Posted on 12/11/2002 12:56:23 PM PST by holyscroller
This is where we are in the post-Sept. 11 world.
The federal government, in the name of national security, swooped down upon Denver International Airport with warrants for more than 100 people: counter workers, bakers, janitors, security guards. You probably remember the trumpets blaring, the handcuffed wrists, the bewildered McDonald's cook. All were accused of using fake Social Security numbers to get jobs that gave them access to restricted areas.Well, the next day, federal agents, still on the hunt, tracked down the people who weren't at work that day and so ended up at the Aurora duplex of Maria Casillas, a 22-year-old Domino's Pizza cashier. They called first, told her to wait, and she did. They plucked her from the living room she had decorated in velvet and lace, protected by rubber runners on the floor and Our Lady of Guadalupe on the wall.
Casillas was seven months pregnant. Charged with possession of false documents and re-entering the country illegally, she stayed in jail, waiting for her hearing, for two months. Just before her due date, sheriff's officers transferred her to Denver Health Medical Center to a secure ward. This is what happened next. On Nov. 11, contractions began. Casillas was shackled to a wheelchair and taken the 100 yards to the main hospital building. Leg irons were placed around her ankles while she lay in bed. They were removed during labor and replaced 35 minutes after birth.
Casillas held her child for two hours, and then authorities took the tiny girl away. Casillas' mother, who was visiting from Zacatecas, Mexico, was allowed to pick up the baby later that day.The next day, Casillas was sent back to jail. Upon her arrival, she was strip-searched, ordered to bend over, expose herself and cough three times.
"I had six stitches and it hurt," she tells me in a collect call from the INS detention center. "I told them, 'I just had a baby. It hurts.' They said they didn't care and told me to cough harder."
It would be 13 days before she saw her baby again. Every time her mother, her husband, her 4-year-old son tried to visit, they were told there was no room, Casillas said. Her son prayed and asked God to let his mamacita come home. Her breasts filled with milk, hardened, ached. She wept and raged and believed that if she did not see her children soon, she would die.
"She called the house and all she could do was cry," said Aracely Arrela, Casillas' sister-in-law. "A mother wants to hold her child, to stare into her eyes, to see her first smile."
Casillas says maybe she could understand if she had committed a crime of violence, if she had hurt someone. "I'm not a bad person," she says, sobbing.
"I'm not a bad person." I keep hearing those words. She was a cashier at Domino's, for heaven's sake. She took orders and made change for three years for $9.75 an hour. She was decorating a room for her baby.
This is a national security threat?
This is absurdity upon absurdity.
She broke the law, yes. She crossed the border - paid a coyote $1,500 - to come here and work. For this crime, she ended up in jail, shackled, strip- searched, humiliated? For this, her newborn child must be punished, taken away, denied her mother's touch, her smell, her milk.
These are the things that happen when the headlines die down, the self-congratulations end, and we the people return to our lives. Imagine this happening to your sister, to your daughter, to your hardest worker. Imagine - if you are a mother, and I have an infant - being ordered, not 48 hours after childbirth, with six stitches burning in your perineum, to bend over, spread your buttocks and cough. Imagine not seeing your baby for 13 days.This is procedure, Fred Oliva, the jail director tells me. It sounds harsh, he admits. Cold- hearted even. But, he says, his job is security. All pregnant women in custody must go through the same shackle and strip- search routine. He doesn't know their history, doesn't need to know. All inmates follow the same rules. "The system requires a certain harshness," he says. "That's unfortunate. That's life."
The system. The law. I hear it all the time. The ardent devotion to black and white. What happens to pregnant women in custody doesn't seem harsh. It is. It doesn't seem cold-hearted. It is.
And if Oliva saw his daughter being shackled, he, the father of two, grandfather of six, says: "I'd probably end up in jail."
Casillas was convicted of a misdemeanor a week after the baby was born. On Nov. 20, she was transported to INS custody. On Nov. 25, 13 days after she gave birth to 6-pound Lizbeth Humildad, Casillas held her baby again.
This morning, just after midnight, Casillas was to be deported, sent back to Zacatecas in central Mexico. Her mother is accompanying her. They are taking the two children. "They are both (U.S.) citizens, and it makes me sad to take them because here they can have much better opportunity, they can learn English, and it is hard in Mexico," she says.
She will not try to return illegally, she says. "I will never, ever forget what happened to me here."
Authorities warned her that if they caught her again, she would end up in federal prison.
Her husband, Javier, is in the process of becoming a permanent legal resident. He will stay here, working his $11.16-an-hour construction job, managing the duplex he owns, sending money to his family. It's the only way he can support them, he says. He sits on the couch in their apartment, his 4-year-old curled up beside him, asleep.
We spoke on Thursday night. He says in Spanish that he has no words for how he feels, how he will feel saying goodbye to his wife and children. In English, he chokes one word: "crying."
As he speaks, his daughter wails, but he makes no move to hold her. The heart can only take so much.
This is where we are in the post-Sept. 11 world. This is what we are becoming.
Then I'd say it's about time. The heartbreak of this story is that they didn't ship her back to Mexico to have the baby there. Then none of this would have ever happened, and we wouldn't be stuck with another anchor baby and a several thousand dollar bill for the delivery and hospital stay. I hope she tells all her friends how badly she was treated in case they're thinking of sneaking in too. Sorry Babe, not a shred of sympathy from me. Get out and take your husband, kids, mother, and all other friends and relatives with you!
Instead we have illegals running around like they own the place.
Crisp news story Tina. Not a hint of bias, opinion or commentary. Just the facts...
How nice of her. Give her a cookie.
You don't think its possible, just maybe, that the author has extremely exaggerated the details?
How about they lighten up on the shackles, but the kids don't become automatic American citizens and anchor babies? They go, but they can't come back. Jail if they do. Be firm; no need to be abusive. And for God's sake, control the borders better so there's less of these incidents.
Spread the word, honey. We don't want you here, and if you come here, you will be treated badly.
If this is what it takes to have our borders respected, then so be it.
#2 There was a reasonable solution. She should have STAYED in mexico instead of RETURNING illegally AGAIN.
You see this wasn't the first time she was caught and deported.
She should have been dumped on her arse on the other side of the border the day she was caught. Now we have another anchor baby pseudo american on our hands.
We have to make the choice: either enforcement of immigration laws within secure borders or our nation is history.
"...working his $11.16-an-hour construction job, managing the duplex he owns,"
Apparently he owns some of the place. Through huge tax breaks, which we legals will never get.
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