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Mar. 05, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Father deported to Mexico leaves behind wife, six young children

ICE officers use ruse to nab man

By LYNNETTE CURTIS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Slideshow

Five of the six Quezada children gather Tuesday with their mother in the family's house. Celeste, 4, left, Geovana, 10, Lola, 6, Ruby, 3, Giselle, 1, and their mother, Baudelia Quezada, were at home on the evening of Feb. 23 when Raymundo Quezada was arrested by immigration officials. He has since been deported to Mexico. The eldest Quezada child, an 11-year-old boy, was in school Tuesday.
Photo by Craig L. Moran.

Four-year-old Celeste Quezada came bouncing into the living room Tuesday morning and, with a soberness far beyond her years, said something that had her four pig-tailed sisters quickly nodding in agreement: "I want my dad back."

But the girls' 34-year-old father, Raymundo Quezada, won't be back anytime soon. He's stuck in Mexico, where he was deported last week.

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    • He and his wife, 33-year-old Baudelia Quezada, knew they were taking their chances when they crossed into the United States illegally about 14 years ago, hoping for a better life.

    But their six American-born children, including their eldest, an 11-year-old son who was in school on Tuesday, don't really understand that. They just want their dad back.

    "His name is Raymundo," 10-year-old Geovana said while her sisters watched "Tom and Jerry" reruns on the family's television. "When he went outside, the police got him."

    It happened the evening of Feb. 23, when Baudelia was getting her children ready for bed. Someone began pounding on the front door.

    Two men and two women, dressed mostly in black, stood on the front porch of the family's east Las Vegas home, holding a photo of a man Baudelia had never seen before.

    They told her in Spanish that they were looking for the "dangerous man" in the photo and believed he was hiding in the family's backyard.

    Baudelia called to her husband that police were at the house. She ushered her frightened children into a back bedroom.

    When Raymundo opened the door and stepped outside, he was pushed against the side of the house and handcuffed, Baudelia said.

    "They said, 'He's the one we're looking for,'" she said.

    One of the four people handed her a card that read: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    Illegal immigrants get deported all the time, said Malena Burnett, the owner of a local business that helps immigrants with citizenship applications and other legal issues and who is trying to help the Quezadas.

    The children and their parents, who are hard-working and own their house, got to Burnett.

    "I can't stand sending these kids to the border," she said. "I know what life is like in Mexico."

    Burnett criticized immigration officials for using a story about a "dangerous man" that scared the children to get access to their father. She doesn't think Raymundo should have been targeted anyway.

    "We are deporting folks who pose no threat to our national security," she said. "There are six children whose safety and welfare are now in jeopardy, who have no place to go in Mexico."

    ICE officials wouldn't comment specifically on the case, citing privacy concerns.

    Spokeswoman Virginia Kice said ICE does prioritize its enforcement efforts "by targeting fugitives who have demonstrated a threat to national security or public safety."

    "But we have a clear mandate to pursue all those who have defied court orders to leave the country," she said. "It's our responsibility to enforce the orders handed down by our nation's immigration judges."

    Kice said ICE "fugitive operations" officers wear jackets clearly identifying themselves as ICE.

    "That said, in some instances, those officers may employ ruses to help safely effect an arrest," she said. "Ruses are used by virtually every law enforcement agency."

    A few days after he was picked up, Raymundo, who worked for years as a cabinet maker in Las Vegas, was deported to Nogales, Mexico, with the clothes on his back and a cell phone, Baudelia said.

    Her first instinct, she said, was to pack up the kids, who have never been outside the U.S., and drive straight to the border to be with Raymundo.

    "I need my husband," she said. But, she added, "we have nothing in Mexico."

    Raymundo's brother-in-law, who lives in Las Vegas, sent him enough money for a hotel room in Nogales for a few days. Raymundo has since moved further south looking for work and an affordable place to live that would accommodate all the children.

    He's had no luck, Baudelia said Wednesday.

    "He called me crying," she said. "He's sleeping in a church."

    Baudelia, who works at a local day care center during the week and cleans houses on the weekends, fears for her husband's safety and welfare in a country where he no longer has any family connections. The thought of moving her children to Mexico makes her shudder.

    "It's horrible there," she said. "It's no place for my kids. This isn't their faults."

