The stories of thousands who seek new
lives in the
By ANNA GORMAN,
Times Staff Writer
LA Times
Mercedalia Diaz was tired of being an illegal immigrant, living in fear of
arrest and separation from her young son. So she filed an application to work
legally in the
After a permit was denied, Diaz landed here, in
Fidgeting with her hands, Diaz responded in Spanish, through an
interpreter.
"My son was born here," the 29-year-old mother said. "I want the
best for him. I don't want him to go through what I went through."
Then Diaz told her story to Judge Bruce J. Einhorn, beginning with her
decision, 15 years
ago, to illegally cross the border into the
It is Einhorn's job to hear tales of desperation from the immigrants who fill
the wooden benches of his courtroom. Many have broken the law by covertly
crossing into the
Once here, most have the same goal: to avoid deportation. The odds of success
are slim last year, in nearly 85% of cases nationwide, judges ordered
immigrants to leave.
Many, like Diaz, plead less for justice than for mercy.
She was among dozens to appear in Einhorn's downtown courtroom over two weeks
this summer. Her case and others in the
As judges go, Einhorn, 51, is informal. He teases attorneys, talks baseball and
occasionally sprinkles his speech with Spanish phrases. A 16-year veteran of
the court, Einhorn is bound by immigration case law. But he has some
discretion.
In that narrow opening, Diaz and others place their hopes. To win legal
residency, Diaz has to prove to Einhorn that she has lived here at least 10
years, that she has "good moral character" and that her deportation
would cause her son "exceptional and extremely unusual" hardship.
She told the judge that she had never committed a serious crime and had worked
steadily earning about $20,000 a year as a house and office cleaner. She
recently bought a house in
"You know I don't make house calls?" Einhorn said.
"Yes, I know," she responded, looking down.
Diaz wavered when asked what she would do with her son Edwin, 4, if she were
deported. First she said she had arranged for a niece to raise him, then that
she would take him with her, then that she didn't know what she would do.
In
"You don't think you could clean houses in
"No, there is not enough money," she said.
Diaz left dejected. She was sure the judge's questions pointed to deportation,
although the formal decision isn't likely to come until a November hearing.
Outside the courtroom, she hugged Edwin, mentally questioning her decision to
come forward.
"You have illusions that you are going to be able to get your
papers," she said. "When you get to court, it's different
. It's not
that easy."
Ask Filadelphia Sanchez why she most wants to stay in the
Just over a year ago, Christian saw his 8-year-old brother struck and killed by
a car as the two were walking home from school. Since then, to cope with his
sadness, he has been seeing a therapist a service the family fears would be
hard to find in
But Sanchez didn't get a chance to talk to the judge about that. As a matter of
law, the only thing that mattered was her prior criminal conviction.
In 1998, eight years after Sanchez illegally crossed the border at San Ysidro,
police responded to a neighbor's call about a fight between Sanchez and her
husband, Ruben Salas. She was arrested and later pleaded guilty to hitting
Salas, landing her in
"The marriage was young," said Salas, who owns a seafood restaurant
in
Later, Sanchez's father, a green-card holder, applied for permanent residency
on her behalf. It was denied. She was in court on this day as a last resort,
hoping the judge would allow her to stay with her family.
As Christian sat in the front row, Einhorn made clear he could not help her.
According to an appellate court decision, an illegal immigrant convicted of
domestic violence cannot not stay in the
Einhorn dictated the Sanchez decision into a tape recorder: "She is now
present in the
As Emily leaned against her, Sanchez, 31, put her head in her hands and cried.
With teary eyes, Christian looked up at his father beside him. Hearing the
boy's muffled sobs, the court clerk motioned to Salas to take him into the
hallway.
The judge turned to the government attorney. "We're not here to break the
hearts of children," he said.
Seven years after he left the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and four years
after he filed an application for asylum, Revaz Cotsiridze, 33, sat between his
attorney and a Russian interpreter for what he hoped would be his final court
hearing.
His aim: never to meet up again with the Georgian police. In court papers, he
laid out a harrowing account of harassment, threats and beatings at the hands
of authorities in his homeland.
He could hardly have happened upon a more knowledgeable judge: Einhorn helped
draft the nation's first asylum law.
Einhorn said he had carefully read Cotsiridze's account, along with a U.S.
State Department report on
The judge's words sounded encouraging until he noted a technical problem. Cotsiridze
had failed to file for asylum within a year of arrival, as is generally
required.
Cotsiridze listened intently to his interpreter, staring straight ahead.
"I was scared," he said later. "I thought he would send me home
to
His troubles with Georgian police began in the late 1990s, according to his
application, when he tried to intervene with authorities on behalf of an
elderly man being evicted from an apartment and a starving boy whom he
sheltered at his auto body shop. Both were yezids, members of a persecuted ethnic minority.
After Cotsiridze reported the poor living conditions at a yezid camp to a human rights
organization, he said, police interrogated him.
"They threw me on the floor, kicking me with heavy boots. One of the
interrogators opened the window and said that if I shall not cooperate with
them, they will throw me out of the window to my death."
After being released, Cotsiridze wrote, he complained to the Georgian
parliament. Police tracked him down again, punching and kicking him until he
was unconscious.
In February 1999, Cotsiridze got a
Cotsiridze's attorney, Reynold Finnegan, proposed an alternative called
"withholding of removal." The
Cotsiridze was willing, and so was Einhorn.
"You are not going back to
The Kenyan woman's voice quavered. Her hands trembled.
"I need the details," Einhorn told her. "God and the devil and
this case are all in the details."
Her story began in 1998, she said through a Swahili interpreter, when her
husband by an arranged marriage became the head of a religious cult. She said
he returned from "religious training" a different man demanding and
violent.
"He was forcing me into another religion," she answered. "He
wanted me to be circumcised."
"Did he ever beat you?" Einhorn asked.
"Many times," she said, adding later: "He used his hands,
sticks, you name it."
On this day, the 39-year-old woman was asking for asylum, saying her husband
a former government security official had threatened to kill her. Fearful
that he might find her in the
Under Einhorn's questioning, the woman described what she had heard about
female circumcision: In villages, not hospitals, girls as young as 10 were
sprayed with sand and flour, dipped in water and given something for the pain.
Then two villagers cut them with a knife.
Female genital mutilation is against the law in
Fearing that religious group leaders would take both her and her daughter by
force, she fled her village in 1999 while her husband was gone.
"The police wouldn't offer me any help," she said, adding that she
reported him four times. "They wanted a bribe."
By 2000, she was living in
"I went into hiding," she said.
She sent her daughter, then 13, to stay with a woman she had met through
church. Her husband continued to search for her, she said, even going to the
woman's hometown and threatening her mother's life.
A few times during the hearing, Einhorn asked if she needed a break. Each time,
she shook her head.
After attorneys for the woman and the
Looking directly into the woman's eyes before he ended the court session,
however, Einhorn said he was "strongly leaning" toward granting
asylum.
"This court," he said, "is convinced of this case."