Teacher Tries to Help Deported Boy

An Orange schoolteacher who tried to win the release over the weekend of a 13-year-old Mexican boy from a deportation facility on the Mexican border said Monday that she gave up when it became apparent that she would have to bring him back to the United States illegally.

Victor Amador Garcia was a student in Carol Pei’s seventh-grade class at McPherson Junior High School until last week. Immigration and Naturalization Service agents took him into custody Thursday while he was riding his bicycle to school and transported him to the border.

INS officials say Victor told them that his parents live in Culiacan in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Victor says he lied to them to protect his mother, who is an illegal alien living in Orange.

Saturday, Pei drove to the border to try to bring Victor back.

“We contacted immigration officials in San Diego but learned the boy was in a juvenile facility in Mexico,” Pei said. “They said we could pick up the child in Mexico, but you can’t (legally) bring him back to the United States.”

“We just couldn’t,” she said.

INS officials have said they detained the boy, who is being held in a Tijuana juvenile facility, after he interfered with a sweep of undocumented workers by riding on his bicycle and yelling warnings that INS vans were approaching. Victor has denied this.

Monday, an immigration attorney in Los Angeles described the youth’s apprehension as “irrational and improper.”

“I think the policy of arresting children really should be questioned,” said Peter A. Schey, director of the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights Inc. “When there are 6 million undocumented workers here in this country, and, as the INS claims, that U.S. citizens’ jobs are being taken, one has to seriously question the rationale and sensibility of devoting limited enforcement resources to arresting juveniles.

“It doesn’t make any sense, especially in this case, to rush him through a deportation process and expel him out of the country when there are no relatives who can help him.”

Money Wired to Sister

The boy’s mother wired $130 on Monday to a daughter in Veracruz for a bus trip to Tijuana that she hopes will lead to her son’s release. The mother, who also has a 6-year-old daughter, said she is fearful that if she travels to Tijuana she, too, will be picked up by immigration agents and deported.

Schey said it “was naive” for the INS to believe that “one way or another” the boy would not re-enter this country, probably with the assistance of a smuggler, to rejoin his mother.

“Little is gained, either from a law-enforcement standpoint, legal standpoint or humanitarian standpoint by summarily expelling children from a country even though they have immediate relatives here,” Schey said.

Nativo Lopez, an immigrants’ rights spokesman with Hermandad Mexicana Nacional in Santa Ana, criticized the INS decision to conduct last week’s raid in Orange.

“Picking up children who are here illegally is common,” he said. “But I ask the question: Why do they have to round up anybody at all?”

The day Victor was caught, his teacher saw men running down Orange streets during the raid on her way to work.

“You should have seen it,” Pei said in an interview Monday. “These men were running everywhere. Each one it seemed had this frightened look in his eyes. You could just see it.”

On Saturday, Pei, her 3-year-old son and 6-month-old twin daughters drove with Magdalena Flores, a McPherson bilingual aide who is eight months pregnant, to the San Diego area in an attempt to bring Victor back to Orange.

With a notarized letter authorizing them to act on behalf of the boy’s mother, they first drove to National City but were told by INS officials that the boy would be at the INS office in Chula Vista.

Told He Had Been Moved

“When we got there, they then told us he had been moved to San Ysidro,” Pei said. “When we got to San Ysidro, they said a Mexican consulate official took the boy through the Otay Mesa border crossing into Mexico.”

Her options were few. At first the INS told her it would cost $2,000 for a bond ensuring the boy’s return for a deportation hearing, she said. They didn’t have the money.

“Magdalena phoned the mother, who made it quite clear that she wanted us to cross into Mexico, release the boy and help him return to the United States,” Pei said.

Pei said she understood the mother’s desperate plea but just could not do it.

They returned to Orange County late Saturday.

Harriett Bakenhus, a school district official, praised the women’s efforts and those of McPherson counselor Jim Bartell, who spent part of Friday telephoning the Mexican consulate on behalf of Victor’s mother.

“Even though we’re not an immigration agency, we do try and help out in the community whenever we can,” Bakenhus said.

Pei said she was motivated by professional and personal considerations to try to help Victor.

Understood Plight

“I believe that anybody who helps someone new in America will hopefully help them become a better citizen,” she said. “Everyone in this country needs an education to help them improve themselves and give them hope. To help someone like this would only be a positive effort.”

Flores, who is from Guadalajara, Mexico, said she was prompted to help the boy and his mother because she understood their plight.

“I feel that a lot of people who are Mexican and living here don’t often know what to do in situations like this,” she said. “Sometime they have trouble with police or agencies. But if I can help in a little way, I believe that they can keep progressing.”