Deportations (article)

Ramsey County / Mother of dying child faces another deportation Help sought for her immigration appeal BY JOHN BREWER Pioneer PressTwinCities.com-Pioneer Press Article Last Updated:10/22/2007 11:03:40 PM CDT http://www.twincities.com/ci_7253533?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com- www.twincities.com&nclick_check=1Cecilia Sanchez-Zurita wants to take care of her terminally ill child in their St. Michael home. But she cannot, because she is being held in the Ramsey County jail awaiting deportation. Her appeals to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have yielded no results. Centro Legal, a St. Paul-based advocacy group for low-income Latinos, issued a press release Monday urging doctors, lawyers and politicians to appeal to ICE on the family's behalf. Something extraordinary would have to happen soon: Sanchez-Zurita told Centro Legal she is going back to Mexico on Wednesday. Her 4-year-old daughter suffers from a rare genetic syndrome that has caused her tongue and head to "overgrow" her body. Her tongue has been cut back several times. She also has a rare liver disease. Doctors decided not to treat the cancer because she wouldn't survive the chemotherapy. "It is very clearly a sad situation," said ICE spokesman Tim Counts. But, he added, "The family has made some poor decisions that have led to some very difficult situations. It is of their own making." According to ICE, the mother first was ordered deported in 1994 and was sent to Mexico in 1997. She was caught twice trying to re-enter the United States in late 1997 and early 2000. She made it back in sometime in late 2000 but was picked up at her St. Michael home Oct. 5. Sanchez-Zurita has been in mandatory detention for the past two weeks as a result of re-entering the country in 2000. Her daughter, four other children ages 3 to 12 and their father are in St. Michael. Counts said ICE could pursue criminal charges against the mother for coming back to the United States but has decided instead to have her 1997 deportation order reinstated. Centro Legal said the mother would be willing to be monitored until her daughter dies, which doctors have said will happen within two years, and then go back to Mexico. "How much more extraordinary can a situation be?" asked an exasperated Gloria Contreras Edin, executive director of Centro Legal. ICE agents "have the discretion to lower the priority of her deportation to the extent that they would allow her to be with her daughter based on humanitarian grounds." While ICE has said the family has options - the father can take care of the young girl or the girl can go to Mexico to be with her mother - Contreras Edin said those are not alternatives. "If they deport her, the daughter will have to go into the custody of foster care. The father can't take care of her - he's taking care of four other children," she said. The girl's around-the-clock treatment also would be impossible to duplicate in Mexico, Contreras Edin added. "It's very frustrating," she said. "I think this immigration debate has turned into a human rights disaster." John Brewer can be reached at 651-228-2093 or at jbrewer@pioneerpress.com.