ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD Omar is being held hostage by the feds.
The ransom: his mother.
Federal authorities are refusing to release the boy to his aunt, a legal U.S. resident, because they know Omar’s mother – who has been in Manhattan for the past 10 years earning an honest living – is an illegal immigrant.
They want to flush her out.
The ultimate prize for the Immigration and Naturalization Service is a statistic – two deportees.
The ultimate cost is the emotional well-being of young Omar, who simply did what his mother told him to do. He’s been sitting in an INS juvenile facility in Houston since Thanksgiving after getting caught entering the country.
The boy is wondering why his mother has abandoned him, unaware of American immigration laws that brand her a criminal. Too young to know that if she comes forward, his 4-year-old New York sister – a U.S. citizen – could become motherless.
“The story, as sad as it may sound, is not unusual,” said Wendy Young, a lawyer for the New York-based Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children.
“They use children as bait to lure illegal immigrants in.”
The unwritten practice, common in the states on the Mexican border, is also employed at Kennedy Airport, where innocent children are psychologically punished for their parents’ crime of being an illegal immigrant.
In August, Geovany, 10, a New York-born citizen, spent four terrifying days in INS custody, alone, after returning from Mexico because the feds thought his birth certificate and Social Security card were fake.
Geovany saw his aunt, who accompanied him on the flight, shackled to a wooden chair in a room where they both spent the night. The next day, his aunt’s visa was revoked and she was tossed out of the country.
“We felt horrible because when we spoke to him [Geovany], he was crying because he didn’t want us to leave,” said the boy’s sister, Amanda, 17 (not her real name).
Geovany’s father and sister, both illegal immigrants who now face deportation, immediately came forward – and were subjected to four days of torment.
City Legal Aid lawyers at first thought INS was just doing its job – but then they began to see how “malicious” the agency practice has become.
“There is something very upsetting about the practice,” said a Legal Aid lawyer who recalled five other “hostage” dramas.
“They harass the child just to get to the parents. They take advantage of the vulnerability of families and the family’s desire to protect the child.”
Ariadna Renteria Torres, the Legal Aid lawyer representing Geovany’s family, described the practice as racial profiling that verges on child abuse.
“The threat is, if the parent doesn’t show up with documents to get the kid, the kid will go to a shelter. And the parents don’t want their kids in a shelter.”
INS juvenile detention chief John J. Pogash flatly denied those allegations, saying INS has the dual role of capturing illegals and taking care of the children until an adult comes forward.
“We have a duty and responsibility to ensure, as best as possible, that juveniles are placed in a safe environment,” Pogash said, citing the dangers of slavery rings who prey on kids.
INS detains more than 4,600 “unaccompanied minors” every year and has the daunting task of verifying their parents’ identity before releasing them.
Immigrant advocacy groups, however, charge that INS’s dual role of enforcement and baby sitter is a conflict of interest – and the best interest of a child takes a back seat.
Omar’s mother, Maria, 36, cleaned houses for 10 years after sneaking into the United States from El Salvador to raise $10,000 to pay coyotes – smugglers – for the safe passage of Omar and his 14-year-old brother, who managed to escape the Border Patrol.
Maria is beside herself because Omar’s father, a legal immigrant, refuses to go get the child. “I don’t care about him,” Maria recalled the father saying.
“He [Omar] keeps asking me ‘Where’s my father?'” Maria said, tears welling in her eyes. “I don’t want to tell him that his father doesn’t care about him – it would make him sick.”
“I can’t take it anymore,” Maria said in a shaky voice. “I’m not going to leave him there wasting away. I’m not afraid. I’m just concerned about what’s going to happen to my other babies.”
Geovany’s father, 36, and sister faced the same dilemma when they learned on Aug. 24 that the boy was in custody at JFK.
For four frantic days and four visits to the INS office at 26 Federal Plaza, Geovany’s father and sister complied with agency demands. They got a notarized letter from Harlem Hospital, Geovany’s original birth certificate, and documents from the city’s Bureau of Records. But INS refused to release the boy.
Not until the frustrated father and sister, ignorant of the laws, signed deportation papers did INS tell them any relative who is a legal resident could have claimed the boy, the sister said.
“My brother was scared because he thought he was never going to see us again,” she said. “He’s a small kid, who spent four days with strangers.”