    Raymundo and Baudelia Quezada have been fighting deportation since 2001, she said. They have filed numerous appeals, all of which have failed.

    But Baudelia insists that neither she nor Raymundo knew until last week that a final, official "order of deportation" against both of them had been issued.

    The family's immigration attorney did not return calls seeking comment.

    Baudelia also wasn't sure why immigration officials didn't nab her along with her husband.

    Kice said that if immigration officers go to a home where both parents have final orders of deportation, officers "may allow one of the adults to remain free ... to care for those children while the agency makes preparations for the fugitive's removal."

    It is up to the family to determine what will happen to their children in the event parents are deported.

    "If the children are in the country lawfully, the parents may choose to have them remain in the United States in the care of relatives or family friends," Kice said. "If the family wants to have the children accompany them when they are repatriated, ICE will seek to accommodate the family's wishes."

    In a 2007 report, Human Rights Watch estimated that about 1.6 million spouses and children living in the U.S. had been separated from their parents, husbands or wives because of deportations between 1997 and 2005.

    While the data are several years old, the estimated rate of families being separated by deportation hasn't changed dramatically in recent years, a Human Rights Watch spokeswoman said.

    Baudelia, through her attorney, has applied for a temporary "stay of deportation" to give her time to try to sell the family's Las Vegas house and prepare for the move to somewhere in Mexico. She's waiting to hear whether it will be approved.

    "I am a fighter and I want to stay, but if he (Raymundo) isn't here, I don't want to be," she said. "I will leave voluntarily."

    Raymundo will not try to cross the border back into the United States.

    "He doesn't want to break the law again," Baudelia said. "It wasn't easy for us to break the law; we are not delinquents. But we wanted opportunity, to work and to raise our children in a safe place."

    Now Baudelia feels that opportunity slipping away.

    "I just pray that God will take care of us."

    Contact reporter Lynnette Curtis at lcurtis @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0285.

     

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    tasha camarena wrote on September 09, 2009 02:48 PM: im sorry. i know how you feel. my husband Juan was deported back to mexico in sept.2008. He tryed to come back to me and his 2 babies and got cought and konw he is in san diago ca jail looking at 8 years. im loosing every thing sinc they deported juan. my house,my car. not much money. my husband had a really good job and i cant work..if any body has any info. that can help please contact me.baudelia good luck i will pray for you and ur family..


    Abdalla wrote on April 18, 2009 01:30 AM: This is inhumane done by ICE and dreadful immigration laws. Why don't allow six American kids to stay with their father in America?

    What will happen if they grow up with dysfunctional thinking that will endanger the communities?

    My heart goes to kids and mother.

    American law makers should change the immigration laws to accomadate the six Americans rights to have their father in America. This guy help to populate in America and serve his American kids best.

    The right of American kids to have their fathers act must be enacted. Otherwise the cost of communities and fed/state budget will be too high.



    JUDGEMENT DAY wrote on March 09, 2009 04:30 PM: TO ALL YOU PEOPLE OUT THERE WITH ALL YOUR IGNORANT COMMENTS LET ME TELL YOU JUST ONE THING GOD WILL JUDGE EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US ONE DAY
    EVERY SINLGE BIRTH OF THOSE CHILDREN WERE PAID FOR BY THE FATHER'S INSURANCE WHERE HE HAD WORKED FOR THE PAST 14 YRS OK AS FOR THE MOTHER SHE HAD 2 JOBS SHE WORKED AT A DAYCARE AND SHE HAD HER OWN BUSINESS CLEANING HOMES WHICH IN FACT SHE DID PAY TAXES ON BECAUSE IN FACT THEY DID REPORT ALL INCOME I KNOW I WAS THERE OK
    THEY DID NOT RECIEVE ANY BENIFITS AND THEY WORKED WITH THERE VERY OWN SS# THEY HAD PERMITS TO BE HERE
    THEY WERE GOING THROUGH THE IMMIGRATION PROCESS YES THEY OWNED THERE OWN HOME AS WELL AS SOME PROPERTY ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF VEGAS WHICH IN FACT ARE PAID
    THEY HAD THERE DRIVERS LICENCES AND LIVED LIKE EVERY ONE OF US HE PAID HIS TAXES AND THEY WORKED HE WAS NOT A CRIMINAL AND YET THATS HE WAS TREATED
    TO THE RELIEF OF ALL YOU IGNORANT PEOPLE THE WHOLE FAMILY IS GONE EVEN THE KIDS WHOM ARE AMERICAN CITIZENS
    IF YOU ARE ALL SO CONCERNED ABOUT THE JOB STATIS IN THIS COUNTRY WHY DON'T ALL OF YOU START PICKING YOUR OWN FRIUTS AND VEGGIES AND WHILE YOUR AT IT HAVE YOUR LAZY WIFES CLEAN YOUR HOMES AND CHANGE YOUR KIDS DIRTY DIAPERS MAYBE SOME OF YOU WOULD ALSO LIKE TO DO YOUR OWN GARDENING AS WELL
    THERE ARE SO MANY JOBS THAT YOU WOULD RATHER PAY SOME ONE ELSE TO DO AND DON'T BOTHER TO ASK FOR PAPERS HUH
    BEFORE YOU JUDGE A FAMILY OR PERSON TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR OWN FAULTS AND TO THE RELIEF OF MOST OF YOU THEY WERE NOT ON WELFARE


