Digital Extra

6.22.2000
Seized in the night

Retroactive law ensnares New Bedford man

By RANDALL RICHARD
Journal Staff Writer

Journal photo / Mary Murphy

SHOWING PATRIOTISM: Maria and Mario de Freitas, with their daughters, Tara and Amber Rose, watch the New Bedford Memorial Day parade, on Court Street, near their home.

When Tara finally opened the door and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she saw her mother at the kitchen table, surrounded by several women. One was pouring coffee. The others were trying to comfort her.

At the sight of her daughter, Maria forced a smile.

"What's wrong, Mommy?" Tara pleaded.

Before her mother could answer, Tara spotted her father's pickup truck through the living-room window. It was parked at an odd angle at the side of the road.

"Where's Daddy?" Tara wanted to know.

"Daddy went to work," Maria lied, as she was getting up from the table.

"No he didn't, Mommy," Tara shot back. "The truck's over there."

"Daddy's friend took him to work," her mother persisted.

"No he didn't, Mommy. You're lying."

Tara's eyes were fixed on the clunky green pickup outside. They began to moisten, but her voice was oddly matter-of-fact. It was as if she were bravely confiding to her mother that she already knew there really is no Santa Claus.

"Daddy didn't go to work, Mommy. Daddy died."

The women at the kitchen table burst into tears as Maria rushed to her daughter's side.

"No. Daddy didn't die," she insisted, holding Tara tightly in her arms.

"Daddy died, Mommy. I know he died."

EACH TIME she relives that year-old scene, Maria de Freitas finds it more difficult to control the heartbreak and the anger.

Like many of a generation who know of dreaded knocks on the door mostly from late-night broadcasts of Hollywood classics, Maria de Freitas never believed it could happen in America.

But that was before June 24, 1999 -- the day her husband, Mario, was picked up by immigration agents to face deportation for a crime he had committed 13 years earlier.

As she recalls that day, it was one of the few times she did not get up before dawn to see her husband off to work.

She remembers hearing the signature squeak of the door on the driver's side of their pickup and the anemic whine of the starter before the truck's engine coughed itself to life. But for some reason, she says, she couldn't quite bring herself to open her eyes and get out of bed.

Instead, she admits with more than a trace of guilt, she just rolled over, giving in to the temptation to go back to sleep until it was time to get up to make breakfast for Tara and her younger sister, Amber Rose.

Journal photo / Mary Murphy

TOGETHERNESS: Mario de Freitas, who is recovering from surgery after a fall on the Big Dig project, sits in the living room with his wife, Maria, and daughters, Tara and Amber Rose.

HER MORNING coffees with her husband, says Maria, have always been precious to her, but even more so since the birth of Tara and Amber Rose, who was then five months old.

It was usually only in the morning, when the kids were still asleep, that they could share a quiet moment.

Mario's obsession with work, she says, and his almost fanatical devotion to rebuilding their house -- on his own, and virtually from the ground up -- left little time for anything else.

Six, sometimes even seven days a week, Mario was out the door before sunrise and off to Boston in his pickup truck to work at the city's "Big Dig."

And though it is hard, sometimes dangerous work -- directing one of the huge, pressurized booms that pour the concrete at the biggest and most expensive construction site in America -- Mario would put in 12, sometimes 14 hours a day.

But even then, after he got back from work, sometimes after 8 p.m., he wouldn't stop, at least not until the neighbors finally told him it was getting a little late and "it's time, Mario, to knock it off."

Whether he was stripping a room down to its two-by-fours after dark and rebuilding it under flood lamps, whether he was pressing, reshaping, and putting up vinyl siding on weekends, building a playroom or a gym in the unfinished basement, putting up a new deck overlooking the garden, or building a back-yard fishpond for the kids, Mario attacked every job like a man possessed.

And that, says Maria, was really her only complaint about their marriage.

TO MARIA de Freitas, it was as if her husband somehow desperately needed to make up for the three years he had spent in prison after pleading guilty in 1988 to a charge of possession of cocaine with intent to deliver.

He had never been arrested before, nor has he since; he had never gotten so much as a parking ticket, she says.

According to a lawyer who was so taken with the family's plight that he has been battling the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service pro bono on the de Freitases' behalf for nearly a year now -- despite the family's willingness to pay -- Mario is recognized by just about everyone in the judicial system who knows him as a "poster boy" for rehabilitation and, ironically, for good citizenship.

