Argentine brother and sister worked under cover for feds, but now face deportation

Siblings face deportatation after work for feds

SAUGERTIES, N.Y. — There was a time, just a few years ago, when Emilio and Analia Maya’s lives brimmed with possibility, when their little Main Street cafe thrived and their hard-fought dream of life in America seemed enticingly within reach.

They had emigrated from Argentina in the late 1990s and settled in this picturesque village at the foot of the Catskills, working in restaurants and gas stations, becoming respected members of the community. Emilio joined the volunteer fire department. His sister volunteered as a translator for the local police.

Life was hard, but happy, and they had big plans. They were saving to open a restaurant where Emilio, now 34, would whip up Argentine specialties like chicken empanadas and chimichurri steak while Analia, 30, served customers.

But that was before the Mayas struck their deal.

Like so many other immigrant workers here in the Hudson Valley, the Mayas had overstayed their visitor visas years earlier. Their days were haunted by the fact that they could be deported at any time.

Though she loved life in America, Analia yearned to be able to travel freely, to once again see friends and relatives in her hometown of Mendoza, to glimpse the familiar, snowcapped peaks of the Andes.

One day, feeling particularly homesick, she turned to her friend, police officer Sidney Mills. The burly, crewcut cop regularly recruited Analia to help with cases involving Hispanics. He estimates that Analia, and later Emilio, worked on as many as a hundred cases.

“Can you help us get legal papers?” she asked him.

Mills didn’t hesitate.

“They were doing right by the community,” he says. “I thought I should do right by them.”

So in March 2005 Mills arranged a meeting at the station between Analia and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Kelly McManus and Morgan Langer. They peppered her with questions about the kind of information she could provide, about why she wanted to stay in the U.S. “I want to finish college and become a translator,” she told them.

According to Mills, the deal was straightforward: In exchange for working as informants, ICE would help the brother and sister get coveted S visas, which, in rare instances, are awarded to immigrants who help law enforcement.

“It was very clear,” Mills says. “That was the deal they thought they had made.”

Five years later, the Mayas say they have only questions and a burning sense of betrayal. They insist they held up their end of the bargain, risking their lives in hours of undercover work, wearing wires and using fake names. But for reasons they do not understand, ICE and the agents who were their handlers abruptly turned against them — and they now face imminent deportation.

“How can this country be so cruel?” Analia asks.

Analia remembers how her heart leaped the day they sealed the fateful deal. Finally they were on the path to legal status and eventual citizenship. Emilio was more wary. How could they trust the very people charged with deporting them? What if it was all just a trick?

Still, at Analia’s insistence he agreed to meet the agents the following week. That first encounter — in the back of a black Explorer in the Price Chopper parking lot — was terrifying. In the car they spotted handcuffs and guns. Oh my God, thought Analia, what have we done?

But the agents were friendly and professional. They were looking for information on people involved with drugs, gangs, human smuggling operations, prostitution and selling false papers. They made it clear that they couldn’t pay for information, and that the Mayas would have to sign forms stating that they would never talk about their undercover work, not even with their immediate family.

And so the Mayas were inducted into the murky world of “CIs” — confidential informants — a world filled with suspicion and deceit and danger, a world in which, undercover, they were no longer Analia and Emilio Maya, but Ana and Edwin Martinez.

At first, the work seemed simple enough. At soccer practice, in the restaurant, even grocery shopping, the Mayas would initiate conversations about information the agents were seeking. They would meet McManus and Langer in supermarket or church parking lots and inspect photographs of suspects. ICE wasn’t interested in regular people working illegally, Analia says. “They were looking for the big fish. The really bad ones.”

Emilio wasn’t so sure. On the street the S visa is known as the “snitch” visa. What if word got out that the Mayas were informing on immigrants like themselves? If the true identities of Ana and Edwin Martinez were exposed, would ICE be there to protect them?

And yet the promised reward was dazzling. The Mayas were about to open their restaurant, Tango cafe. Their parents had followed from Argentina and were helping them. What illegal immigrant wouldn’t leap at the opportunity to secure legal status and end the daily dread of deportation?

What choice did we have, Emilio asks — though he acknowledges that, in fact, they did have a choice. Agents had explained at the very first meeting: If they had any doubts, they were free to walk away without any repercussions. Instead, they chose to stay.

As the months passed the Mayas got to know their handlers — the redheaded, no-nonsense Kelly; the nerdy, bespectacled Morgan. The relationship was businesslike, not warm or social. But the Mayas trusted them. After all, officer Mills had introduced them.

In February 2006, the agents decided to take the next step. They wired Emilio and sent him to a Main Street house that operated a prostitution ring.

Mills remembers the night clearly — how he, McManus, Langer and Analia sat in an unmarked car down the street, listening as Emilio asked about the girls, where they came from, who brought them, the cost. Analia, who was acting as translator, was shaking. What if they discovered the recorder, hidden in a packet of cigarettes? What if they turned on her ?