    Kenny Trimble wrote on March 07, 2009 01:10 PM: I just hope it isn't us TAXPAYERS that are supporting those 6 kids. If they want to live here, they need to stop stealing subsidies


    lk wrote on March 07, 2009 01:10 AM: GTFO,
    Before passing judgement as to the quality of this mother, do some fact checking. According to county assessors website the home this family owns is zoned to a year round school. That means her kids most likely are on track break.

    Have a lovely day.


    Teri wrote on March 06, 2009 09:24 PM: This is why California is on the brink of Bankruptcy.


    GTFO wrote on March 06, 2009 08:19 PM: "I will leave voluntarily."

    Does she have any other choice? Why do people who come here illegally think they have a right to stay here? Fourteen years is long enough! And please don't whine about her kids. If she gave a rip, she'd have the other two school-age ones in school, instead of planted in front of a television watching cartoons.


    Claudia wrote on March 06, 2009 08:10 PM: Thank you, ICE. Don't stop until you have deported every single illegal alien. Criminal is criminal. These people have taken more than enough from our country. And, note to the writer, it is clear that this man has committed more than the initial crime of entering the U.S. illegally. How about working illegally, identity theft, crimes piled on top of crimes. We have had enough!


    diane wrote on March 06, 2009 10:08 AM: These folks have produced 5 more "citizen children" since their original deporation proceedings- strtegically anchoring them more deeply into the crust of America's fragile political climate.
    Having worked with this population, my guess these kids, while completely innocent & sweet bystanders in their parents misdeeds, are receiving aide to independent children and other tax payer subsidies. Aided and abetted by immigrant advocacy, religious and labor groups in addition to our own government's blind eye & ourstretched hand, today's illegal immigration movement has grown emboldened with a sense of entitlement unparalleled in US history and allowed its own set of laws unbeholding to either US or Mexico's standards. Who can blame them? My only gripe is that our own leaders encourage it!
    The dangerous but effective craze of political correctness has paralyzed US Citizens from free thought or protest least they offend the offenders. This bit of social engineering has been as effective in retooling the American landscape as it had the communist movement following WWI. Mexico's leaders have used it to advance their aggressive decades long meddling in American immigration policy as it colonizes "El Norte" & now appears to hold sway in US courts. Why do we accept this insanity?
    Decades ago, Senator Reid proposed review of the 14th amendment regarding citizenship to offspring of illegal aliens who clearly manipulate it, but his efforts were abandoned as globalism and cheap labor took precedence. The media understandably decries the deporation of these kids , but virtually ignores the thousands of American kids orphaned through war or other American tragedies? Our government criminalizes US Citizens while giving a pass to foreigners who seem to enjoy a kind of twisted diplomatic immunity. Why?
    A "better life" is best sought legally.


    Edie wrote on March 06, 2009 05:17 AM: By the way fellas, Call the what house and demand that E-verify be used with the stimulus plan. They took it out and need to put it back in immediately. Ask them who they work for. Illegal immigrants or U.S. citizens and legal residents who pay their salaries.


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