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Sep 24, 2006 9:30 pm US/Pacific
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One Strike, You're Out
by Anna Werner
(CBS 5)
The government's gotten tough on immigrants—and not just illegal immigrants.
Many people here legally with green cards are being deported because the government claims they've committed "aggravated felonies," which you would think would be serious crimes like murder and drug trafficking.
But as we found out, that's not always the case.
And now that expanding definition of an aggravated felony raises a troubling question: is the government's immigration policy of "one strike, you're out" tipping the scales of justice, and ruining people's lives?
If ever there was someone symbolic of the American dream, it's Gurdev Gill.
Gill arrived here from India in 1986 and built a small ranch into a 300-acre farm near Fresno, where he and his family turn grapes into Thompson seedless raisins. The 82-year-old farmer says his time here has been happy. Just this June, Gill became a local celebrity when he appeared on the cover of American Vineyard magazine, after being named Farmer of the Year by the local chamber of commerce for his outstanding contributions to the community.
So when Gill—a legal resident with a green card—went as the last member of his family to apply to become a U-S citizen, the government's response came as a shock to his son Harry. "I was in the office," says Harry. "My wife called me and she said you know what? Dad got a deportation letter. And I said what?"
The reason? Something that happened here 15 years ago, at a gas station the family owns that was plagued by drug dealers. "They used to go and break up my store," says Harry.
So one day, Gurdev Gill took action.
"He tried to get these people away from here," says Harry. "So he took his gun out of his pickup and fired in the air."
"His intention was not to harm them," says his son Avtar says,
Gurdev Gill was fined and given probation for possessing a loaded firearm, never serving a day in jail. That was in 1991. And at the time, the incident would not have affected Gill's status in this country. But now, 15 years later, the government claims that old misdemeanor makes him a dangerous man who should be deported.
"He's hardly a danger to the community," says his attorney, Bob Jobe, who sees the same thing happening to long term residents with a green card all over the country. "It's exponential, the difference between today and ten years ago."
If it happened to my father, it can happen to anybody," says Gill's son Harry.
And Lucas Guttentag, who teaches immigrants' rights at UC Berkeley and Stanford law school, believes, "This is the most punitive immigration laws we've seen, I think, for a hundred years."
That's because this law as written in 1988 was meant to deport only felons who'd committed serious crimes like murder or drug trafficking. But in 1996 Congress broadened the law. And worse, they made it retroactive. Which means now immigration authorities can look back twenty, thirty, even forty years—and virtually any minor offense, like drunk driving, even shoplifting, is enough to get a longtime resident deported.
But it's a law immigration opponents applaud, like Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR.
"If you have come here and violated the law, there is no reason why we should keep you around," says Mehlman.
"How do you know that the people they're deporting are the right people?" asks reporter Anna Werner.
Mehlman's answer: "Well, if they have a criminal conviction, then they're the right people."
But are they? Joren Lyons of San Francisco's non-profit Asian Law Caucus complains that the law doesn't take any personal factors into account. "Once the case has been filed," says Lyons, "the immigration judges themselves have no discretion at all."
Take for example Lyons' client, 21-year-old Sam Nhek, who was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his Cambodian mother barely escaped the infamous "killing fields" that claimed his father's life. Sam was a year old when they legally settled in the U.S., where his mom remarried and he grew up as a typical Southern California kid.
But one day he went joyriding in a stolen car with a friend and wound up serving time in jail for possession of stolen property. Because Sam wasn't eligible for citizenship until he turned 18—and was therefore still a green card holder and not a U.S. citizen—that joyriding offense is about to get him deported.
"I regret what I did," he says, close to tears, and adds that he's willing to accept more jail time if it would help him stay in America. He now works six days a week helping to support the rest of his family. "I don't want to be away from them. That's all I want most, just my family, just be with my family."
Instead, Sam is about to be deported to Cambodia—even though he's never been there and doesn't speak the language. "I wouldn't know where I would walk if I was dropped off somewhere," he worries. "I wouldn't know who to talk to."
"He didn't kill someone, he didn't shoot somebody," says attorney Lyons. "He's not a drug kingpin. He was in possession of a stolen car as a 19-year-old. That's not the kind of thing that you should take somebody away from their family without a hearing on whether they've learned from the experience and whether they're likely to repeat it."
Sam's mom says it's like a piece of her heart falling out. "He didn't hurt anybody, but why they have to take him away?"
Immigration reformer Ira Mehlman has an answer. "They are a guest here. And until they become citizens of the United States, they have to abide by the rules. And if you don't abide by the rules, then you ought to be removed from this country."
"None of these are easy decisions," says Chuck DeMore, head of investigations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Francisco. "If you expect every time that there is a sympathetic factor to not enforce the law, it's not going to happen that way. I mean, there have to be compelling, compelling reasons."
So what about a case like farmer Gurdev Gill's?
"Shouldn't there be some discretion," asks Anna Werner, "in the case of a man who is over 80 years old, runs a successful business, contributes economically to the community, and had a very, very minor charge where he was trying to protect himself years and years ago and paid the penalty for it?"
Answers DeMore: "Your age, your financial situation, if you're wealthy, shouldn't protect you from the same laws that govern the rest of the people."
"What about being, in essence, a good citizen?" asks Werner.
"If you want me to say he shouldn't have been removed or he shouldn't be in removal proceedings, I'm not going to say that. I mean, that is the law," says DeMore.
"But if he loses in the end, that's the way it is?"
"That's the way it is."
Which doesn't sit well with immigration rights professor Lucas Guttentag. "What we're seeing now is very harsh and aggressive enforcement of very punitive laws. And a failure to consider the human consequences."
And his recommendation?
"I would say to people who have green cards, if you want to become a U.S. citizen, and you're eligible, do it immediately. The law can change tomorrow and suddenly subject them to deportation based on grounds that didn't exist today."
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)