Citizenship fight leaves migrant jailed, bewildered

The Houston Chronicle (Houston, TX), Nov 24, 2003 p. 01

Citizenship fight leaves migrant jailed, bewildered.

By: Dale Lezon; Carlos Antonio Rios.

For years, Juan Gabriel Zavala crossed the border into Texas at Matamoros with ease. Claiming he was a U.S. citizen, he'd show border guards a tattered U.S. birth certificate to gain entry. He would come to Houston to mow lawns and live in crowded apartments in Spring Branch, and he would send money to his ailing mother in Mexico.

His good luck ran out Oct. 17. He was arrested for immigration violations when he applied for a U.S. passport and was jailed at the immigration lockup in Houston. Now, he faces deportation unless he can prove he was born in the United States. The case could drag on for months, said his attorney, Salvador Colon.

"I'm bewildered," Zavala said through a translator during a recent interview. "I wouldn't believe that any U.S. citizen would have a problem like this."

Immigration law experts say Zavala's predicament is common. Many Mexicans, they say, are U.S. citizens whose mothers crossed into Texas to give birth and get their children U.S. birth certificates. Those parents then raised their children in Mexico, expecting them to later enter the United States eligible for good-paying jobs as well as the bounty of U.S. social services, such as food stamps, Social Security and welfare.

When their children attempt to cross the border claiming U.S. citizenship, however, many are suspected of lying by immigration officials and are forced to prove it, experts say. And proving U.S. citizenship is very difficult, said Jodi Goodwin, a Brownsville attorney and chairwoman of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Texas.

Art Moreno, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security in Harlingen, countered that immigrants also commonly buy bogus birth certificates or even valid ones that can be altered to establish fake citizenship.

Inspectors at 11 ports of entry in the Harlingen area averaged about 500 false citizenship claims per month through March, the most current data available, Moreno said. An investigation begun in the early 1990s into midwives who sold phony documents has so far revealed that at least 2,000 people bought them and were found using them to establish U.S. citizenship, he added. In the past 12 years, Moreno said, he has seen one person prove a claim to U.S. citizenship.

"He can claim all he wants that he is a U.S. citizen, but he's not," Moreno said of Zavala. "He is trying to manipulate the information to his gain."

Colon said Zavala's is one of the strangest cases he's seen. Some identification documents - including a valid birth certificate issued in Hidalgo County and baptismal records - show Zavala was born in the United States, while others claim he was born in Mexico.

Zavala said he was born May 28, 1976, in Weslaco. Colon said Zavala's mother told him that she and her husband, both Mexican citizens, crossed into Texas two months before Zavala was born and returned to their hometown, Salamanca in Guanajuato state, two months after his birth.

In 1980, Zavala said, his father died and his mother registered his birth in Mexico, stating that he had been born in Salamanca in 1976. She wanted him to have social benefits, such as public school, available to Mexican citizens, so she had to tell authorities he was born there, Zavala said.

Zavala said he began working construction when he was 13 to help with household expenses. When he was 20, he said, he came to the United States to get a better job so he could send money to his mother, who was hobbled with a sore back after years of scrubbing people's floors and clothes.

"I knew I was an American," he said. "I knew I could come to the United States and make a better life and help my mother."

Zavala migrated to Spring Branch and worked as a laborer, usually cutting grass and trimming hedges, or ripping drywall from buildings with construction crews. Most recently, he worked for a company that makes playground equipment and lived in an apartment off Long Point with four other Mexicans, he said. He earned $8.75 an hour.

He regularly would visit his mother in Mexico and then would return to Spring Branch, using his U.S. birth certificate as identification to cross the border at Matamoros, he said. But in 1998, when he presented his birth certificate at the border on his way back to Houston, U.S. immigration officers claimed it was false. They said Zavala told them that he was not a U.S. citizen and they confiscated the birth certificate and deported him. They barred him from entering the country for five years.

Moreno said inspectors are trained to spot phony birth certificates and other bogus documents.

Zavala said he told authorities he was not a U.S. citizen and agreed to be deported in 1998 to avoid being placed in jail while his case was decided because he wanted to get home quickly to his ailing mother.

But Zavala didn't want to give up his good life in America. He said his uncle, who lives in Texas, mailed him a copy of the birth certificate and he used it to cross the border at Matamoros in 2002.

After he applied for a passport to better document his U.S. citizenship, federal authorities arrested him for re-entering the country in violation of his 1998 deportation.

If he can find school or medical records attesting to his client's U.S. citizenship, or can prove that Zavala agreed to the 1998 deportation to avoid jail, Colon said he may then be able to convince a judge that Zavala is a U.S. citizen and cannot be deported.

Meanwhile, Zavala waits in jail, worried that his mother is suffering without the money he usually sends her. He said he calls her once a week, and she tells him to be patient because the truth will come out.

"It's really hard waiting," Zavala said. "(But) it's worthwhile to wait to get it settled to help my family."

See docket (with downloadable case documents in PDF format) of the Zavala case in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, Houston Division.

and see Medina v. INS, 993 F.2d 499 (5th Cir. 1993).