Supporters rally behind El Salvadoran (Aspen Daily News)

Supporters rally behind El Salvadoran
by David Frey, Aspen Daily News Correspondent
dfrey@aspendailynews.com
Sunday, February 1, 2009

GLENWOOD SPRINGS — Four years ago, home for José Mendoza Turbin was a little town in the highlands of western El Salvador, a place that could be as beautiful as it was dangerous. Despite its remoteness, Tacuba, like many small rural Salvadoran towns, was wracked by gang violence. Mendoza Turbin could count at least five friends killed by gangs. Others he knew had their hands chopped off.

Caught between rival gangs, Mendoza Turbin fled here on his own at age 17. Since then, Glenwood Springs has been his home. After fighting unsuccessfully for asylum for years, he now faces the imminent threat of deportation. An outpouring of support from teachers, students and community members has come to his aid, though, as supporters pressure immigration officials to let him stay. They say Mendoza Turbin isn’t just a kid who sneaked across the border; he’s a community asset.

“We have a very caring community here,” said Ginny Badger, a teacher’s assistant for English Language Learners at Glenwood Springs High School. “If we can just get the government to see how important this kid is and how much he means to us, we’ll be OK, but we’ve just hit a brick wall.”

Badger rallied some 20 supporters to plead his case in front of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Grand Junction last month. They’re hoping to convince ICE’s top agent in Denver that although Mendoza Turbin, now 21, arrived in this country illegally, and although his plea for asylum has been rejected, he should be allowed to stay. He has made such an impact on the community already, they say, and if he’s allowed to follow his dream to become a nurse, he will make even more of one.

“One of the ironies is that we as teachers are not allowed to ask for papers on whether or not they’re here legally,” Badger said. “We are just here to educate them. Then another branch of our government deports them. Here we’ve got a kid who we’ve invested three or four years in, whose every intention is in becoming a nurse, who’s an ideal role model, yet the government doesn’t want to hear it because of a technicality of law. To me there’s a point where law isn’t serving the community.”

‘Education changed my life’

By his teachers’ accounts, Mendoza Turbin was no ordinary student. Arriving with few math skills and speaking no English, he huddled over flash cards before school, and met with teachers after school, to catch up to other students.

“Once you meet the kid, he’s so sincere, so genuine, so very appreciative of his education and appreciative of everything everyone has done for him since he came here,” said Joseph Sustar, who had been his sophomore math teacher. After moving to Belleville, Ill., Sustar came back to appear at the immigration meeting in Grand Junction.

“I’m just 100 percent behind his effort to stay here and I figured if it could help him a little bit, it was worth the trip,” Sustar said.

When Mendoza Turbin first arrived at Glenwood High, Sustar said, he didn’t even know his multiplication tables. A year later, he was tackling high school algebra, and translating it for other Spanish-speakers in the classroom.

“They saw how hard he was working and worked to catch him,” Sustar said, “and they finished at the top of the class with him.”

When Sustar addressed the graduating class last year, he singled out Mendoza Turbin for his accomplishments. When Mendoza Turbin walked across the stage to get his diploma, he got a standing ovation from his classmates.

Now, he’s seeking a nursing degree through Colorado Mountain College.

“I believe education changed my life,” Mendoza Turbin said.

Gang target

Mendoza Turbin’s grew up in the rugged mountains of western El Salvador, in the shadow of El Imposible national park. His parents were poor farmers who rented the land they worked. His mother had never attended school. His father hadn’t gotten much farther.

Glenwood Springs High School staffers have rallied behind Jose Mendoza Turbin in his efforts to stay in the country legally. Among them are, pictured here left to right, Joe Mollica, John Mount, Linda Flohr, Ginny Badger, Paul Freeman, Britten Boyd, Amy Treese and Wade Lewis.

In the aftermath of a bloody civil war, El Salvador found itself plagued by gang violence, and his hometown of Tacuba was no exception.

“These gangs targeted me because I was young,” Mendoza Turbin said.

Two rival gangs, MS13, the Mara Salvatrucha, and MR18, the Mara Negra, had their sights on him, and Mendoza Turbin confesses he joined with both of them from time to time, stealing or hitting someone to please them.

They would stop him on the way to school, he said, and they became impossible to escape. He and his family decided the only safe thing to do would be to leave.

“They were doing bad things,” he said. “Killing. “Hitting. Stealing money. That’s what I could do. My parents taught me my values. That’s why I couldn’t join them.”

Alone and scared

Mendoza Turbin’s brother was already living in Glenwood, where he came as a refugee after a devastating earthquake rocked the country a few years before. Mendoza Turbin set out to join him, crossing Guatemala and Mexico by bus and hitchhiking until he came to the U.S. border.

“It’s scary, you know?” he said. “I was alone and you had to be strong to come to this country.”

He joined with a group of immigrants who blitzed across the Rio Grande into El Paso, Texas. When the Border Patrol came, some fled to safety. Mendoza Turbin got caught. After two days in detention, they released him, and he made his way to Glenwood Springs, where he showed up in school midyear. He wasn’t a great student, he said, and he was scared.

“I really didn’t give him much hope,” Badger said. “He was literally so disoriented. His skills were so low. He probably had about a 5th grade education, and that’s probably being generous.”

But Mendoza Turbin dedicated himself to studying, and teachers met with him before school and after school to help. He became interested in a nursing career as a way to give back.

“I want to show all the people that helped me a lot that the education they gave me, advice and everything, really, I got it,” he said. “Show how grateful I am to them. Because a lot of people have been kind to me. I want to give them something. They gave me this community.”

Running out of options

Since he arrived, he’s been working to find a way to stay legally. After four years of trying, he’s running out of options. He pleaded for asylum, based on the danger he said he faced from gangs, but he was rejected by an immigration judge and appeals court. He’s pleaded for a stay of deportation, but that’s been rejected twice. He’s trying again, with his teachers and community members lining up behind him.

“Any fight that is not fought is the worst fight,” Badger said. “You don’t see us clamoring for every student. This kid is special.”

Their last hope lies with an agent in Denver who can grant a stay of deportation.

“It is not just any other case,” said his attorney, Shelley Wittevrongel, of Boulder, who has begun working on Mendoza Turbin’s case for free. “I think Jose is exceptional in that he has come here, used his time in the United States and really dedicated himself to taking advantage and giving back to the community. So when the community came to me and said, ‘We don’t want this kid to have to go back,’ I tried to put my creative juices to work to figure out what could be done.”

His past pleas have been turned down because his asylum claim was rejected, Wittevrongel said. Officials have never ruled based on the claim that he’s a community asset. That’s one reason a stay of deportation can be granted. If it seems like a long shot, she said, it didn’t use to be. In recent years, immigration officials have been more reluctant to offer stays, she said.

“It’s not just a sob story,” said Sustar, his former math teacher. “We’re not just trying to save him from El Salvador. He came to Glenwood Springs High School. We enrolled him. All this public money has already gone into his education. It just seems from a dollars and cents perspective, it just makes sense that the community should reap the benefit of having him here.”