| In jail, his crimes far behind him, Pablo
waits
By TRACY L. BARNETT
Columbia, Mo.
Don’t try to talk to Pablo Ureta about patience. He’s
had about all he can take.
Pacing the floor of his tiny cell in the Shawnee County Jail in
Topeka, Kan., he thinks about his 5-year-old son, whom he hasn’t seen
since he left home on May 24. He thinks of his wife, whom he is desperately
afraid of losing. He thinks of his mother, who has worked tirelessly for his
freedom since the day he lost it.
He thinks of finding an easy way to end it all -- and then he
feels ashamed. But no matter how hard he thinks, he can’t find a reason to
justify what has happened to him.
“This is supposed to be America 2002, New Millennium
America,” said Ureta in a recent telephone interview from jail. “You
should at least have your day in court.”
Ureta, who was born in Uruguay, is one of an estimated 75,000
immigrants who await an uncertain future in the nation’s jails and holding
centers under the mandatory deportation provisions of a stringent
anti-immigrant law that passed in 1996. He has no right to bail or a public
hearing. His judge has no authority to allow him to stay -- despite the family
he will leave behind, and despite a flawless record of seven years.
Since 9/11, immigrant advocates say, local Immigration and
Naturalization Services offices have stepped up enforcement of this law. Three
federal courts have ruled some of its provisions to be unconstitutional, a
denial of due process. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in June to take on the
case. But by the time it gets to court, it will be far too late for Ureta.
Ureta looks like what he always wanted to be: a normal, average
American guy. He doesn’t speak with an accent. He doesn’t even
remember his native language. Ureta grew up here -- he played on the same
playgrounds, went to the same mall, was on the same soccer team as anyone else
in his class in Columbia, Mo.
Ureta came to the United States from Uruguay when he was 8 years
old, three years after the death of his father. Nancy Malugani, his mother,
brought her three children to the United States when the United Nations offered
her a veterinary fellowship. Uruguay was then, as now, torn by political and
economic problems, and Malugani decided to stay here and raise her children.
She got a job as a Spanish teacher in a junior high school in Columbia, became
active in the community, bought a house and created a life for herself and her
children.
Ureta would be the first to admit that, as a teenager, he was no
angel. He ran around with the wrong crowd, he experimented with drugs and
occasionally sold them. He became involved with a group of older men who were
transporting and selling marijuana.
But when he was 19, Ureta learned that he was going to become a
father, and his life took a dramatic turn. That realization served as a wake-up
call, giving him the strength to break his ties with his old friends and with
the dealers he had been hanging around with. He married the mother of his son,
who had been his sweetheart since junior high school. He got a minimum-wage job
at a grocery store. Soon he found a good job in St. Charles, Mo., installing
telecommunications equipment. He moved there with his family, and they started
a new life.
But Ureta’s past continued to haunt him. Four years after he
cut ties with the dealers, law enforcement officials showed up on his doorstep
with an indictment. On the advice of his lawyer, he pleaded guilty to being
involved in a conspiracy to transport marijuana across state lines. He was
convicted and sentenced to 14 months in a federal prison.
Ureta came home from prison a quieter man, more introspective,
even more dedicated to making a good life for his family. He returned to work
at the telecommunications company. He eventually decided he wanted to get an
electrician’s license, and he was told he would need to get his
immigration papers updated in order to go to school to get his license.
Ureta had never heard of the Illegal Immigration Reform and
Immigrant Responsibility Act, a hard-line initiative of the anti-immigrant
lobby that laid the groundwork for the destruction of thousands of families
across the United States.
Ureta’s boss, Don Ross, has become a sort of mentor to Ureta,
and has joined with the family in trying to secure his release. He wishes the
young man had consulted with him before he decided to take the day off and get
his papers in order.
“I’d have suggested he wait until things cool
down,” Ross said.
But Ureta didn’t have a clue what awaited him when he decided
to renew his green card. On May 24, he kissed his wife goodbye and headed to
Kansas City to get his papers in order. He never came home.
Now Ureta sits in jail, awaiting the hearing with an INS judge
that will determine his fate. Uruguay might as well be Siberia as far as Ureta
is concerned. He doesn’t speak Spanish and there is little hope that he
will find a job in a country in the midst of an economic disaster. He has no
family or friends in Uruguay to help him there. His wife has no plans to
accompany him, should he be deported. His 5-year-old son doesn’t begin to
grasp the gravity of the situation.
Ureta’s five partners in crime were convicted, served their
time and went on with their lives. One of them possessed a gun.
Ureta was never linked with any violence. He was never even caught
in possession of marijuana. His lawyer didn’t know that pleading guilty to
a felony would obliterate his client’s right to live in the United States.
The law hadn’t passed yet. But since it was retroactive, it applied to
Ureta’s case, as well as to thousands of other legal residents whose
crimes had been committed years ago.
Under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility
Act, immigrants who are convicted of a wide range of nonviolent infractions are
classified as aggravated felons.
Ureta’s family searched all over the country before finally
finding a lawyer who would agree to take the case; most refused, calling it
hopeless. Finally Malugani discovered Brian Lerner of Carson, Calif., a
high-priced specialist who has taken numerous cases like Ureta’s. The
legal costs will be at least $10,000 -- easily double that if there is an
appeal.
Lerner’s hopes are pegged on two possibilities: One, which is
exceedingly remote, is that Missouri Gov. Bob Holden or President George Bush
will grant a pardon. Ureta’s friends and family are collecting signatures
on a petition with the hope that Holden will issue such a pardon -- even though
it is not clear that he even has jurisdiction in a federal case like this
one.
The other hope lies in the halls of Congress, where a bill called
the Family Reunification Act is slowly wending its way through the political
process. The bill, which passed the House Judiciary Committee in July, would
give judges the right to consider the defendant’s family situation and the
circumstances of his case.
Ureta was scheduled for a hearing before an administrative judge
with the INS on Sept. 9. His lawyer pleaded for an extension to give time to
see whether the law would pass. Despite the prosecutor’s argument that the
taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for another six weeks in jail,
the judge agreed to the extension, noting that Ureta’s case was one of
thousands. “I don’t think holding this person for six weeks is going
to make much difference,” he noted dryly as he signed the extension.
Malugani left the hearing hopeful that the next six weeks would
bring release for her son and other immigrants.
But Ureta is beside himself with grief; he doesn’t feel he
can wait another day.
“I’m tired of being strong,” he wrote in a letter
to his mother. “I want to be normal. I just want to go back home, work my
job, come home to my family. That’s all I have been wanting for six years
now.”
Tracy L. Barnett is the managing editor of Adelante, a
bilingual Latino newsmagazine, and an adjunct assistant professor of journalism
at the University of Missouri.
National Catholic Reporter, October 11,
2002
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