Wrong turn puts family on tragic path (AP)

Wrong turn puts family on tragic path

By WILSON RING – 4/25/08

KEESEVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — A simple wrong turn led to the destruction of Elvia Salgado Martinez's family.

It was about 2 a.m. when she and her husband, Santiago Tapia, left the motel on Route 9 in Keeseville, nestled between the Adirondack Mountains and Lake Champlain, to look for a hospital. The 24-year-old Mexican immigrant was 5 1/2 months pregnant, and the pains had been getting worse for a day. She started to bleed.

But rather than heading north for the hospital in Plattsburgh, Tapia got on the interstate headed south, toward Albany. Three exits later, realizing the mistake, they turned around.

That was when they saw a New York State Police cruiser in their rearview mirror, its lights flashing. And that was when their lives quickly became unraveled.

"My husband speaks a little English. He explained to them that I was pregnant. He told them in English he was going above the limit at 78 because I felt bad and it was urgent that we get to the hospital," Salgado told an Associated Press reporter in Spanish during an interview 12 days after the March 31 stop. "He said that in English and the policeman understood perfectly, but he (the policeman) said, 'No, it was nothing but a lie.'"

It wasn't until a Spanish-speaking trooper arrived that an ambulance was called.
If the bilingual officer hadn't come, "I don't think they'd have moved us from there," Salgado said. "I think they would have taken us to jail."

Three weeks later, Salgado is back living in the motel, alone, without family, friends or anyone who speaks Spanish. Her husband is back in Mexico and the ashes of her son rest in a white ceramic urn in the shape of an angel.
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Salgado is 24 with a round face, polite and well spoken. A high school graduate with a year of technical education, she met the man who became her husband when he came to teach in the rural schools near Cuernavaca, in the Mexican state of Morelos south of Mexico City.

She insists they had no intention of settling in the United States; the plan was to save money to pay for their education and help her family. They arrived illegally in February of 2005, walking through the desert from the Mexican state of Sonora, which abuts Arizona.

In less than a week, they arrived in a town near Syracuse and went to work with Tapia's brother. "He said we could come here and make good money," she said.

They paid off the $6,000 loan they took out to hire a "coyote," or smuggler, to take them across the border and after a season in western New York, moved to Bennington, Vt. It was there they were arrested for the first time.

They were living with a group of immigrants when one bought a car he didn't know how to drive and hit a tree. Salgado said the police came with dogs, kicked in their door and searched everything.

"They treated us like delinquents," she said.

The next day, Border Patrol agents from northern Vermont came and picked them up.
Salgado said she didn't know why authorities let her go and not the others. In some low-risk cases, the Border Patrol will release immigrants while their cases are processed, said Bradley Curtis, a Border Patrol supervisor for northeastern New York and Vermont. "Everything is decided case by case."

Salgado came away with paperwork that lets her remain in the United States as long as she makes court appearances in Boston; she has permission to stay through next March, officials say.

After her husband was deported, Salgado moved to northwestern Vermont. She lived in a house with other workers, but she had her own room, and she worked at a garden nursery, saving enough money for her husband to cross the border again.

Which he did, four months after he was deported.

They worked together in the nursery. "The boss didn't pay us much," she said. But they both worked 12-hour days, six or seven days a week. "It was to put together a bit of money."

They left the Burlington area last fall after the growing season ended and moved to New Jersey. It was there they learned she was pregnant. Six months previously she'd had a miscarriage.

"I really wanted this baby. We didn't want to lose him," she said.

So at her husband's insistence, she stopped work when they learned she was pregnant. The couple moved to Keeseville and took jobs packaging apple slices — no heavy lifting. They'd been there only two weeks when the pains started.
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On the interstate, Salgado said, the first thing the troopers did was ask for their immigration papers. They then accused the pair of smuggling drugs. With her permission, they searched the car.

New York State Police Capt. John Tibbitts, who commands the area in Lewis where the stop took place, said the radio log showed that his troopers stopped Salgado and Tapia's car at 2:55 a.m. The Spanish-speaking trooper was called at 3:08. He arrived 10 minutes later and the ambulance was called a few minutes after that.

The radio log of the Essex County Emergency Services said its ambulance arrived on scene at 3:52, left with Salgado at 3:56 and arrived at the hospital at 4:45 a.m.

Tibbitts said state police rules don't allow troopers to let people with medical conditions speed to the hospital; in such cases police must call an ambulance.

"As far as I can tell everything was done pretty expeditiously," Tibbitts said. "They had the best care available, sooner rather than later."

Kody Salgado Martinez was born at 5:19 a.m. He was 15 1/2-weeks premature, and weighed just 27 ounces.

"He was well formed. He was just short the time," Salgado said.

Meanwhile, the state police notified the Border Patrol they had possible illegal aliens. The Border Patrol agent who went to the hospital verified that Salgado could stay in the country and took Tapia into custody, officials said. Tapia did get to spend a few minutes with his son before being taken away, Salgado said.

The baby was rushed by ambulance to the neonatal intensive care unit at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, Vt. Later that morning Salgado was discharged from the Plattsburgh hospital; she used a voucher given to her by a social worker to take a taxi to Vermont.

In Burlington, the hospital staff found her a room so she could stay near her son. Then someone noticed Salgado was sick; she had a dangerous infection, and was treated at the hospital, even as her son was struggling for life.

A Spanish-speaking priest baptized Kody on April 1. A day later, at 3:35 p.m., the child died.
He lived just less than 60 hours.
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Salgado last saw her husband at the Clinton County jail, two days before he was moved to a detention center in Batavia. Because he'd already been deported once, there were few formalities needed to deport him again. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says he was returned to Mexico on April 18. Salgado doesn't know she'll see Tapia again. She's spoken with him on the phone a few times.

"He wants to come back, but I told him 'no,'" she said. "I don't want him to come up again, because if he does, he'd go through the danger again" of crossing the desert.

She went back to work before the doctor told her she could; her employer has treated her well and paid for her room while she was out, but she's got to make money — she has no insurance, and is starting to get medical bills for thousands of dollars. Groups that help immigrant farm workers in New York are taking an interest in her case and her employer has put her in touch with a lawyer in Plattsburgh.

She would like to take Kody's remains back to Mexico for burial, but she can't afford to miss work, and she can't afford to risk her tenuous immigration status.

Salgado is convinced that without the delay at the side of the interstate, doctors could have prevented Kody's premature birth. Privacy laws prevent the hospitals from talking about Salgado's case. But in general, they say sometimes doctors can stop pre-term labor, sometimes they can't.

She harbors her memories of a child whose entire life spanned 2 1/2 days. She has an album with pictures of Kody, both before and after he died. She has a doll-sized sweater he wore, his hospital identification bracelet and other mementos, all packed in a colorful box provided by Fletcher Allen.

At one point, she says, her tiny boy — tethered to the intensive care unit — grabbed her finger and wouldn't let go.

"The nurses told me he knew who I was," she said, her sorrow intermingled with joy.