Delay Sought on INS Hearing : Congressman Acts to Aid DeBeer Fight Deportation

The young Orange County man who killed his guardian after what he said were years of sexual abuse won the support of a Northern California congressman Wednesday as he prepared to fight an attempt by the government to deport him to the Netherlands.

The case of Joeri DeBeer drew national attention when jurors who convicted him of manslaughter in the killing of his guardian urged the sentencing judge to show leniency.

DeBeer, 18, is now on probation and living in Northern California and has been informed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service that he is in the country illegally. He faces a deportation hearing in San Francisco this morning.

U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) wrote a letter Wednesday requesting an immigration judge to postpone the hearing. DeBeer is currently living in Miller’s district.

“It appears that this young man has met all the conditions of his probation and has made tremendous progress since his release from Juvenile Hall,” Miller wrote. “In light of this information, I respectfully request that you consider a continuance of the trial regarding issues of deportability.”

The decision to start deportation proceedings against DeBeer was made by David N. Ilchert, district director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in San Francisco. Ilchert said he ordered the deportation hearing because DeBeer violated his non-immigrant student status when he committed a crime of “moral turpitude.”

“He committed a horrible crime,” Ilchert said Wednesday. “The kid’s got no business being in the United States. They can reform him in his native land.”

John R. Alcorn, an Irvine-based immigration attorney representing DeBeer, said he hoped to convince the immigration judge, James Vandello, to postpone the deportation hearing, allowing the INS to reconsider its position.

“I’m simply hoping that when they reconsider the case, they’ll understand the merits of it and withdraw the (deportation) order . . . to allow Joeri at least to go to school this year, continue his counseling, and get on the straight track,” Alcorn said.

On May 21, DeBeer was found guilty of manslaughter by an Orange County Superior Court jury for the shooting death of his legal guardian, Phillip A. Parsons. DeBeer told the court that Parsons, a convicted child molester, had molested him numerous times over four years and had tried to molest him again just before his death.

Set Body on Fire

On April 9, 1985, DeBeer shot Parsons in the head, then placed his body in a van and drove to Riverside County, where he doused the body with gasoline and set it on fire.

The case attracted wide attention when the jury that convicted the Netherlands-born youth appeared at his sentencing and pleaded for leniency.

Facing a possible 14 years and 8 months in prison, DeBeer was instead sentenced to three years’ probation plus the 14 months he had already spent in Juvenile Hall.

Ilchert said DeBeer’s case was a clear violation of immigration law. “He’s an overstayed student, and at the time of his last admission from Mexico about two months ago he was inadmissible to the United States because he had been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude.”

Jenny Ward, with whom DeBeer has been living in Contra Costa County, said Wednesday night that DeBeer went to Mexico with his former Orange County lawyer on a fishing trip.

In an interview Saturday, Howard W. Ezell, western regional commissioner for the INS, defended the attempt to deport DeBeer, and said, “He’s got a family in the Netherlands. It’s not like he’s being deported to Siberia.”

Alcorn, however, said he feared for DeBeer if the youth is forced to return to Holland. “Joeri’s birth-mother and father are divorced in Holland. His stepfather and birth-mother apparently don’t have any interest in him. He’s had no contact with his birth-father. If he were deported to Holland, he might end up on his own, with an incomplete education and the terrible experiences (of) his adolescence.

‘In Stable Environment

“For the first time in his life, as far as I know, he’s in a stable home environment where there’s a positive, healthy father figure and mother figure and two other sons. He’s attending his classes, he’s going to see his counselor once a week, and he’s doing really well.”

DeBeer has been living in Oakley, a small rural community about 50 miles east of San Francisco, with the family of Syd and Jenny Ward, whom he met while racing motorcycles with their two sons. He currently attends a community college, with his tuition paid by a trust fund set up by one of the jurors.

Alcorn, who is representing DeBeer free of charge, said he has a dual problem in winning INS permission for the youth to remain in the country. First, he must get DeBeer a “waiver of of excludability” for the manslaughter conviction or convince the INS to withdraw the deportation order. He said that he will then try to renew DeBeer’s student status.

DeBeer’s passport was confiscated Sept. 30 by INS agents in Oakley. One day later, DeBeer surrendered to INS agents in San Francisco, where he was arrested and later charged with being in the country illegally.

DeBeer was released from Oakland City Jail Oct. 3 when one of the Orange County jurors put up the $5,000 bail bond to secure his release.