Young Salvadoran Fights INS to Keep Dream Alive

Just after they finished the long trek from El Salvador to the United States six years ago, 14-year-old Miguel Perez made one last promise to his dying mother.

“I told her that I would succeed, that I would become somebody,” said Perez, now 20. “She gave up her life for me.”

After years of hard work and study, Perez has kept his promise. Today, he is a standout third-year psychology student at Cal State Dominguez Hills and was recently offered a summer research position at Penn State.

But Perez’s academic career may be cut short, and his drive to succeed may be frustrated if, as scheduled, he is deported March 9 by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Since university officials learned of the pending deportation order a week ago, they have rallied to support him, writing letters and making phone calls to immigration officials and U.S. congressmen.

The campaign to halt the deportation was just the latest episode of a saga that started with Perez leaving the port city of La Union in eastern El Salvador and finally arriving in South Gate to begin an uncertain life as an undocumented immigrant.

Perez and his mother were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents minutes after they illegally crossed the Mexican border on foot near San Ysidro in January, 1984.

After a few weeks in separate INS detention cells, both were released when they applied for political asylum. Soon afterward, Perez’s mother died and he became an orphan at 14.

Perez’s asylum application dragged through immigration court for more than five years, until last December when his final appeal before the Board of Immigration Appeals was denied.

Immigration attorneys say cases such as Perez’s are common among young undocumented immigrants in Southern California who have been abandoned by their parents or whose parents have died since coming to the United States. Even though the young immigrants may have grown into adulthood in this country, they face deportation if they have been unable to legalize their status.

Peter Schey, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, said in the past few years his agency has handled several hundred cases of young immigrants who have been returned, alone, to their native countries.

“We’ve received collect calls from children at the airport in San Salvador, saying, ‘What do I do? I’m here at the airport? Where do I go? I don’t have any money,’ ” Schey said.

Immigration officials said youths are turned over to the proper authorities in the countries to which they are deported.

“We don’t just flip them across the border,” said INS spokesman Joe Flanders. Once an immigration judge orders a deportation, the INS must carry it out. In some cases, Flanders said, immigration officials will provide a small stipend to indigent deportees.

In denying Perez political asylum in May, 1988, Immigration Judge Robert Griffin said Perez had “failed to establish that his life or freedom would be threatened in El Salvador.” Perez’s attorneys counter that the Santa Ana lawyer who originally handled the asylum application simply neglected to present evidence to show Perez might be in danger if he returned to his homeland.

Because Perez has grown into adulthood in the United States, he worries that he may find it difficult to adjust to life in El Salvador if forced to return. He speaks both English and Spanish fluently and his friends say he seems to be almost as American as he is Salvadoran.

Most immigrants deported from the United States to El Salvador know that, at the very least, a familiar culture will be waiting for them. Perez, however, doesn’t even have any living relatives there.

“There’s no one for him to go back to in El Salvador,” said Carl M. Shusterman, one of his attorneys. “He’s completely Americanized.”

Perez said of his possible return to El Salvador: “It certainly would be reverse cultural shock. I’ve been accustomed to the way we do things here.”

Shusterman and Jay Segal, who is also representing Perez, said they don’t blame the INS for the scheduled deportation.

Shusterman said after reviewing court documents he believes that the attorney who originally handled Perez’s asylum application displayed “total incompetence.”

In one 1988 court appearance, the Santa Ana attorney who represented him presented no documentary evidence to support Perez’s claim that he had reason to fear persecution if he was returned to El Salvador, Shusterman said.

“Miguel’s interests were not served. His case showed a total lack of preparation,” Segal added. “I have never seen this in 30 years of practice.”

The attorney was suspended by the State Bar of California in 1988, bar officials said. He faces a variety of allegations in State Bar Court, including that he misled a Canadian immigrant applying for a “green card,” a temporary residency card.

Shusterman, a former INS prosecutor, said he would file an appeal next week in Perez’s case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco. He also directed Perez to request asylum, as a last resort, from the Canadian Consulate in Los Angeles.

At Cal State Dominguez Hills, school officials expressed shock that the popular and successful student soon might be forced out of the country.

“He’s just a tremendous young man,” said Catherine Shaffer, a financial aid counselor who said she invited Perez to spend last Christmas with her family in Ukiah, in Northern California. “This is devastating. Everyone here is writing letters and doing what needs to be done to keep him here.”

University Vice President Louis Murdock contacted the office of Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Los Angeles) to plead Perez’s case. Dymally’s office contacted Shusterman’s law firm, which agreed to take the case.

Perez belongs to several student organizations at the university, including an association of minority social-science researchers. He has written articles for the newsletter of the Chicano News Media Assn., criticizing U.S. immigration authorities for their policies on political asylum cases. He also once served as volunteer photo editor for Americas 2001, a Latino-affairs magazine.

And even though he is not an American citizen, on several occasions he has written to his congressmen to criticize U.S. support for the Salvadoran government. Perez’s attorneys say the letters may place his life in danger if he must return to El Salvador.

“I came to the conclusion that U.S. aid to El Salvador does more harm than good,” Perez said, explaining why he wrote the letters. “It leaves no possibility for change in the country. A few rich people are in power.”

Teachers at South Gate High School, which Perez entered in 1984 while living with his sister and an elderly aunt, find it remarkable that Perez has progressed so far in his studies. When he first came to the school, he “didn’t know a word of English,” said Rena Patton, an instructor in English as a second language.

Within a year, Perez had mastered the language, Patton said. Eventually, he graduated 12th in a class of more than 500 seniors.

“He’s probably the most outstanding student I’ve ever had in my career as a teacher,” Patton said.

Perez returns to the high school every semester to talk to Spanish-speaking students about the importance of seeking an education, Patton said.

“That’s the remarkable thing about him. He didn’t just take from the school and run away. He’s wanted to put back into education what he took out. . . . If he’s forced to go to Canada, it will be their gain and our loss.”

If he returns to El Salvador, Perez will for the first time visit the grave of his mother, Elena Manzano, who was buried there after she died in Los Angeles of heart disease at the age of 61.