Mom worries as woman faces deportation (Omaha World-Herald)

Mom worries as woman faces deportation

Published Tuesday February 17, 2009
BY CINDY GONZALEZ
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

WEST POINT, Neb. - Annemarie Burger readily admits it: her little girl has been no angel.

Now 37, daughter Tanja Nez has six children raised mostly by others. She was a meth addict. Lived on the streets.

A district court judge recently gave her probation for distributing drugs.

But Nez's mother can't grasp the bigger consequence that offense carries under immigration law: deportation to Germany.

It's a land, Burger said, that Nez hasn't seen since age 3, when she came to the United States legally with Burger, who had married a U.S. soldier.

A land where Nez does not know the language.

"That's like sending me to Mexico and dropping me off," said Burger, who has lived in this Nebraska town since 1974.

While rife with emotion and a moral dilemma, federal immigration law is clear in this case, said Timothy Counts, spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nez was convicted of an aggravated felony, automatic grounds for deportation.

The case underscores what can happen when a legal permanent resident - despite being eligible for years - does not become a citizen before she becomes a felon.

The case also highlights the dilemma of an immigrant parent: Go with the U.S.-raised child to ease her into the country from which you took her - or stay for grandkids and great-grandbabies?

Burger would rather see her daughter put away in an American prison than risk her slipping back to the world of drugs in a place she
doesn't know.

"Everybody makes mistakes," Burger said. "She tries to make it better. It's not like she killed someone."

An immigration judge is set to hear Nez's case Wednesday and could grant an exception, but that is rare. She must show evidence that her deportation would cause extreme and unusual hardship to a U.S. citizen.

"Our belief is that she has no legal right to be here," Counts said.

In an interview from a Grand Island jail, Nez said her mom, who became a citizen 12 years ago, is as scared as Nez is about the future.

"She just sent me a German translation book," Nez said.

Burger offered to accompany her daughter, but Nez told her to stay for Nez's six children and two grandchildren.

Except for a short relapse, Nez said that she had been clean of drugs and alcohol for more than a year when immigration agents arrested her three days before Christmas.

She had met her boyfriend, Monte Stobbe, at a rehabilitation center in Hastings, and the two began a journey to turn their lives around. Before that, she admits, she was a drug addict for 12 years.

The offense that launched Nez into deportation proceedings happened in the summer of 2007.

Hall County public defender Gerry Piccolo said Nez helped a friend buy meth. The amount was about 3 grams, enough for about one hit, Piccolo said. Under state law, that is distribution.

Nez pleaded no contest, and a Hall County District Court judge sentenced her in October to four years probation.

Nez was fulfilling her probation requirements and re-establishing a relationship with her children, ages 17 to 11.

"I just started to get back in their lives the way a mother should be - clean and sober," she said.

Nez had a line on a job at a fast-food restaurant but first needed a copy of residency paperwork she said was stolen years earlier.

She went to the Lexington immigration office and was told the documents would come. Two weeks later, on Dec. 22, immigration agents detained her.

Until she turned 18 and received a letter from the federal government about getting a green card, she never considered herself anything but American.

Nez's mother helped Nez obtain her "alien number" when she became of legal age.

Nez didn't take the next step of becoming a U.S. citizen. She was intimidated by the citizenship exam and, later, cared more about drugs.

"I didn't feel German," she said. "I've been here all my life."

Her biological father was a U.S. soldier who didn't stick around. Nez could have derived citizenship from her U.S. dad had he established paternity before she turned 18, said Marilu Cabrera, a Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman.

A different military man who Burger later met and married brought toddler Tanja and her mother to the United States. Had her mom become a citizen before Nez turned 18, the daughter would have derived citizenship.

But Burger also was intimidated, and she waited until she was age 50 and eligible to take the civics portion of the exam in her native language.

Nez, short a few credits to graduate with her senior class, dropped out of high school, got her GED and married the first of three husbands.

She had three children, left that man and had three more children who live with her second husband in the Grand Island area.

Meanwhile, Burger raised the three oldest grandchildren from the time all were under age four until her husband died two years ago. Two great-grandchildren and their teen-age mother now live with her.

She and Nez didn't talk for years as Nez spiraled into drugs. They reconnected as the daughter rehabilitated.

Since the December arrest, Burger has lost 20 pounds and can't sleep well.

"I am 63 years old," Burger said. "I can't take anymore."

The mother thinks she helped deliver the daughter to federal agents by pressuring her daughter to get copies of her immigration papers so Nez could get a job and help the household.

Burger wonders whether she could have done more as a mother. She thinks Nez could lead a constructive life if offered another chance, even with a U.S. prison sentence.

Burger and Stobbe said immigration experts told them that fighting Nez's drug conviction would be tough and costly. Nez will represent herself, as immigration court does not appoint public defenders.

Burger keeps looking for ways to keep her daughter near.

"She's made a lot of mistakes," Burger said. "But she's still my daughter. I love her. I can't throw in the towel."