wfn.org | Presbyterian Congregation Fights For Member Facing Deportation

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31-March-1999 
99133 
 
    Presbyterian Congregation in Texas 
    Fights For Member Facing Deportation 
 
    by John Filiatreau 
 
DENTON, Texas - Ed Portillo, summons in hand, went to the Immigration and 
Naturalization Service (INS) office in nearby Dallas, thinking he was 
taking a routine step toward renewing his resident-alien status. 
 
    The next thing he knew, he was in handcuffs, awaiting deportation. 
 
    After a few days in the county jail, he was put on a bus with dozens of 
other immigrants to be driven down Interstate 20 to Port Isabel on the 
Gulf, a staging area for "illegals" en route to Mexico. As the bus pulled 
out of Denton, he wondered when - and whether - he would see his wife and 
daughter again. 
 
    He was mulling over his whirlwind apprehension and his dismal prospects 
when an agent in an INS car stopped the bus, demanded the release of Ed 
Portillo and took him back to Denton. 
 
    "This is a miracle," he thought, "a real miracle." 
 
    But it wasn't really a miracle. 
 
    It was just the first fruit of a campaign mounted by dozens of 
mortified Presbyterians who have worshiped with Portillo for the past nine 
years and sent their kids to his Sunday School classes. 
 
    Portillo's pastor at 190-member Trinity Presbyterian Church in Denton, 
the Rev. Kent Miller, said that what began as a bid merely to save Portillo 
from deportation is becoming "a longer-range change-the-law sort of 
program." 
 
    The law in question is a 1996 immigration measure that provides for the 
immediate, perfunctory deportation of criminal aliens. 
 
    Portillo was caught up in the government dragnet because he was 
involved in a crime in 1983, when he was 19 years old. He says he gave a 
gun to some friends and waited in a car while they robbed someone. He later 
pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery under a deferred-adjudication 
agreement, promised to make restitution and was sentenced to 10 years on 
probation. 
 
    Because he stayed out of trouble and paid the restitution, he was 
released from probation after just five years.  And he thought his record 
had been cleared. 
 
    Not so. 
 
    Though the INS took him into custody on March 17, immigration officials 
say Portillo came to their attention when he applied for citizenship about 
two years ago. 
 
    "On the application and in an interview under oath, he answered `No' 
when asked if he had ever been arrested or convicted of a felony," Neil 
Jacobs, INS assistant director for investigations, told a Dallas newspaper 
recently. "A records check indicated he has some serious offenses involving 
the use of a gun. 
 
    "We have to go by what the law says, and the law says we have to put 
him under (deportation) proceedings." 
 
    Jacobs told "The Dallas Morning News" that Portillo probably should 
have been deported in 1983 on the heels of his conviction. 
 
    Portillo was scheduled to appear before a deportation judge April 1. 
Because he was sentenced to probation rather than prison, he is not an 
"aggravated felon" under INS law, and therefore has standing to ask a judge 
to prevent his deportation on the basis of his unblemished record for the 
past 16 years, his length of time in the country and the fact that his wife 
and daughter are U.S. citizens. 
 
    "I did something stupid 16 years ago," he said, "... but I worked two 
jobs to pay for what I did and to get out of trouble. Now it's like I'm 
being tried all over again." 
 
    Portillo has lived in the United States since 1973, when his parents, 
migrant workers, crossed the border in search of steady work. He is the 
oldest of seven children. He helped his parents care for his younger 
siblings. 
 
    He helps his wife, Karen, with her successful catering business. She 
has multiple sclerosis and can't do labor that is too physically demanding. 
He also works as a head waiter in a Hyatt restaurant at the Dallas-Fort 
Worth Airport, mainly to maintain health insurance for his wife and 
daughter Katy, who is 9 years old. 
 
    He also cuts the grass and tends the grounds at Trinity Church, where 
he has taught Sunday School classes for several years, and at a local 
orphanage, the Cumberland Children's Home, and drives to Dallas to mow his 
elderly mother's lawn. 
 
    "The Portillos joined our church about 1990," Miller, the pastor, told 
the Presbyterian News Service. "Both of them are members, and very active. 
They attend services regularly. They're part of our church family. ... 
 
    "We're a small church, without a custodian or janitor, and Ed is one of 
those that do the work. He's done a lot of gardening and landscaping work 
for us. For the past year or so we've had a prayer group meeting at 7 a.m. 
on Wednesdays, and he usually attends that before he goes to work." 
 
