He killed his attacker as a teenager. Should he be spared deportation?

Marco Flores was months away from serving his prison sentence when an immigration agent showed up at the maximum-security Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, west of Boston, last spring and handed him a stack of papers.

The documents confirmed what he had long feared: After his release, the US government planned to deport him to his native El Salvador – a place he had not seen since he was six.

He has been in prison since he was seventeen. Now 30, he had hoped to start a new life when his sentence ended: as an electrical engineer, as a husband and as a father. But on that day in May, he was forced to acknowledge that his dreams had virtually no chance of becoming reality.

His crime was violent: He killed his former neighbor and babysitter, Jaime Galdamez, 31, who was accused of raping Mr. Flores for years starting when he was nine.

Mr. Flores pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2013, without understanding what it would mean for his immigration status. Federal law prioritizes the deportation of people convicted of crimes, especially those found guilty of murdering someone.

Still, he hoped that given the circumstances that led him to kill Mr. Galdamez, a judge would allow him to stay. His mother and brother are both legal residents of the United States. His sister is a citizen and so is his wife, Diana Flores, a childhood friend who began writing to him after his conviction, eventually leading to a wedding in the prison visiting room.

But at a time when the country has hardened its stance on immigration as record numbers of people cross the border illegally, convicted felons like Mr. Flores have little chance — no matter how much growth and remorse they show.

Immigration courts routinely deport people who have worked and committed crimes in the United States for years no offense worse than a traffic violation. They include parents forced to leave their families behind and beloved community members with successful businesses. Even the millions of young immigrants known as “Dreamers,” who were brought to the United States illegally as small children and often achieved outstanding achievements, still have no sure path to permanent residency.

And with record numbers of migrants crossing the southern border, a major political vulnerability for President Biden in next year’s election, lawmakers in Washington discuss to introduce to increase the number of deportations and make it more difficult to obtain asylum.

“There are millions of people around the world who desperately want to come here legally and contribute something of great value, people with extraordinary abilities, and they can’t because they’re stuck with years of backlog,” says David J. Bier, deputy director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.

Mr. Flores “forfeited his right to decide where he wants to live for the rest of his life,” Mr. Bier added, “when he took matters into his own hands.”

The people with the best chance of avoiding deportation typically have no criminal record, a history of contributing to the community and a strong argument that their deportation would cause exceptional hardship to their American relatives, said Eliza Klein, who recently retired. an immigration judge in Chicago.

But even those cases are “extremely complicated” to win, Ms. Klein said. And because undocumented immigrants are not entitled to appointed legal counsel in immigration courts, few people facing deportation ever get an attorney.

Other immigrants convicted of similar crimes have sometimes avoided deportation.

Solange Anestal, a Boston woman who spent 17 years in prison for killing a man who abused her, faced deportation to Haiti when she served her sentence in 2020. Terrified that she would be targeted by criminals there, she convinced a judge to let her stay, assisted by a lawyer who took her case for free.

“It may sound sad or crazy,” she said in an interview, “but I would have chosen to stay in prison in America because I was deported.”

Mr. Flores’ deportation hearing was initially scheduled for July. On the morning it was to take place, he reported to his prison job and cleaned the prison hallways as he waited to be called before an immigration judge in Boston via a virtual hearing.

The call never came; nor any explanation. Neither the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts, nor the Department of Homeland Security, which initiates deportation cases, would comment on Mr. Flores’ case.

Whatever happened, the delay benefited Mr. Flores: In September, a pair of lawyers agreed to take his case for free.

Ms. Flores, who and a friend had spent months looking for a lawyer for her husband between her cafe job and college classes, said Mr. Flores wants a bigger wedding when he gets out and enough kids to “start a football team ‘. .” If the time comes, she will follow him to El Salvador, she said.

But they fear Mr. Flores’ life could be in danger there — from gangs, the corrupt government or Mr. Galdamez’s relatives who could seek revenge.

“We would spend our entire lives looking over our shoulders,” Mr. Flores said.

Jorge Galdamez, Mr. Galdamez’s cousin, said his family does not want to hurt Mr. Flores.

“He has done his time. It is now in the hands of the law,” he said in a Spanish interview. “I have no hatred towards Marco.”

Mr. Flores was three when his mother left their small Salvadoran town of Metapan and set out to build a better life for them in America. Left in the care of his teenage brother, Mr. Flores pined for her until three years later she saved enough from her office cleaning job to pay for his trip to Boston.

He was 8 when his mother left him with Mr. Galdamez, then 21, who lived on their street in East Boston. A fellow immigrant from the same city in El Salvador, Mr. Galdamez, offered to babysit the boy for free, bought him toys and ice cream and eventually began sexually abusing him.

Police would later confirm that Mr. Galdamez had abused Mr. Flores, kept dozens of photos and videos of young boys on his computer, and talked to other men online about how to molest children without getting caught. Mr. Galdamez also acknowledged his misconduct toward Mr. Flores and other online predators.

The abuse ended when Mr. Flores was about 14 years old. He remained silent for years afterward, believing that Mr. Galdamez repeatedly warned that his mother would be angry with him if she found out.

When Mr. Flores was 17, he found a photo of his 6-year-old nephew in Mr. Galdamez’s basement apartment. Shortly afterwards, his mother told him that Mr. Galdamez would be moving into their apartment to care for the boy.

On May 23, 2011, firefighters responding to a fire in Mr. Galdamez’s apartment found his body. He had been strangled, then doused with lighter fluid and set on fire.

Less than a day later, Mr. Flores turned himself in and confessed to the murder.

Prosecutors agreed to a 15-year prison sentence for Mr. Flores. They told the judge they agreed with the defense that, in the teenage defendant’s eyes, killing Mr. Galdamez was the only way to protect his young nephew.

Mr. Flores accepted the plea deal after his court-appointed attorney convinced him not to risk a jury trial, with the possibility of a first-degree murder conviction and an automatic life sentence. He later regretted his guilty plea, he said, and wondered how a jury could have included his victim’s crimes against him in its verdict.

Schuyler Pisha, one of Mr. Flores’ lawyers, said he may qualify for a stay under forms of compensation reserved for victims of certain crimes, including human trafficking. He must show, Mr. Pisha said, that when he committed the crime he was “young, with a brain that was not yet fully developed in a situation that was very extreme and in a situation in which he will not find himself again .”

Mr. Flores’ best chance to remain in the country would be to convince a judge that upon his return to El Salvador he would be arrested and placed in conditions so horrific that they would be considered torture, said Dana Leigh Marks, who retired as an immigration officer. judge in San Francisco at the end of 2021.

“It’s a risky bet,” she said.

a report from Human Rights Watch found that more than 200 deportees to El Salvador were murdered, tortured or went missing there between 2013 and 2020. The country has jailed tens of thousands of men in a campaign to stamp out gang violence.

If a judge can be convinced that Mr. Flores has a more than 50 percent chance of being tortured in El Salvador, then he cannot be deported back to the country under the U.N. treaty called the Convention Against Torture, Mr. Pisha said, who plans to do this. expert witnesses are present to speak about human rights issues.

Mr. Flores’ sentence ended in late December, two years early, because he earned a leave of absence for good behavior, his wife said.

He was immediately taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and sent to a detention center in New Hampshire.

He is still waiting for a new hearing date on his deportation.