FAYETTEVILLE : Sick daughter secures woman's stay in U.S.
Posted on Friday, January 9, 2009
A daughter's illness, not four days alone in a Washington County holding cell, was enough to gain Adriana Torres-Flores legal permanent resident status.
Torres-Flores, 39, of Springdale won a rare deportation reprieve this week in immigration proceedings prompted by a December 2007 arrest on misdemeanor charges of selling pirated CDs and DVDs.
On March 6, Judge William Storey revoked her bail bond and sent Torres-Flores to a courthouse holding cell after she refused to plead guilty to the pirating charges. A bailiff left her in the cell until March 10 with no food or water in a case that gained national attention.
Prosecutors later dropped the pirating charges against her, saying they lacked evidence.
The notoriety of the case had nothing to do with Wednesday's immigration ruling in Memphis that she could stay in the United States, her attorney Roy Petty said.
"The law doesn't care about the hardship of the applicant, so the time Adriana spent locked up doesn't matter," Petty said.
The ruling was unusual because most deportation hearings end with a decision to send the immigrant to his home country, said Elizabeth Young, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Federal law caps the number of such adjustments that can be granted each year at 4,000, Young said. It is difficult to prove a person qualifies, she said, and requires a lot of evidence.
The judge won't take someone's word that their child is sick but must be given proof from doctors and nurses, Young said. They also will want to see prescriptions and medical reports, she said.
"It's not every day that someone gets granted the relief," she said.
Children, who often are born in the United States and are citizens, are involved in many of the cases where a person is granted relief, Young said, but a sick parent or spouse who is a citizen also can be used as a reason to stop deportation. She said she's seen a few cases where a spouse had cancer.
The citizen being left behind must face "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship," if the alien is deported, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review.
Under the ruling, Torres-Flores can get a job and apply for citizenship in five years.
The person seeking to stay in the U.S. also has to be of "good moral character," Petty said.
Petty said his client wouldn't have been eligible had the charges against her not been dropped.
"A very important thing was that the charges were dropped," he said. "If they had not been dropped, if she had been convicted of selling pirated CDs, she would not have been granted relief no matter how sick her daughter is."
Torres-Flores was arrested at a Springdale flea market, where police said she was selling merchandise. She was set to plead guilty to the charges in March but changed her mind at the last minute, and Storey revoked her bail bond, sending her to a holding cell outside his courtroom.
The 8 1 /2-by-9 1 /2 foot room is not meant for long-term stays and doesn't have a toilet or running water. Torres-Flores used a shoe for a pillow and drank her own urine.
She has been treated for post traumatic stress disorder after the incident, Petty said. Because of that, he said, they brought it up in court Wednesday.
"We tried to argue that it affects her children, but the judge said it was not an issue in the case," Petty said. "Legally, he's right."
All that matters is how her deportation affects her daughter, 10-year-old Christina, who suffers from an undiagnosed illness, possibly Crohn's disease, Petty said.
Relief was granted because Torres-Flores' daughter would not get adequate medical treatment in Mexico, which would probably lead to her death, Petty said.
Contrary to what many believe, illegal aliens can't gain permanent resident status simply by having a baby on U.S. soil. Torres-Flores, who could not be reached for comment Thursday, had four children in the U.S., he said.
"I wish there were such a thing as an anchor baby, because it would make our jobs a lot easier," Petty said.
Petty will file for permanent resident status for Torres-Flores' husband, Cruz Torres, although he won't be eligible for several years. Immigration officials said they don't anticipate arresting Torres, who also is in the country illegally.
There are too many illegal aliens to make such exceptions, said Bob Dane, spokesman for Federation for American Immigration Reform.
The Washington-based organization doesn't espouse a mass deportation of all illegal aliens but does believe law enforcement should never look the other way, Dane said.
"We're either following the rules and applying them fairly, or we're not," he said.
Due process and humane treatment must be afforded to everyone, Dane said, but there is no cause for people to use their children as a shield against prosecution. Aliens know they are coming here illegally, he said, and could be separated from their children.
"That's sad. But what's sadder is that our immigration attorneys often tell their clients to use that argument to circumvent [the law]," Dane said. "It's one of the components on the game board of gaming the system."
To contact this reporter:
awallworth@arkansasonline.com
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