wfn.org | Judge Won't Set Bond For Family Man Facing Deportation

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7-April-1999 
99142 
 
    Judge Won't Set Bond For 
    Family Man Facing Deportation 
 
    by John Filiatreau 
 
DENTON, Texas - An immigration judge refused on April 1 to release Ed 
Portillo on bond pending an April 16 hearing on whether he should be 
deported to Mexico. 
 
    Portillo, a Presbyterian Sunday School teacher, has been in jail since 
March 17, when officials of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service 
(INS) arrested him under a 1996 law that provides for the immediate 
deportation of criminal aliens. 
 
    In 1983, Portillo, then 19 years old, pleaded guilty to robbery and was 
sentenced to 10 years' probation. He says he had given a gun belonging to 
his father to some friends and waited in a car while they robbed someone. 
He made restitution and stayed out of trouble, and was released from 
probation after only five years; and he thought - wrongly, as it turned out 
- that his record had been cleared. 
 
    He came to the attention of the INS when he applied for citizenship two 
years ago. He was taken into custody when he reported to an INS office for 
what he thought was part of the process of renewing his resident-alien 
status. 
 
    Portillo has had no trouble with the law - not even a speeding ticket - 
since 1983. 
 
    Members of his church, 190-member Trinity Presbyterian of Denton, have 
been campaigning for his release and for a reversal of the deportation 
order. About 90 church members were on hand for the April 1 hearing, but 
only a few were admitted into the small courtroom. 
 
    In the April 16 hearing, Portillo is expected to ask the judge to 
prevent his deportation on the basis of his unblemished record for the past 
16 years, his length of time in the country (26 years), and the fact that 
his wife and daughter are U.S. citizens. 

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