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December 24, 2007
Dream Turns Nightmare: Milwaukee Police Officer to Be Deported
In the line of not forgiving anything immigration is deporting a police officer;
"By CATRIN EINHORN, Published: December 22, 2007
MILWAUKEE — Growing up here, Oscar Ayala-Cornejo recalls, he played chess and devoured comics, hung out at the mall and joined the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps. After high school, he realized a childhood dream, joining the Milwaukee Police Department.
But when Mr. Ayala-Cornejo filled out recruitment papers, he used the name of a dead relative who had been a United States citizen. He had to, Mr. Ayala-Cornejo says, because ever since his parents brought him here from Mexico when he was 9, he has lived in the country illegally.
The life that Mr. Ayala-Cornejo carefully built here, including more than five years with the police force, is to end at noon on Saturday, when, heeding a deportation order, he will board a plane bound for the country he left as a child.
In May, acting on an anonymous tip, immigration agents arrested him on charges of falsely representing himself as a citizen. He pleaded guilty, and is now permanently barred from the United States.
“I’m going to be saying goodbye to my family, my friends, my city — everything that I know,” Mr. Ayala-Cornejo, 25, said in an interview at the home he shares with his widowed mother and his brother, filled with family photos.
The authorities say that in violating the law, Mr. Ayala-Cornejo made himself vulnerable to blackmail and assaults on his credibility that could have jeopardized police investigations. “You can’t be a law enforcement officer when you yourself are breaking the law,” said Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mr. Ayala-Cornejo’s case is familiar to many illegal immigrants. Brought here by their parents illegally as children, they grow up thinking of themselves as Americans, often speaking English without a trace of an accent. But their immigration status frequently catches up with them when they prepare to attend college or take a job...".
at; http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/us/22deport.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
Posted by VisaLawyer at December 24, 2007 02:22 PM