He is a young man, says Frederick Watt, Mario's lawyer, who got in trouble once but managed to quickly turn his life around, a young man who ended up becoming a close friend to his former probation officer, a young man who found a job just one day after being released from prison and who worked tirelessly for 9 years to become a prized and treasured employee, a young man who, with sweat equity alone, more than tripled the value of a run-down $53,000 eyesore and turned it, after countless long nights and weekends, into the pride of the neighborhood.

All of which, Maria now says, made June 24, 1999, come as so much of a shock.

Why now, she kept asking the neighbors who had crowded around her kitchen table that day to console her. Why now?

NO SOONER, it seemed, had she fallen asleep after hearing the pickup truck pull away from the house than the phone rang.

"Somebody just took Mario."

"What do you mean?" she shouted into the phone. "Someone took Mario?"

Before her girlfriend could answer, Maria de Freitas was out the door in her pajamas. She spotted the pickup at the side of the road and ran to it, screaming.

"Inside the truck, the coffee cup is still steaming hot," she says. "The bagel is warm, and the lunch box is still sitting there."

It was as if her husband had vanished into thin air, she recalls, as if he had suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth.

They said they were from Immigration, her girlfriend told her. They said that Mario had a little problem that needed to be straightened out.

Mario's "little problem," it turned out, was far from little -- and it is nowhere near being straightened out.

Journal photo / Mary Murphy

NEW ADDITION: With his two daughters, Tara, now 5, and Amber Rose, 1, Mario de Freitas holds the sun he always hoped for, Shane Douglas, born June 3.

WHAT IS happening to the de Freitas family is not unique. How it happened is.

Once, sometimes twice, each week, another Portuguese-American family in Rhode Island or Massachusetts is divided as a result of the 1996 deportation law.

Last year, it happened 96 times -- to sons and daughters of permanent legal U.S. residents; to young men and women, many of them drug users, who came to America as children or infants, who were educated here, grew up here and who are products of American society, men and women who are now being shipped back to a 6-by-28-mile island in the Atlantic Ocean, an island they hardly remember, where they can neither read nor write the language, an island from which they will probably never return.

In most cases -- 427 to date -- they are sent to the Azores straight from prison and only after serving time for whatever crime it was that made their deportation mandatory.

What sets Mario de Freitas apart from other deportees is that, 10 years after a federal magistrate ruled that he be allowed to stay in America after completing his prison sentence, he was arrested by INS agents outside his home.

Thanks to the intervention of U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, a Democratic congressman from Southeastern Massachusetts, he has been released from INS custody while his case is being reviewed.

For the de Freitas family, that's the good news. The bad news is that no one who has been ordered deported since 1996 has successfully managed to get that deportation order reversed on appeal.

Since Congress passed the antiterrorism act of 1996, immigration judges have lost virtually all discretion in such cases. All noncitizens are subject to deportation if they are sentenced to one year or more in prison, even if they are placed on probation rather than sent to jail.

In effect, even a suspended sentence can mean a lifetime of exile from the United States -- a lifetime of separation, not only from the only country they have known since childhood, but also from the mothers, fathers, wives, and children they leave behind.

In de Freitas's case, there was no suspended sentence. He had already finished serving his sentence when the INS first moved to deport him.

"What I did was wrong," says de Freitas, "and it was right to put me in jail. But it was like being punished twice for the same crime."

As a 4-year-old, Tara's world -- until June 24, 1999 -- was a world of gardens and fishponds and quiet Sunday mornings with her father.

The rest of the week, Tara was Mom's. But on Sunday mornings, she was Daddy's girl.

It was on Sundays that Tara and her father would walk together to 11 a.m. mass at the nearby church. Usually, Mom would be making lunch or still doing chores around the house when they'd get back, so they'd sit alone for a while on the porch or head off to the sandbox or the fishpond in the back yard.

Most other days, Mario de Freitas was off to work long before Tara woke up. And on most nights, she'd have to remember to be quiet so he could get some sleep.

But those Sunday mornings were different. That was the time to show her father everything she had had learned the rest of the week, and Tara always managed to make the most of it.

The first few days after they took her husband away, says Maria de Freitas, were the toughest for Tara.

Tara wouldn't cry, she says, but she'd sit alone outside on the swing, rocking back and forth, hour after hour, just staring into space.

Nothing her mother said would console her, and it wasn't until three days after Mario was picked up, when he finally called home from a jail cell in Hillsborough, N.H., that Tara again smiled.

