Camden man and family languish in immigration limbo

The ICE investigators arrived at 6 on a Friday morning. Blanca Bautista was still in her pajamas, preparing to get her three oldest children ready for school. The fourth, 4-year-old Abril, was already awake and playing with toys.

Bautista's partner of 13 years, Jose Manuel Benito de Castilla, 32, answered the door, and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers told the couple they were looking for someone. After checking the family's passports, it appeared they had the wrong apartment.

"We wanted to help, we saw police, and thought they were looking for someone in the neighborhood," Bautista said in an interview this week, speaking in Spanish.

But after investigators - who did have the wrong apartment, according to sources - discovered that Benito had a prior order of deportation, they led him away in handcuffs. He has been held in the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, N.J., since May and his attorney says he's running out of options.

Though Benito's predicament is not unusual - he is among thousands on the immigration court docket in New Jersey at risk of deportation - his case, touching on a well-liked and hardworking parishioner, has become a cause célèbre in Camden, drawing in clergy and even the police chief.

Camden County Chief Scott Thomson has made inquiries to federal immigration authorities on the family's behalf.

"I don't know how my city is a measure safer with this individual off the streets," Thomson said, adding, "We are human beings first and cops second, and we should never lose perspective of that."

The children were all born in the United States, but Bautista, too, is undocumented, and she had to overcome fear of being detained to come forward with her story.

Despite President Obama's call to end deportations of nonviolent undocumented people, repeat border offenders remain on ICE's priority list. A minor legal infraction also has complicated Benito's case.

He arrived illegally in the United States in 2000, left in 2004 to visit his widowed father in Puebla, Mexico, and was caught coming back through Arizona and deported. He sneaked back in that year to rejoin Bautista and the daughter who was then their only child.

Sister Veronica Roche of St. Joseph's Pro-Cathedral in East Camden said that although there were similar cases around the country, this was the first so close to the parish. "For him to be in a room up there and the family doesn't have the resources they need," she said, "It doesn't make any sense. Especially when he's not any threat to the public."

She noted that the three older children celebrated First Communion at the church five days before Benito, a pizzeria worker, was arrested, and about a month after a community public safety meeting with police.

"It undermines what we want to do," she said.

Bautista said she saw the word police on the ICE officers' vests that morning and thought the church had turned over to police names of people at the public safety meeting. The event was cohosted by Camden Churches Organized for People, which has taken up Benito's cause, helping organize a vigil Sunday that even police officers attended.

The meeting, a week before Benito was detained, was intended to encourage the community, often targeted by crime, to come forward. Police stressed that in Camden, officers are there to protect, not deport.

"The initial intentions of targeting violent criminals who are undocumented and here illegally, there's a purpose for that," Thomson said. "However, the collateral damage that is caused in trying to search those folks out can create irreparable harm for local police chiefs and, understandably, enhanced levels of distrust from the community we need to work in."

The family is working with Derek DeCosmo, chair of the New Jersey chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

DeCosmo said such cases were extremely common across the state. There are more than 20,000 cases on the state's immigration court docket. "All of those people are facing deportation," he said.

There are two strikes against Benito - the order of deportation and an old warrant for failing to report to court.

In 2000, shortly after arriving in Camden, he borrowed his brother's car to drive to Pennsylvania. The weather was bad and he got into an accident and called police. It turned out the car his brother had bought had been stolen, DeCosmo said.

Benito went to court, paid a $2,500 fine, but, out of fear, did not appear for further hearings.

DeCosmo is trying to clear that charge. The more pressing issue is deportation. A hearing Friday will review whether Benito should be granted a stay of deportation due to reasonable fear of conditions at home.

If deported, Benito has said, his family would likely have to follow him back to Puebla, and his concern is they would become targets of gang violence, specifically kidnapping, which sometimes occurs when people return from the United States and are perceived to have money.

Bryan Cox, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed that Benito had a prior order of removal. He said the case was under review and no removal was scheduled.

A deportation order typically comes with a 10-year ban, and a person who is deported and illegally reenters could be charged with a felony, he said.

As for why Benito was held when ICE was looking for someone else, an agency official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators often wind up arresting people other than the ones they're seeking if they "fit into a priority category."

The family is supported by friends and relatives. Bautista took a factory job but left it when her son, who has severe allergies, got sick. She's now applying for night jobs.

"Jose told me when I visited, 'Don't forget, if you feel like you're ever losing hope, look at these kids. They're who we're fighting for,' " Bautista said.

Abril, the youngest, talks sometimes with her father on the phone. She gets frustrated and asks him, "Just come home to hug me," and, Bautista said, he tells the child, "Wait until you sleep and I'll come to hug you in your dreams."

The oldest, Diana, said she doesn't want any presents for her 11th birthday on Wednesday, just her father there to fulfill his promise. "We were going to get dinner at a restaurant, just me and him," she said, smiling shyly.

It took Bautista months to come forward with her story, for fear that if she was detained her children would be virtually orphaned. After a recent visit with Benito, she decided to speak out.

"I saw kids reaching out to touch relatives through glass, saw my kids walking through the metal detector. This isn't just about me," she said.