30137: Hermantin(News)Immigration chaos tears a family apart (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Wednesday, Mar 7, 2007

Today's Extras   Posted on Wed, Mar. 07, 2007reprint or license print email

IN MY OPINION

Immigration chaos tears a family apart
BY ANA MENENDEZ
amenendez@MiamiHerald.com


Document | Letter from ICE

Separating families used to be the privilege of dictators and sadists. What a 
symbol of the moral decline of America that we're now deporting mothers and 
giving the whole shameless operation a cheeky name like ``Return to Sender.''

Our fearless leaders may not be able to find Osama bin Laden, but the 
immigration foot patrol can track down Marie Thelusma in her Miami Gardens 
home, drag her away from her 4-year-old son at 5 a.m., and send her back to 
Haiti.

Return to Sender, get it? Yuk, yuk.

'He was saying, `Mommy, where are you going? Mommy, don't leave me,' '' 
Thelusma said in a phone interview from Port-au-Prince, where she is staying 
with friends.

Even within the cruel workings of the immigration bureaucracy, Thelusma's story 
stands out for being especially heartbreaking.

Thelusma, 31, had no criminal record, was married to an American citizen and, 
in the saddest twist, was supposed to appear at a residency interview later 
this month.

''If she had remained in the U.S., she would have become a resident on March 
26,'' said her attorney, Candace Jean.

TAKING IT BACK

Instead, after Thelusma's arrest, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 
sent her a form letter taking it back: ``This is to advise you that, due to 
unforeseen circumstances, we have cancelled the previously scheduled interview 
on Monday March 26, 2007 at 10:30 a.m. for the above applicant. We regret any 
inconvenience this may cause.''

These bureaucrats are nothing if not polite.

''This is the worst case I have ever seen,'' said Jean. ``This is truly evil, 
splitting this family.''

Thelusma escaped Haiti in 2000 using a bogus Haitian passport and immediately 
sought asylum in the United States. An appeals court denied her request; she 
was ordered deported in November 2005. By then, she had married an American 
citizen and had a child.

In the early morning of Jan. 28, the police knocked on the door. ''I told them, 
we have a baby of four years,'' said her husband Jean Arne.

Not our problem, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara 
Gonzalez, citing Thelusma's false documents.

''It's unfortunate that parents put their children in that situation by 
breaking the law,'' she said. ``We don't make the law, we enforce it. . . . ICE 
officers carried out the order of removal as mandated by law.''

Just following orders.

Those who take their paycheck from a bankrupt system have little choice but to 
pay it lip service. The rest of us are free to make moral judgments 
unconstrained by dehumanizing jargon or rationalizations.

''It's the law'' is hardly a persuasive argument when ''the law'' is in 
shambles. Immigration is a mess -- the one thing Democrats and Republicans 
agree on.

Soon, lawmakers will try again to introduce immigration reforms. President Bush 
has said he favors fixing the status of many immigrants who entered the country 
illegally.

RESOLUTION PASSED

Last month, the Miami-Dade County Commission passed a resolution urging a 
moratorium on the deportation of migrants without criminal records. So why are 
we still deporting mothers to countries that the United States warns its own 
citizens against visiting?

If morality is not reason enough to keep a mother with her child, there are a 
slew of practical reasons, not least of which is that children who grow up in 
intact homes tend to be less of a burden to society later.

Republicans are usually eager to emphasize this fact. Where is their outrage 
now?

Only someone anesthetized by the Orwellian double-speak of our immigration 
''policy'' could believe that America is safer because a mother has been taken 
away from her son.

CLICK ON TODAY'S EXTRAS TO READ THE LETTER FROM U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND 
IMMIGRATION SERVICES

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