Battered wife faces deportation to El Salvador (San Francisco Chronicle)

Battered wife faces deportation to El Salvador

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, October 25, 2010

A Mountain View woman who fled a violent husband and entered the United States illegally in 1995 faces imminent deportation to El Salvador, where her husband has been looking for her, her lawyer said Monday.

Irma Medrano, 44, is being held by immigration authorities at a jail in Yuba City and could be deported as soon as Tuesday, said attorney Aubra Fletcher. She said the government has refused to delay Medrano's case to let her apply for political asylum and has disputed her claim that her life would be in danger in El Salvador.

Medrano's relatives in San Salvador have reported that her husband has come to look for her after he learned that she was on the verge of being deported, Fletcher said. She said police protection has improved little since the early 1990s, when Medrano's husband tried to strangle her with a belt and a police officer allegedly told her, "We can't do anything because it's your husband."

But lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security said conditions for women have improved in El Salvador. The number of female legislators and Supreme Court justices has increased, the government said, and police nationwide have undergone training in preventing rape and child abuse.

"The government and police of El Salvador are far more willing and far better able to address (Medrano's) concerns regarding her husband," government lawyers told the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is considering her case.

Medrano's case "has undergone exhaustive review by judges at all levels of our legal system," said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Federal courts have ruled that victims of domestic violence who enter the United States illegally can qualify for asylum by showing that their homeland government is unable or unwilling to protect them.

Medrano's lawyers have cited a State Department report in March that found rape remained widespread in El Salvador, rape laws were not effectively enforced, and domestic violence "was considered socially acceptable by a large portion of the population."

Medrano said she left her homeland after years of abuse and settled in the Bay Area, where her sister, who had left El Salvador under similar circumstances, is now a U.S. citizen. Medrano left her two children with relatives in El Salvador and now has two more children, both U.S. citizens, with another man who was later deported.

She gained temporary legal status in 2001 when the United States granted refuge to Salvadorans because of an earthquake in their country. But her status was revoked because of two misdemeanor traffic convictions, for a hit-and-run causing property damage and driving without a license, and authorities moved to deport her in 2006.

Immigration courts rejected her claim for legal residence, saying she had not shown that her children would suffer extraordinary hardship if she were deported.

After learning that Medrano's husband has been looking for her, her new lawyers urged the immigration board to consider her application for asylum.

Medrano, who works at a supermarket in Mountain View, reported to a San Francisco immigration office Thursday for a routine weekly check-in and was taken into custody and transported to Yuba City to await deportation, Fletcher said.

Her sister, Paula Cano of Hayward, sobbed Monday while describing how she took Medrano's 12-year-old daughter to see her mother in jail over the weekend, leaving her 9-year-old son at home.

"These two kids, they need their mom," Cano said. "We're scared for her. ... I don't know why they want to do this to her."