‘Model’ Family Facing End of Line in America

In the computers of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Victor Gamez Lopez is known as A-24266189.

He’s listed as an illegal alien who, along with his wife and five children, is under orders to leave the country by Oct. 14.

To those who know Gamez Lopez and his family, he is more than a number. To them he is an honest, reliable, hard-working man who fits the mold of the Model American: a family man who is active in his church and his children’s schools and who has worked his way to a middle-class status.

But under the law, none of that counts. By necessity, the rules of the immigration game--in which many of the players are kicked out of the country one day only to return the next--are either black or white. Shades of gray are few.

Amid the maze of rigid regulations and controversy surrounding U.S. immigration laws, the stories of individual human beings--people whose futures hang precariously in the balance--often get lost.

In official files, Gamez Lopez’s story begins on Aug. 31, 1980, when he and his family were stopped while riding in their car by Oceanside police, though they had broken no laws. They were not cited or informed of violations. The policeman turned them over to the INS at San Clemente, where they were identified as illegal aliens, given a number and released. A five-year legal battle has ensued.

But his real story begins years before his detention, in 1973, when, as a farm laborer in his late 20s, he was hired by Stout Avocado Co. as a minimum-wage worker to help plant a 40-acre grove next to Starvation Mountain Road near here.

The Stouts, Paul and Betty, noticed his hard work and decided to hire him full time. It wasn’t long before they made him supervisor of the grove, which has now grown to 135 acres. Eight years ago, Gamez Lopez moved his family from Aguas Calientes, a small village, to a three-bedroom house on the avocado farm, where they still live.

“They’re good people. They’ve never been on welfare,” says Betty Stout, Gamez Lopez’s boss. “Victor is one of the few people I wouldn’t be afraid to turn over my bank account to and know it would remain untouched. He and his wife have raised their kids like Americans did 20 or 25 years ago.” Stout is paying for the family’s immigration attorney.

“I know the law is the law, but there ought to be something available to protect people who are good,” Stout added. “They are part of my family now. The kids will be the aliens now when they go to Mexico.”

That is also what worries Gamez Lopez, 40, who has two children in high school and three others in elementary school.

“We are very worried for them,” he says. “They are doing well in school here. They are very sad. We have nothing in Mexico. The village I come from is very poor. I just don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Teresa Gamez Lopez, 16, a sophomore at San Pasqual High School, says she and her brothers and sisters have spent most of their lives in the United States. She added, “I don’t think we could manage well at all in Mexico. English is a lot easier for us.”

“I don’t want to go. This is pretty unfair. We were told the longer we stayed here, the better the chances of us getting a green card,” Teresa said. “We haven’t been to Mexico since we moved here. Even when our grandmother died, we stayed here.”

Since 1977, the family has set down roots in the Escondido community. Both Victor and his wife, Felipa, attended night school to learn English. They became active participants in church and school activities. Their reputation is such that various people, including the school principal and parish priest, have undertaken a last-ditch letter-writing campaign in the hope of postponing or quashing the deportation order.

“They go to church, the kids are in Bible study classes. They are an asset to this country, not a liability,” said Father Fredrick K. Florek, pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church. “We feel there should be humanitarian reasons for an exception.”

Marydee Hinrichs, principal of San Pasqual Union School, is among those who have written letters to the INS and others. “The kids are always here; they are clean and their parents make them study,” she said. “I’m horrified that they are after this particular family. This is the kind of people we want to come, who are productive and participate. This is a terrible crime for the children, who can’t really read or write Spanish.”

Painfully aware that his agency has been placed in the position of wearing the black hat, Cliff Rogers, deputy district director of the INS office in San Diego, says the Gamez Lopez family contributed to its own troubles by fighting the deportation process.

“By prolonging the process it makes it harder to leave, no question about it,” he says. “We just don’t haul off families. But each time there was an appeal, the family stayed and became more involved in the community.

“I agree he might be an upstanding member of the community, but the bottom line is he and his family are here illegally, and now the legal process has gone its full course. This is a simple matter of how using the legal avenues available to people who are here illegally can stall deportation proceedings.”

Rogers says the INS in the past has delayed its voluntary deportation order for the Gamez Lopezes until the end of a school year. “He’s not the only one in that position,” Rogers said. “What’s the difference of five years in his case versus someone else who is also a good person and been here just one year?”

After Gamez Lopez was detained in 1980, he signed an INS document saying he would voluntarily leave the country within 10 days, Rogers said. Instead, relying on advice of his friends and attorney, Gamez Lopez appealed the deportation. At each level, from a hearing before an immigration court judge to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, he lost. The last appeal was rejected in May.

While his case was wending its way through the legal system, Gamez Lopez pinned his family’s hopes on controversial immigration legislation in Congress known as the Simpson-Mazzoli bill. One part of the bill offered amnesty to immigrants living in the United States as of the late 1970s, which would have covered the Gamez Lopezes.

But the bill died, dashing the family’s hopes.

Donovan J. Dunnion of San Diego, the family’s second lawyer, says that, with the exception of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, this is the end of the line for the family. He is attempting to convert the deportation order to a voluntary deportation, which would allow the family to apply for visas in the future. However, Rogers, of the INS, said such a change is unlikely, since Gamez Lopez had opportunities to leave voluntarily and didn’t.

“The policies are quite rigid and that’s the problem,” Dunnion said. “This is a nice, nice family. It seems the current laws are just designed to deport nice people . . . while the scum-of-the-earth people don’t fight it and come right back.”