The Honduran native is desperately fighting to avoid deportation to a country he left nearly twenty years ago and in which he has no immediate family. His case is currently before the federal appeals court in Atlanta, which is poised to make a decision about Mejia's fate that could help define how much power the INS can exercise over those it wants to expel. At issue is the constitutionality of a law passed by Congress in 1996 that limits judicial review of immigration authorities' decisions .
Mejia first arrived in Miami in 1980 at the age of fourteen; he joined his mother, who had come here to work as a housekeeper when her son was only nine months old. He entered the country legally as a tourist; shortly thereafter he received student immigration status, good until August 1990, and enrolled at Palmetto High School.
On April 14, 1986, police stopped a car in which Mejia, a Miami-Dade Community College student, and another youth were passengers. The police found nearly a kilo of cocaine in the vehicle. Mejia later denied he had anything to do with the drugs.
As this was his first offense, prosecutors offered him a deal: If he pleaded no contest to cocaine trafficking, a felony, he would serve two months in jail, a month in a halfway house, and then two years of probation -- a sentence reserved for youth offenders. After that his record could be sealed, essentially giving him a fresh start. Mejia asked his defense attorney, the prosecutor, and the judge whether a no-contest plea would affect his immigration status. All three insisted it would not.
They were wrong.
After completing his probation without incident, Mejia enrolled at Florida International University. In March 1990, however, the INS caught up with him in the form of a letter that accused him of having entered the United States illegally and of being a convicted felon. The INS temporarily detained him, then released him on bail pending a deportation hearing.
Mejia tried to extend his student immigration status but was rejected because of the pending deportation proceedings. He was left with a stark choice: Stay in Miami awaiting his deportation hearing (though after August he would be here without a valid visa), or voluntarily leave the country (effectively accepting deportation) and try, however unlikely, to obtain a new visa to return. He chose to stay. The INS seized on this and in December 1990 sent Mejia another letter, this one stating that the agency was now seeking his deportation.
In a series of immigration hearings, Mejia's lawyers argued that he had overstayed his visa in order to defend himself. Furthermore they insisted that his original no-contest plea and youth-offender sentence did not count as a conviction. An immigration judge disagreed. It was indeed a conviction under federal immigration law. Mejia's attorney appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals in Virginia. In 1994 that appeal was denied, with the result that Mejia could be deported at any moment.
Over the next two years Mejia hired several different lawyers in his efforts to escape deportation. At the same time, he was finding success selling photocopy machines internationally. He also became engaged to his steady girlfriend, a U.S. citizen named Maria de los Angeles Salcines. The couple, known among friends and family as Nieto and Angie, were married on April 19, 1995.
Just three days before the wedding, and without Mejia's knowledge, the INS issued what is commonly known as a "bag and baggage" order, summoning him to appear for deportation to Honduras on May 12. When he finally received the notice, Mejia ignored it. Today he says that he didn't think he was required to appear because his lawyers were still appealing his case.
At International Document Solutions, where Mejia worked, he won honors as the number-two salesman for 1996. A year later he broke the four-million-dollar mark in sales. (Much of his work involved setting up photocopy machine franchises throughout Latin America.) With his wife working at a photo studio, the couple felt secure enough to begin searching for a home to buy.
Then in early 1997 Mejia learned the INS might be looking for him. His wife urged him to find a new attorney, and the two ended up at the office of Oscar Levin, an immigration specialist with the Miami firm Greenberg Traurig.
Levin enlisted colleague Elliot Scherker and together they filed a motion in state court seeking to set aside Mejia's original conviction, arguing that he had erroneously been told his no-contest plea would not affect his immigration status. On August 1, 1997, a judge granted the motion and Mejia's conviction was overturned.
Despite this apparent victory, on September 23, 1997, INS agents swooped down on Mejia's office near Miami International Airport. They allowed him to turn off his computer and call his attorney, then they drove him to Krome. He has been there ever since.
Attorneys Levin and Scherker filed motions in federal court seeking to halt deportation and requesting a new INS hearing based on the fact that Mejia's twelve-year-old conviction was no longer valid. This past March 12 Judge Joan Lenard ruled that under a 1996 federal law called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, she had no jurisdiction over the case. Critics of that law say it violates the constitutional right of the courts to oversee acts of Congress. In addition it gives the executive branch power to detain people without their having recourse in the courts. "These are fundamental issues about how the government is supposed to work: separation of powers, a check on dictatorship -- important stuff," Scherker says.
The day after Lenard's decision, Krome guards woke Mejia at 4:00 a.m. and told him he was being sent back to Honduras. At the same early hour, Scherker, who had been informed the day before, arrived at his Brickell office and began to draft an emergency motion to the federal appeals court for a stay of deportation. By 8:00 a.m. Scherker had faxed the motion to the court as Mejia and other Krome detainees headed for the airport in a van.
Mejia's plane was scheduled to leave at 11:00 a.m. He watched anxiously as those with earlier flights were dropped off. Finally only Mejia was left in the van when the driver received a radio message asking the guard to call Krome. Mejia could scarcely believe the news the guard shared after he returned from calling the facility. The court had granted Mejia's stay.
"He said, 'Mejia, you're going back,'" he recalls. "So I tried to move farther back in the van, and he said, 'No, you're going back to Krome.'"
The jubilation wore off quickly, however. Mejia was still stuck in Krome, where he will stay until he either wins both an appeal and a new hearing, or the INS receives permission to deport him. (The INS refuses to discuss the case. "We reserve our comments for the courtroom," says Greg Gagne, a Washington D.C.-based spokesman for the agency.)
Although Levin and Scherker have petitioned the INS for Mejia's release on bond pending a decision by the federal appeals court, district director Robert Wallis denied it. In a letter to Levin, Wallis stated that he didn't believe Mejia's case would be reopened, and he also cited Mejia's failure to appear for the first bag and baggage order as further justification for his refusal.
Angie Mejia, who has now spent birthdays, Christmas, and a wedding anniversary separated from her husband, cannot understand why the INS won't grant bond. "He's fighting to stay here. How can he be a flight risk?" she asks. Levin and Scherker appealed Wallis's decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals but six months later have yet to receive a ruling.
The attorneys presented oral arguments before a federal appeals court panel this past June 16, but they don't know when the judges will rule. "It's much bigger than just Mejia," Levin notes. "Unfortunately for him, he happens to be the vehicle for the fight.
