MOTHER OF 3 STILL COULD BE DEPORTED

Akron Beacon Journal (OH)

WOMAN'S CASE REOPENED AFTER HER RELEASE FROM PRISON ABOUT MONTH AGO

Author: Julie Wallace, Beacon Journal staff writer

The freedom that Sandra Orantes-Cruz has enjoyed for a little more than a month grew precarious this week when she learned that the immigration case she fought and won is being reopened.

The decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals could jeopardize Orantes-Cruz's efforts to remain in the United States where she has lived since the age of 6 when she was adopted from El Salvador by a Twinsburg couple.

"I knew it wasn't over," Orantes-Cruz said Tuesday as she tended to her three young sons and nephew, all of whom are ill.

"I want to break down and cry," she said, "but my babies are sick, and that's not what they need."

Orantes-Cruz, 31, was ordered deported because she was convicted in 2003 in Medina County on charges of felonious assault and kidnapping, and she had never filed for citizenship.

As she neared her release date from prison last year, immigration officials picked her up and moved to have her deported to the country of her birth, where she no longer has any relatives.

She was granted a reprieve, however, when her attorney, James Chin of Cleveland, persuaded Medina County Common Pleas Court Judge Christopher Collier to retroactively modify her sentence -- reducing it from three years to 360 days of probation.

Collier made the change because at the time of her original sentencing, he hadn't been told of her history, which included living on her own from age 16, her involvement in two abusive relationships and her diagnosis with battered women's syndrome.

The sentence reduction removed her from the threat of automatic deportation in accordance with a previous immigration decision -- a California case involving defendant Oscar Cota-Vargas, who had been ordered deported to his native Mexico.

In that case, a judge reduced Cota-Vargas' sentence for receiving stolen property -- a move immigration officials maintain was done deliberately to remove him from the grip of immigration officials.

In the notice Chin received about Orantes-Cruz's case, it was noted that the government wants her case reopened but held in abeyance until their efforts to appeal the Cota-Vargas case are concluded.

That means it could be a while before Orantes-Cruz hears anything.

"The worst-case scenario would be that they overturn Cota, and then we would have a problem," Chin said. "It doesn't seem to end."

Orantes-Cruz has been living with her biological sister, Morena Sweitzer, in her Akron home since her release from custody just before Christmas.

Sweitzer and her husband, Paul, had cared for Orantes-Cruz's sons while she was incarcerated.

Sweitzer said her sister has been trying to rebuild her life since her release. Orantes-Cruz, who has never driven a car, was about to get a temporary license so she could learn to drive.

"She's trying to get her life going . . . and then this. It's so frustrating," Sweitzer said.

Caption:

Sandra Orantes-Cruz has lived in the United States since being adopted at age 6.