FATHER FIGHTING DEPORTATION

BRADENTON -- Eight marijuana plants. Barely 2 feet tall, remembers Stephen
Kaschl, using his hands to show their height.

In November, more than a year after the plants were found by Sarasota
detectives, the first-time offender pleaded guilty to growing them for
personal use. The cops had been tipped off by a neighbor, Kaschl later learned.

He agreed to two years of probation and believed his ordeal was over. But,
on June 26, the Canadian-born Kaschl walked into a probation office and
found an immigration agent waiting with handcuffs.

Kaschl, 38, remains in a Bradenton jail cell, where he's fighting removal
from the United States. He never suspected that probation would lead to
deportation.

He has a very good reason for wanting to stay.

"I grew up without a father and I don't want my daughter to grow up the
same way," he said Wednesday, tears spilling down his cheeks.

It was three days before his 10-year-old daughter's first visit to the
jail. She lives in Sarasota with his ex-wife.

"This is my home," he said on his 44th day in INS custody, referring to the
United States. "This is where I want to live."

It's been 19 years since Kaschl, 38, has called Canada home. His accent is
barely noticeable.

After years of working and paying taxes south of the border, he never
thought of applying for citizenship, even though he could have easily
become a citizen years ago.

"Being a Canadian citizen and a resident of the United States was the best
of both worlds," he said. And as far as marijuana goes, he says he's been
clean for a year-and-a-half.

As far as Canadian family goes, he has two sisters and a brother in Alberta
- -- 3,000 miles away from Sarasota.

"He's not a murderer. He made a dumb mistake," said his ex-wife, Lisa Adam,
who is also a citizen of Canada. "His family isn't in Canada. They're here!
Why is the government doing this to him?"

As he's been waiting, Adam has watched in anger as dozens of ex- convicts
have walked away from the INS detention facility after the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that the government could not indefinitely hold felons whose
countries won't take them back.

It's not that Kaschl's country won't take him back. Officials there have
already said they will.

So Kaschl spends his days in INS limbo, fighting deportation and a July 6
order that keeps him in jail. His job as a truck driver is waiting for him
when he gets out, but his employers can only wait so long, he said.

"This farce that's going on in your country is the craziest thing I have
ever heard," said his former mother in-law, Muriel Messina, from her home
in Canada. "He is a man who wants to, desperately wants to, stay with his
family, particularly his daughter," she said.

If prosecutors agree, Kaschl can withdraw his plea to growing marijuana
and, instead, plea to misdemeanor charges of marijuana possession.

But it's not that simple, says chief assistant state attorney Dennis Nales.
"Unless there is a motion and a legal basis for that motion to be granted,
I would not agree to it," Nales said.

Phyllis Galen, who prosecuted Kaschl, now has a private practice in
Sarasota and can't approve such a deal, he said.

Kaschl's attorney, Richard Reinhart, said the legal wranglings could mean
his client will sit another two to three months behind bars.

On Tuesday, Reinhart will ask an immigration judge to keep his client from
being sent to Canada as he looks to withdraw Kaschl's plea.

Meanwhile, as his daughter is learning to skate, an unused set of ice
skates is collecting dust in his closet, he said. When she visits him, he
knows she'll ask when he'll be able to join her on the ice.

"Soon, is all we can keep telling her," he said.