Immigration officials to deport American Fork family who fled anti-Mormon threats (Deseret News)

Immigration officials to deport American Fork family who fled anti-Mormon threats
Published: Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2010 8:10 p.m. MDT
By Dennis Romboy, Deseret News

AMERICAN FORK — Artistic glass adorning LDS Church temples and other buildings around the world bear the creative handiwork of Debora Zalazar and her husband Claudio Correa.

The Argentine couple moved to Utah to work on projects that reflect their deeply held religious beliefs. Zalazar is meticulous about creating scriptural scenes on stained glass. Correa painstakingly etched each flower and scroll to the last detail, including all the glass in the Draper Temple.

"Everything they do is filled with real spiritual energy," said Cathy Torlina, director of Holdman Studios in Lehi where Zalazar and Correa are contract workers. "They bring their faith to their work, be it secular or religious."

But since a knock at their door about 6 a.m. last Friday, they've had to steer that faith in a different direction.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took Correa into custody and he now sits in the Utah County Jail awaiting deportation. They left Argentina in the face of anti-Mormon and anti-American harassment. And after a decade of trying, he and his wife and two teenage children have not been able to gain asylum or legal status in the United States.

They could be on a plane to their homeland in a week.

"I was trying to be a good civilian, a good citizen," Correa, 46, said in a telephone interview from jail. "I don't even have a traffic ticket in 10 years and now I'm in the maximum security area."

The couple works hard, contributes to the community and pays taxes. Their children, 17-year-old Kevin and 14-year-old Magali, are honor students.

"We love the people here. We are not against anyone. We love all the people. We love the culture. We came with that spirit. We want to be part of this," Zalazar, 40, said with tears welling in her eyes.

Correa and Zalazar harbor no bitterness. They know they must leave. All they're asking for is six months. Correa is in the middle of painful treatment for hepatitis C, possibly contracted at a dentist's office. (The family has limited health care options due to lack of medical insurance.) Kevin wants to earn his high school diploma, and he's willing to cram his senior year into the rest of his junior year to do it. He also has rheumatoid arthritis.

"Since we have a good history, if they can give us an opportunity for my son to finish high school and my husband to finish his treatment, then we can go in peace," Zalazar said.

The family's attorney German Flores intends to file a petition, bolstered with dozens of character letters from doctors, friends and neighbors, with ICE seeking a deportation deferral. Beyond that, he says, there's not much he can do.

"The family knows that they don't have very much of a chance to stay in the country legally. They have had their day in court already," he said. "They're a good family but, again, the law is so stringent."

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said those petitions are not uncommon and are considered on an individual basis.

The family left Buenos Aires in December 2000 when anti-American sentiment was at a crescendo. Correa said he was harassed for working for an American company and being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He received threatening phone calls and his house was vandalized with graffiti such as "Go away Yankee Mormon." A bomb threat at his company was the last straw.

"We went to the USA because we wanted to find a better place to live," Correa said.

They came under a visa waiver, which is very limited in scope and allows only 90 days in the country, settling in Iowa where they had friends. Correa understood his employer would file a labor certification petition on his behalf that would pave the way for legal residency. But that didn't happen. He then learned his family could obtain temporary protected status due to heightened political, social and economic unrest in Argentina. But that legislation was not enacted. Finally, he said he heard about the possibility of asylum based on the persecution that caused them to leave their home country.

By that time, though, they had been in the country more than two years and asylum petition must be filed within 12 months of arrival unless extraordinary circumstances exist. An immigration judge ultimately denied their petition and subsequent appeal in 2006.

Kice said privacy law limits what immigration officials can say in asylum cases, but she issued a general statement about the Correa family.

"Foreign nationals, like the Correas, who choose to exercise the privilege of entering the United States under the visa waiver program are prohibited from seeking to change their status after arriving here and are not entitled to a formal deportation hearing. Nevertheless, over the course of four years, the Correas' immigration case underwent a comprehensive review by judges at several levels of our legal system and the courts held that he and his family did not have a legal basis to remain in the United States."

During those years, Correa and Zalazar received advice from various attorneys and others, some good and some bad. They were under the impression that immigration officials would re-open their case after 10 years from their arrival, so they never left. They say they never received a written deportation order.

"We never tried to take advantage of being here," Correa said.

Flores said re-opening the case is not likely because the family does not meet all of the criteria, primarily that they have no U.S. citizen relatives that would be burdened by their removal.

The couple decided to move from Iowa to Utah after learning Holdman Studios did the glass work at the Nauvoo Temple. "You're using your talent to do other churches, why not our church?" Zalazar recalled her husband telling her. She works as a designer and trained her husband, who was a professional photographer in Argentina, to do etching and other duties.

Their co-workers are "outraged" about what happened to the family, Torlina said. "I'm not sure why or how (this happened). All I know is it's unjust." They're contacting law professors to see if anything can be done.

Neighbors in American Fork have also rallied around them.

"We've got most of the neighborhood writing letters," said Bishop Brent Sharp of their LDS Church ward. "This case just doesn't seem right. … They brought their family here in the first place to find a better life for their kids just like our ancestors did."

Zalazar is preparing to sell off the family's possessions in anticipation of leaving. But there are things she and her family will always have.

"Knowledge, experience, the life lived here, friends. Nobody can take that away from you."