The agents were pleased. The night’s work brought a big reward: Later that month McManus and Langer drove the Mayas to the ICE office in New York, where they were photographed, fingerprinted and handed work permits — small white cards stamped with the authorization to work for a year. As long as they were working for ICE, the permits would be renewed every year.

Analia and Emilio were ecstatic. Finally they were legal. This was the first step, they thought. The S visa would surely follow. “The agents were laughing at us, we were so happy,” Analia said.

That September, agents approached Analia about an undercover job in a cosmetic factory in Port Jervis 70 miles away, where she was to pose as an illegal immigrant from Mexico. She was to get information on hiring practices, on who provided the false papers, and on the managers.

Analia was nervous but a bigger concern was leaving the restaurant indefinitely. “Tell them you can’t go,” Emilio pleaded. “What about our customers?”

“I don’t have a choice,” she said. “This is our future.”

For five weeks, Analia lived in a hotel near Port Jervis, working the 7:30 am to 3:30 p.m. shift at the factory. Agents would pick her up at 4:30 in the morning, slip on the wire — a small device she wore in her jeans pocket — and drive her to a parking lot where a van picked up the workers. When her shift ended, they would pick her up, debrief her, and drive her back to the hotel.

Standing for hours on the assembly line was exhausting, and trying to pry information from managers was even harder. Analia didn’t dare make friends. Nights were miserable, alone in the hotel. And there was the constant fear of being exposed.

Analia begged McManus to let her go home. But, she said, the agent told her that she had to keep her side of the deal. Otherwise, she would be arrested and there would be nothing McManus could do.

In the end, an old injury — a broken collar bone that hadn’t healed properly — landed Analia in the emergency room. Doctors said she couldn’t work in the factory anymore.

For the most part, Analia said she never felt in serious danger, though Emilio described several close calls. Once, he said he was wired and trying to buy false papers from a suspect in a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee shop. The suspect became suspicious, flung down the money and stormed away.

On another occasion, Emilio said, he was wired at the Newburgh police station, 50 miles away, and sent to a run-down neighborhood to find a woman named Maria. He was instructed to pay her $220 for a false Social Security number and work permit. But Maria insisted on driving to another location and agents lost track of him. Terrified, Emilio had to make his own way back to the station, miles away.

By the summer of 2007, Emilio’s nerves were frayed. He was losing valuable time from his cafe and he still hadn’t received a visa. He was sick of pretending to be Edwin Martinez. He wanted out. “We had given them information on a gang, on a smuggling operation, on drugs, and still we had nothing,” he said.

But when he demanded an explanation from the agents’ boss, James Mooney, the response was chilling, Emilio recalled: If the Mayas stopped informing, they risked immediate deportation.

Analia dismissed it as an idle threat. After all, they had made a deal with an agency of the U.S. government. Of course it would be honored. They just had to be patient.

But things were changing, the Mayas could sense it. In 2008, they say, the agents began demanding information on terrorism and guns — information the Mayas simply couldn’t provide. The brother and sister continued offering tips about local activities, but they were no longer sent on undercover jobs.

In many ways, it was a relief. They were busy running the restaurant. Emilio had married his girlfriend, Kseniya, a 22-year-old student from Belarus, and they had a baby girl, Valentina. Analia was pregnant with her son, Santiago. They had little time for information gathering, though the question was never far from their minds: Where did they stand with ICE?

The answer came in May 2009. At a meeting in the Price Chopper parking lot, Emilio says, agents bluntly told him that unless he delivered information on weapons and terrorism, his work permit would not be renewed and he would be deported.

He listened in horror. What about the promised visas? What about their deal?

“They said the information I gave them wasn’t good enough,” Emilio says.

Analia was frantic. Where could they turn for help? They had promised not to tell anyone about their work. They had no written proof of their deal with ICE. What would happen to them?

Their parents urged them to leave, to go back to Argentina, to turn their backs on the country that now seemed to be turning on them. No, Analia said. We’ve worked too hard to just give up.

In desperation, she confided in a customer at Tango — U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, who had stopped by for Saturday lunch with his daughter. Sobbing, Analia told him everything. The congressman listened in disbelief. “Calm down,” Hinchey said. “The government doesn’t use people and throw them away.”

That next week, Hinchey’s office began researching their case — and, the Mayas say, ICE stopped taking their calls.

Months passed. Hinchey’s office pressed unsuccessfully for information from ICE. The Mayas’ permits were valid until 2010; now that a congressman was involved, they assumed, they would somehow be allowed to stay.

No one foresaw what happened next.

