Arrest and Deportation of Guatemalan Student Leave Mark on Campus

Mynor Sandoval was on his way to class at Cal State Fullerton when a campus police officer and an immigration agent stopped him at the door of Room 657.

Sandoval, 32, was arrested and swiftly taken to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s center in Los Angeles, then to Las Vegas and finally to Florence, Ariz. Charged with living in the United States illegally since 1971, the student was given a hearing May 31 and ordered deported. He is to be returned to Guatemala today.

The March 20 arrest abruptly ended what Sandoval calls his 14-year quest for an education. It prompted an outcry at Cal State Fullerton from individuals and organizations concerned about the presence of a federal agency on campus and the university’s role in the arrest.

The university has since adopted the policy that it will not assist immigration authorities in any future cases involving suspected undocumented aliens on campus.

A spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles says the federal agency was simply doing its job.

“He was living here illegally,” said the spokesman, Joe Flanders. “Our agent was enforcing the laws.”

Flanders said the INS first became aware of Sandoval last year, when he submitted a falsified application for a birth certificate he hoped would pave the way for him to become a U.S. citizen. Officials tracked him to a New York school, where they learned he also had been receiving financial aid from the government by claiming to be a citizen, Flanders said.

Stolen-Property Charge

Authorities said Sandoval also was being sought in Pittsford, N.Y., for allegedly failing to appear in court to answer charges of possession of stolen property.

But to Sandoval’s friends and professors, who described him with adjectives such as hard-working, jovial, outgoing, inquisitive and respectful, news of his arrest came as a shock. Sandoval had transferred to Cal State Fullerton last September and was one semester shy of his bachelor’s degree.

In a telephone interview from the INS detention center in Arizona, Sandoval said that when he reaches Guatemala, “I’m going to jump right back.

“Ever since I was small, I wanted to write,” he said. “I wanted to learn. Once (in Guatemala) I gave a talk about our society to some friends at school. I later learned that two men were looking for me. I was scared. I knew I had to leave. I realized that in my country, I could not be the man I wanted to be.”

Even to others in the university community who did not know Sandoval, the March 20 arrest with the help of campus police raised serious questions. Several Latino student groups circulated a petition protesting the INS action and the university’s complicity.

“I was totally shocked by what happened,” said Jacqueline Kiraithe, head of the university’s foreign languages and literature department. “I was shocked that the immigration department came on campus, and I was shocked that a student just, in a sense, disappeared.

“My feeling is that he is a young man who came with a great determination looking for an opportunity to be educated, and who supported himself through high school and college, and whose desire for learning was great,” Kiraithe said. “It seems to me that the immigration service could find people who are really criminals. They cut him off when he was almost there. It breaks my heart.”

It was Sandoval’s arrest record in New York that Cal State officials said made this case something other than a simple immigration issue and justified campus police involvement. Flanders, however, said the INS was concerned with the illegal immigration charges, not the charges pending in New York.

Groups Petitioned for Policy

Campus groups such as the Latin Indian Speech Assn., the Mexican-American Engineering Society and the Mexican American Outreach Assn. circulated a petition asking for a clearly defined university procedure for dealing with the INS.

Cal State Fullerton President Jewel Plummer Cobb announced April 23 that the university “will not assist in cases which relate only to the possible undocumented status of a student.” The word “not” was underlined. Previously, the university did not have a policy for such situations.

The campus groups quickly endorsed Cobb’s policy.

Roger Nudd, the university’s vice president for student affairs, said the new policy calls for campus police to notify the administration before assisting the INS in an immigration case.

Linda Wong, of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, believes that “the students’ concern is legitimate. Once the university even opens the door, INS or any other agency will try to push it wide open,” she said.

Sandoval contends the stolen-property charge he faces in New York State is unwarranted. He said he bought the items in question for $60 from a stranger on the street. “I have never stolen anything. My record is clean,” Sandoval said. “The only thing I ever lied about was being an American so that I could obtain (financial) help for an education.

“For me, it was essential to get an education,” he said. “Freedom of mind and spirit is one of the fundamental reasons that I came to America.”

Sandoval said he first left Guatemala at the age of 16. He said he hitchhiked through Central America and Mexico, sneaked across the border and made his way to Los Angeles. He attended high school in Los Angeles and colleges in New York and Philadelphia before returning to California to enroll at Cal State Fullerton.

Earned Degree in New York

Along the way, he received an Associate of Arts degree with emphasis on criminal justice at Onondaga College in Syracuse, N.Y., where he became friends with the chairman of the college’s criminal justice department, Richard Lombardo.

“We used to have philosophical discussions,” Lombardo recalled. “He wanted to work for the federal government. He wanted to make the world a better place. . . . I thought he was a good kid. I’d fight for him.”

Sandoval’s sister, Ada, who now lives with her husband and two children in Garden Grove, said her brother “came because he wanted to study and my mother couldn’t afford to give him that. He wanted to be somebody in life.”

Ada Sandoval said she now is concerned with her brother’s safety when he returns to Guatemala. “In Guatemala, they’ll kill you regardless of whether you’re involved in politics,” she said.

Jaime Flores, social services coordinator of El Rescate, an L.A.-based center for Central American refugees, said any Central American citizen returning to his country after a prolonged absence can expect to be investigated and looked upon cautiously.

Had Sandoval sought political asylum, his chance of attaining such a status would have been slim, Flores said. Sandoval said he did not want to seek political asylum for fear he would be turned down and then sent back to an even more suspicious Guatemalan government.