MARIO COULD never lie to Tara, Maria explains, and he didn't want to talk to her from jail -- he couldn't bear to tell her he was locked up.

"Look, Mario," she told him. "You have to talk to her. She thinks you died."'

When she heard her father's voice that day on the telephone -- even as her mother was still holding the receiver -- Tara's face lit up and the sparkle returned to her eyes.

"Daddy didn't die, Mommy," she said. "He didn't die."

But then came the same nagging question -- the question Tara started asking day in and day out: "When is Daddy coming home, Mommy? When is he coming home?"

And the only answer she could find to give: "Not today, baby, not today."

IT WAS time, Maria de Freitas realized, to stop feeling sorry for herself.

"No more crying," she promised. "Now it's time to fight."

Her first challenge was to find out why the INS had picked up her husband so many years after he had served his sentence and rebuilt his life, why they were still determined to deport him after a Boston immigration judge had already ruled that he would be allowed to remain in America.

As far as Maria was concerned, her husband's troubles with immigration had ended with the judge's ruling. Why, she demanded to know, had things suddenly changed?

If anyone could find the answer, she figured, it was Frederick Watt, a lawyer from New Bedford who was seen within the Portuguese-American community as one of the few straight-talking immigration lawyers in the area and a proven champion of their anti-deportation efforts.

Far too many Portuguese-American families had been strung along by their lawyers -- lawyers who, at best, were ignorant of the vast changes in the deportation law that took place as a result of the 1995 terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City, or who bled them of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees for what they already knew was a lost cause.

To many in the Portuguese-American community, this lawyer was different. If he knew the case was hopeless -- and it often was -- he'd tell them so.

Mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, siblings -- some of whom had already mortgaged their houses to pay other lawyers -- were often advised by Watt to put their money to better use, like giving their son or daughter, brother or sister, nephew or niece a little nest egg for their all-but-certain lifetime of exile.

In this case, however, Watt was so outraged by the conduct of the INS, so convinced that there had been a miscarriage of justice, that he refused to take money from the de Freitases.

Watt's first priority was to get Mario de Freitas out of jail.

It would not be easy.

Under the 1996 law, final orders for deportation are no longer open to judicial review and bail is rarely an option.

In fact, in virtually every case -- the exceptions being those cases in which local, county, or state criminal judges agree to vacate their original sentences or reduce them to less than 365 days -- a final order inevitably means banishment from the United States.

Only in those cases where the original charges are dismissed and a new trial is ordered is bail permitted -- and then, only if the crime in question was committed before 1996.

Before he could do anything, Watt needed to get answers to the same questions Maria de Freitas had been asking herself since she had found Mario's pickup truck that morning at the side of the road. Why, after 12 years -- and after an immigration judge in Boston had already decided that Mario could stay in America -- had the INS decided to go after her husband?

A call to the INS regional office in Boston was less than helpful.

There must be some mistake, Watt told the INS officer over the phone as Maria handed him a sheaf of documents.

Mario's alien card, his passport, the judge's order allowing him to stay in America -- all were in Watt's hands as he spoke.

Could he fax the documents he was holding to Boston and get it all cleared up by the end of the day?

The answer was a curt "no."

Watt was incredulous.

Maria remembers him staring at the papers, his anger and disbelief growing as he was hanging up the phone.

"What are you doing?" he asked her. "Can you drive up to Boston?"

With the sheaf of papers back in her hand, she was out the door before Watt had finished redialing.

The documents, he told the INS officer, were on their way. They were being hand-delivered by his client's wife.

BY THE TIME Maria de Freitas had driven to Boston, the bad news was waiting for her.

There had to have been some kind of major screwup, Watt was explaining over the phone. Either the INS never told Mario's original lawyer or Mario's lawyer never told him, Watt said, but the INS had appealed the judge's ruling one month after the judge had ruled in Mario's favor.

Bottom line, said Watt, is that Mario never showed up for the new hearing, and the INS won the case on an uncontested appeal.

Maria was furious.

She told Watt she was on her way to see Mario's old lawyer to find out what had happened.

The last time they had talked to him, she said, was years and years ago, the day the judge had said Mario could stay in America.

There was always the chance the INS could appeal, she remembers the lawyer saying, but that was highly unlikely.

"Get married and have a good life," he told them as they were shaking hands. And it was the last they heard from him.

Maria promised Watt she would get to the bottom of it. She'd find Mario's old lawyer and get back to him, probably by the end of the day.

"You don't understand," Watt interrupted. "You won't be able to find him."