On Nov. 17, as he left his house for work, Emilio was surrounded by nine agents wearing ICE flak jackets and pointing guns. Among them were the agents who had coached him and wired him. “We are deactivating you,” they said, slapping him in handcuffs and shackles, as a horrified Analia begged McManus for answers: “Why are you doing this? Where are you taking him?”

Emilio was “out of status” and would be deported, McManus said.

She acted, Analia recalls, as if she was dealing with strangers.

Emilio was driven 100 miles to Pike County jail in Hawley, Pa., and locked up for 15 days, though he was given no explanation and charged with no crime.

Analia was inconsolable. She called Hinchey’s office and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s, immigration lawyers, and of course, Mills. He listened, shocked. There must be some explanation, he thought.

A 10-year veteran of the police department, Mills had long worked undercover narcotics operations, sometimes with the FBI. He knows how deals are stuck with informants. And though he had never dealt with ICE before, “I assumed it was just another law enforcement agency and the rules would be the same.”

The golden rule: “You protect your sources, and you never renege on a deal.”

Now Mills is torn between the belief that the Mayas are good people who deserve to be rewarded for their work, and the nagging feeling that, “there must be something I don’t know.”

If there is, ICE hasn’t revealed it. The only explanation Hinchey’s staff received was that none of the information the Mayas provided had led to arrests or prosecutions.

Emilio was released on a 90-day stay on the eve of his deportation in December after Hinchey personally called ICE field agent Thomas Decker, who signed the release. The order for deportation was signed by Mooney — the same agent who met regularly with the Mayas and oversaw their undercover work. It was dated Dec. 27, 2005. ICE won’t explain why it waited four years, and used Emilio as an operative before serving it.

When the 90 days are up, Emilio must leave the country voluntarily or face deportation. The clock runs out on March 2. Analia faces her own hearing in immigration court on March 5.

ICE spokesman Brian Hale said the agency was in the difficult situation of being unable verify details about any case involving informants, or even to confirm a deal was made. In general, he said, ICE uses “alien informants” in what he termed a “significant public benefit parole” program, which may eventually lead to S visas. “There has to be a significant benefit to the government,” Hale said. “That is the standard they have to adhere to.”

Reached at her office in Castle Point, ICE agent McManus, the Maya’s key contact, said she couldn’t comment and hung up.

Critics of ICE say it is not unusual for the agency to treat informants poorly.

“They use the most vulnerable people to do dangerous work, make them all sorts of promises and then just abandon them,” says New York immigration lawyer Claudia Slovinsky. In more than 25 years of practice, Slovinsky says, she doesn’t know of a single case of someone receiving an S visa.

“These kind of shocking things happen with ICE all the time,” Slovinsky says. “And we need to shine a light on it because most Americans have no clue.”

The Maya’s plight has divided this historic little village on the banks of the Hudson. The local fire and police departments have written on their behalf. Weekenders have flocked to their aid, signing petitions, holding fundraisers, bombarding Hinchey and Gillibrand’s offices with letters of support.

Gillibrand’s staff has asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano “to determine whether the Mayas are being given full and fair consideration in this matter.” And last week Hinchey submitted a rare private bill requesting the Mayas be granted legal status. Private bills are occasionally used to provide relief from immigration laws for compelling cases. But they are unpopular, particularly in the current political climate. There are complex rules governing their introduction and they are extremely difficult to pass.

Meanwhile, the reaction from the Latino community has been suspicion and fear.

Before Emilio’s arrest the cafe hummed with patrons from Argentina and El Salvador and Chile. Latinos don’t come to Tango anymore. They shun Emilio and Analia at the bank and the supermarket. Emilio, who played professional soccer in Argentina, has been dropped by his local team. Analia’s friends won’t return calls because they fear her phone is tapped.

It’s an open secret that undocumented immigrants work in many restaurants and factories in the area, and they are easy to find. While they won’t speak openly about the Mayas, privately many say that any entanglement with ICE — either as informant or suspect — is perilous. “People are just scared of anything to do with ICE,” said one restaurant worker from El Salvador.

Another said it was hard to have sympathy for informants. “You make your bed, you lie in it,” he said.

The Mayas understand. Even if they avoid deportation, they wonder about their prospects in Saugerties. “What kind of a life can we have here,” Analia says, “when so many people are enemies?”

For now, the clock is ticking and the strain shows. Emilio is on the verge of giving up and buying a ticket to Argentina, knowing he will not be able to return. Analia and Kseniya say they will be unable to run the restaurant on their own, and besides, they wouldn’t want to stay in the country without him.

Tango still opens at 7 every morning, still clatters with old-fashioned conviviality and charm. Customers breeze in and coo at the babies, and Analia greets them with a smile. In the kitchen, Emilio tries to distract himself with cooking. But as the deadline looms and the family awaits it’s fate, nothing in the cozy little cafe feels the same.

Helen O’Neill is a national writer for The Associated Press, based in New York. She can be reached at features(at)ap.org.