief counsel for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, attempted to raise doubts that Mejia-Perez would face any more violence and danger than average Guatemalans. She also questioned why Perez didn’t mention the dangers facing her family in her and her husband’s deportation proceedings.

After Perez stated that her family did not file a police report in her father’s beating for fear of reprisal and because police wouldn’t do anything about it, Taylor said, “Your family hasn’t given the police any opportunity to help you recover the land.”

With his parents and sisters set to leave the U.S. in nine days, Mejia-Perez faces an unusual situation of living in the Alameda del Prado home that his parents own with Perez’s brother, Jaime, who acquired political asylum in 1992 during the Guatemalan civil war and is a U.S. citizen.

Asked during the hearing why Jaime Perez never petitioned for her to get a green card visa, the most clear way for her to garner a road to U.S. citizenship, Perez said it was too costly at the time. They have never otherwise attempted to get “green cards,” the first step to citizenship.

If he is granted asylum next year, Mejia-Perez could apply for a green card visa within one year and citizenship within five years. He could then petition his parents to enter the U.S. legally, but current U.S. law states that anyone who is in the U.S. illegally for more than one year must not return for 10 years.

“We’re still hoping for a miracle – and that’s your department,” Dvorkin said, gesturing to Rev. Dave Matz, a Spanish-speaking priest at Mission San Rafael Arcangel in San Rafael and one of two family friends who attended the hearing.

“We’ve got plenty of people praying,” he replied.

[Source: Marin News ]