Special Report: Lawyers help undocumented immigrants clear blemished past
Mario Yepez was caught driving under the influence in Soledad in August 2003, the same year he got his green card.
“My lawyer told me to plead guilty and to complete the programs,” Yepez said. “He never told me I would have problems in the future.”
Yepez followed court orders, finished the drug and alcohol programs, and got his license back two years after his conviction. He said he’s been sober since.
But in 2013, immigration agents stopped Yepez at an airport in Texas after a trip to Mexico.
Yepez landed in detention centers before he was deported. He was one of the record 438,421 unauthorized immigrants deported under the Obama administration.
Even though the former president was famously called “deporter in chief,” a study by the Migration Policy Institute found Obama-era policies focused on two key-groups: those who committed high level crimes and recent illegal border crossers. But President Donald Trump has a less nuanced approach.
“People that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million – it could be even three million – we are getting them out of the country,” Trump told CBS 60 Minutes in an interview in 2016.
“Trump says if you have committed any criminal offense, and it’s worse than that, if you are just arrested for an offense, even if you haven’t been convicted, or even worse than that, if an ICE officer in their opinion believes that you are a danger or have committed a crime,” Santa Cruz immigration attorney Mike Mehr said.
This includes convictions that date back decades since there is no statute of limitation for immigrants when it comes to deportation proceedings and many criminal attorneys aren’t familiar with the complexities of immigration law.
“They may think if they plead their client to a lesser offense, that it won’t cause as much problems as pleading them to a more serious offense. But immigration laws are even more complex than Internal Revenue Service law,” Mehr said.
Meher is among the many attorneys helping people like Yepez clear their blemished records.
“A bill was passed that I help draft that went in to affect last year, that said if you went to a drug program, for like simple possession of a small amount of drugs and you are sent to a diversion program, if you complete it, you are told by the court that you will have a clean slate,” Mehr said.
Now back on the Central Coast, Yepez said he cherishes a second chance at doing things the right way
“Ever since the conviction I have changed so much for the laws of this country. Besides I have a daughter who is born in this country and I feel like she has an opportunity that I never had,” Yepez said.