Mario's old lawyer, he told her, was in prison -- serving a two-year sentence on a bribery conviction.

WITHIN A week, Mario de Freitas told his wife from his prison cellblock that he had had it.

He was cold and hungry and tired.

There was no way he would stay behind bars a day longer.

No one, he told Maria, ever beat the INS.

He was surrounded at that very moment, he told her, by men who were trying -- men who were rotting away in jail as their lawyers took every dime their families had -- and who would finally get shipped out like all the others, anyway.

No, he told Maria, he was not going to fight it anymore.

As far as he was concerned, they could put him on the plane tomorrow for the Azores. It was over.

Maria begged him not to give up.

Even after she got the call from the Portuguese consul, she refused to accept that Mario would be deported, that he would be banished from America for the rest of his life.

"Please prepare a suitcase," the consul told her. "Get his clothes ready and anything else he might need. The date has been set. Your husband will be deported July 8."

Twenty-four hours before Mario was scheduled to board the plane, Watt called Maria at home.

Congressman Barney Frank had postponed the deportation and was making arrangements to get Mario out of jail pending a final decision.

"Oh, my God," Maria shouted. "Oh, my God. They stopped the damn plane. I can't believe it."

Within a week, Maria got another call. This one was from the prison at Hillsborough. She could pick up Mario. He was being released and would be dropped off at a Coast Guard base in Boston, where the INS maintains an office.

Maria and her sister piled into her sister's car with Tara and Amber Rose.

About an hour later, as they pulled up at a traffic light outside the base, Maria spotted her husband.

"He's sitting on the curb next to the 7-Eleven," she recalls. "His hands are under his chin. His hair is dirty, and he's got these work clothes on. He's wearing boots. And I said, `Oh, my God. Look at my husband.' "

"You know something," her sister told her later. "Me and the kids could have rolled right off the dock, because you just jumped out of the car. You didn't even put it in park."

"Well, I couldn't help it," Maria said. "I just saw him there and he looked so tired. And we hugged. And all he kept saying was `Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.' "

MARIO DE FREITAS is not given to displays of emotion. He's the type of man who prefers remaining on the sidelines, letting his wife or his hands do the talking for him -- whether those hands are pouring concrete at the Big Dig, or just buttoning his daughter's dress as she giggles with delight at the start of another long Sunday morning.

For Tara, the week of May 21 had been a week of Sundays -- with her father staying home from work for the first time in her young life.

It took a fall at the Big Dig, a badly bruised liver, some internal bleeding, a few days in intensive care at Massachusetts General Hospital, and more than a few stern words from his doctor, but Mario agreed not to return to work for at least another week.

After his wife gives birth to their third child, which he prayed would be a boy -- he says he'll go back to work. But in the meantime, he says, there are a few spots on the ceiling where the plaster is just not quite right.

Maria de Freitas, who was due to give birth within days, rolled her eyes.

It was as if she had just read his mind.

Not more than five minutes earlier -- as he was walking home from a morning stroll through Buttonwood Park -- she was saying she really didn't like the way he was staring at the ceiling, especially since the doctor wanted him to stay off his feet:

"I've been watching him staring at the ceiling. . . I know what he's thinking."

Now, she can laugh at his addiction to work. But two weeks earlier, as she was rushing to his side at Mass General, she was terrified. It was as chilling, she says, as that day last June when she opened the door to Mario's truck and felt the warmth of his deserted cup of coffee.

This time, it wasn't the INS that threatened to separate them.

This time, 70 feet below ground, a steel rebar collapsed under his feet. The fall against the rebar below wasn't much -- less than a body length, he recalls, but a steel spike that was protruding about an inch-and-a-quarter above the rebar plunged into him.

The rescue workers who put him in a basket sling and hauled him by crane up to street level said they wouldn't have given much for his chances if the spike had been just a few inches higher.

As it was, says de Freitas, it took a while before he could breathe. He kept opening his mouth to call for help, he says, but nothing came out.

Finally, a few of the men on his crew spotted him turning blue for lack of oxygen and radioed for help. For a moment or two, he admits, he thought he might be dying.

There's nothing more terrifying, says de Freitas, than your own silent scream -- when the moment comes and you suddenly realize that there is no one who hears your cry for help.

Editor's note: Maria de Freitas gave birth to a 9-lb. boy, Shane Douglas, on Saturday, June 3.

Tomorrow: The Bristol County, Mass., district attorney believes the deportation law is harsh, but it's helping him to clean up the county.

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