    The congregation was "devastated" when Portillo was taken into custody, 
Miller said. 
 
    "That first Sunday after it happened was a real sorrowful Sunday," he 
said. "We had a congregation in tears. It was like the atmosphere after a 
car accident where someone was killed. There was frustration, anger and 
confusion. Our Session met for a long time, trying to decide what we should 
do. We settled on a fairly low-level strategy. We wanted to stay within the 
law and respond in a way that would be appropriate." 
 
    They began collecting letters of support for Portillo and phoning their 
representatives in Congress, asking them to help prevent Portillo's 
deportation and to consider changing the law to prevent similar injustices. 
They had about 65 letters - most of them from Trinity Presbyterian members 
and Portillo's relatives - in just 12 hours. They also worked the media. 
The story in "The Dallas Morning News" led to a follow-up story on a local 
TV station. 
 
    "It was just like Ed was kidnaped," Miller said. "We felt the same 
frustration you'd feel if someone you loved was kidnaped and held hostage. 
And it was an impenetrable situation. No one (at INS) would explain 
anything or answer our questions. They were all very tight-lipped. We were 
told that even the judges had no discretion, that there was no way to waive 
the law or make an exception for Ed. And Ed was astounded to learn that a 
number of people in (jail) with him were in the same boat. 
 
    "I am not a historian," Miller added, "but what the government is doing 
with this law - the automatic deportations, the fast-tracking through the 
process - seems to me to be not unlike what we did with the Japanese in 
World War II. And what Germany did with all kinds of criminals, as well as 
the Jews." 
 
    Ron Farnsworth, Ed Portillo's best friend and a leader of the save-Ed 
movement, said the upcoming bond hearing is "a little ray of sunshine" 
after two weeks of darkness. 
 
    "I talked to Ed last night," he said. "He's just trying to maintain an 
even keel. This has been the longest four days of his life. The best-case 
scenario is that they'll release him on his own recognizance. I'm hoping 
they will let him post a cash bond. Initially we were told he wouldn't even 
get a bond hearing. 
 
    "We're going to pack the courtroom. We'll have at least 30 people 
there." 
 
    According to Farnsworth, Hyatt has granted Portillo personal leave for 
work days he has missed and assured him that he will have a job when he 
returns. 
 
    Karen Portillo, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, said her 
husband told her that, when he was on the bus en route to Port Isabel, he 
was having an "out-of-body experience." 
 
    "His soul was looking down at this lump of meat in chains when they 
stopped the bus on I-20," she said. "He said he thought then, `There is a 
God. You did it again.'" 
 
    She said he has closed her catering business "until this is over." 
 
    Nine-year-old Katy Portillo has written to the judge in her father's 
case: "I can't live without my daddy. If a kid doesn't have a daddy, their 
whole life is ruined. So if you would kindly let him out I would love it." 
 
    Ed Portillo feels much the same way. 
 
    "If I'm deported, you might as well rip my heart out," he told a 
reporter. "How can I go away from my child, my wife and the life I've grown 
to love?" 
 
    Don Smith, a member of Trinity Presbyterian and a former director of 
the American Civil Liberties Union in Denton, is among those trying to 
help. 
 
    "Ed is the epitome of a hard-working, honest, conscientious, 
responsible, taxpaying citizen," Smith said. "He is exactly the kind of 
person this country ought to try to encourage and help ... This law was 
intended to give us the ability to deport someone who is a real threat, 
like a terrorist, not to pick up wage-earners, fathers, businessmen." 
 
    Portillo's attorney, Lisa Moreno, agreed, saying:  "This is a family 
man, a hard worker and a hands-on parent, not one of those distant fathers. 
If you send him away, he'll leave a wife who has MS and no health 
insurance, and a daughter who'll have no health insurance. This is a man 
who is genuinely deserving of residency and citizenship, who has had no 
incident with the law since he was a 19-year-old green youth. This is like 
mom and apple pie. These are American values." 
 
    Karen Portillo said she has met many other women whose men are facing 
deportation. 
 
    "I stand in line with these wives at the jail," she said. "They are 
Canadians, Asians, Europeans, Hispanics, all facing the same thing we're 
facing. These women need help." 
 
    She said she has been told that "99.99 percent" of people in Portillo's 
situation "don't get released on bond," but is nonetheless confident that, 
in time, her husband will be vindicated. 
 
    "Ed's character is going to get him out of this," she said. 

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