Ah I was just coming back to say I have Catholic Charities in Baton Rouge ON THE CASE! I talked to a nice lady who assured me someone would be out there sometime this week.
YAY! The guys around here do good work. Good luck! If nothing else, you can be sure they won’t feed you a line of BS.
Good luck!
Thanks! Already I’ve had email contact with them and they’ve been asking for details about our little girl and how he’s involved in our daily activities and what her disabilities are.
I was also told they are in contact with charities in the places they drop off deportees in Mexico so they have services for them when they get there so I can feel a little better if he does get deported, at least he’ll have a safe place to go until he can get his ticket home.
Eva Luna, do you know about this? I know that when they catch people trying to cross by land in the San Diego area, the place where they put them back into Mexico is that fence directly to the right of the pedestrian turnstile as you enter Mexico on foot at the San Diego-Tijuana crossing. But what about people who get deported from the interior of the U.S.? Do they fly them to some airport in Mexico, or do they take them to that same fence next to the pedestrian turnstile at the Tijuana port of entry?
I don’t really know, but I think it varies. Most of my firm’s clients don’t end up actually being forcibly removed (and I don’t work on many removal cases myself; I primarily work on employment visas and green cards). I imagine it has something to do with what’s cheapest; it’s probably cheaper to fly someone from Chicago to an airport in the interior of Mexico somewhere rather than to San Diego.
The only person I’ve ever known personally who was deported was taken into custody in Texas. This was back in the early 90’s so the entire process is probably different today, but according to him he was flown to Louisiana to a holding center, and was then flown to the port of Progreso (not exactly a typical port of entry for travelers from the US) with about 30 other deportees. They were given their Mexican passports or identity cards back after arrival, and sent walking with very little fanfare. None of them were from anywhere remotely near Progreso.
According to him it left him penniless over 1,000 miles from his hometown and family and friends, which ironically was right on the other side of the Texas border from where they started the journey. He could have taken a taxi home in about 30 minutes. (Incidentally, he went on to obtain his US citizenship and lives in Dallas today.)
Update: here’s a practice advisory on whatever anyone knows about how the new policy of prioritizing deportation cases will be implemented. There’s some good background info there.
And since we already have a bump here (of the thread, not referring to the poster): any news on your case, Rushgeekgirl?
I hope this policy change helps your SO’s situation, Rushgeekgirl. Have there been any developments?
I’m sorry I didn’t see this before. His court date is this Tuesday. We’re concerned because at first the attorney from Catholic Charities had so many questions for us both but after the first few days we never heard anything else. I’ve emailed and left phone messages several times with no response. He was moved from Jena to Oakdale this week and I don’t know if she knows this or if it’s standard procedure, but nobody will tell either of us anything.
We still have no idea what will happen if he is deported or where they’d send him. Because he’s already seen several people shipped off who had no criminal records we aren’t holding out much hope he’ll get to stay.
Sorry, just got home from out-of-town wedding. Yes, people get moved from one holding facility to another all the damn time.
Please don’t generalize from the cases of other people whose situations may or may not be at all similar to his. The people you mention may have just thrown in the towel and asked to give up their rights and be sent home. Because he has been here so long, and because he has a U.S. citizen child, he has potential remedies from deportation. As long as he doesn’t waive his right to a full and fair hearing of his claims, he ain’t going anywhere just yet. And developing a claim takes time.
At his first hearing, the judge will likely just ask whether he is going to have an attorney and/or prepare his claim to stay here. If the answer to either of those questions is yes, the judge will normally postpone the hearing to give him and/or his attorney (or accredited representative; not all employees of nonprofits who handle these types of cases are actually attorneys, though they have all undergone a thorough apprecenticeship-type training) time to prepare evidence, witnesses, etc.
My guess is that Catholic Charities started doing that, but they are probably very strapped for staff and resources, and so something more time-sensitive came up, and so they have put you guys on the back burner for the moment. But don’t lose hope!
Rushgeekgirl, when you said the court hearing was this Tuesday, did you mean today?
Keeping my fingers crossed for you. Keep us updated.
Thanks for the well-wishes and advice.
I called the information number and it says his next hearing date is September 29th. I guess they did give him more time, but I don’t know if it’s just prolonging the inevitable or there’s more hope than I thought.
I haven’t heard from him yet so maybe tonight I’ll have more information.
Never mind he just called. The person from Catholic Charities didn’t show up and the judge gave him until the 29th to get an attorney. Nothing has changed, he’s just got a few more weeks to sit and worry.
Oh they asked him if he wanted to fight or wanted to do the voluntary departure but the voluntary departure requires a bond to prove you’ll leave by the date you’re given.
FYI, it’s entirely possible that the Catholic Charities person may have had little or no notice that he was being moved. The aggravating thing about detainees being moved is that it makes it EXTREMELY difficult to coordinate representation. In case you need it, here’s the online detainee locator page.
I emailed an called her (left a message) the day he was moved, then Friday morning I emailed to ask if she would be there in court today. I never hear a thing back, not since our first conversations in the first three or four days. I’ve been checking that site and the phone number too, that’s how I knew about the new court date. I just wish I could talk to people with voices and ears, ya know? REAL people instead of this email/phone tag business.
I sent emails to the other attorneys on that “free” page, although the two I contacted in the beginning wanted money to even meet with him. http://www.justice.gov/eoir/probono/freelglchtLA.htm
Maybe one of the others will be more helpful.
This was the response I finally got today from Catholic Charities:
*We are only two attorneys in my office and we are at capacity now. The other reason I had asked all the questions was to ascertain whether I can find pro bono assistance. Just to give you an idea, there are only 8 non-profit or law school clinical professors/lawyers in the whole state of Louisiana - we do the best we can in a state that has four detention centers holding apporximately 2000 detainees.
We will continue to try locating pro bono counsel, but as we informed ______, there is no gaurantee that we will find someone and the obligation is always the detainee’s to locate counsel. This is a civil proceeding not a criminal proceeding, where there is a right to free counsel. It is an unfortunate truth and we have to work within those confines.
Should we find someone, that attorney will make contact with _____ and will sig na contract with him for legal services. We can notify you as a courtesy.*
That makes sense. My boss is involved with a local nonprofit that coordinates pro bono attorneys to work on asylum cases, and they send out similar e-mails with brief summaries of each case in the hope that one of their volunteers will take it on. So you may yet have some luck. And yes, there are free legal services available, but as you can imagine, the demand is much, much greater than the supply.
I just wish I could have been more involved with this from the beginning. I should have known he’d misunderstand and think this woman was his attorney. If I’d known she wasn’t I guess I still couldn’t have done much more. There’s only so much anyone can do from a distance with no money and I already have enough on my plate dealing with our daughter’s disability issues and the general lack of cash he brought in most days. I do hope he will get out, and I hope he’ll have learned his lesson this time and not do stupid stuff. He’s like a teen; he never thinks about consequences.