WIGENT ADAMANT ON U.S. STAY

Rochester woman finds defenders as she fights INS deportation order.

(Jan. 8, 2000) -- Maria Wigent attended school in Rochester, went to work
here, got married downtown and even honeymooned in a hotel on East Avenue.

But she also got hooked on cocaine and shoplifted from local stores so many
times that she was banned from one grocery store chain.

As a result, she may be kicked out of the United States and sent back to the
country she left when she was 5.

Wigent is a legal immigrant from Italy caught in what some believe are harsh
provisions of a 1996 law intended to crack down on illegal immigration and
criminal conduct by noncitizens.

Wigent's case is not unique, though there are no reliable estimates of how
many other legal immigrants found guilty of minor crimes are in danger of
being deported. But examples are not hard to find:

Daniel Campbell, a contractor in Michigan who has lived there since the age
of 7, could be deported to France after a breaking-and-entering conviction
from 30 years ago resurfaced.

An Atlanta woman convicted of shoplifting and forgery gave up her fight to
remain in the United States, where she had lived since she was 8. She
decided she would rather return to Guyana than stay in the county jail where
immigration officials detained her.

At least two other local people, both of whom were convicted of more serious
drug crimes, were threatened with deportation. One got a reprieve, while the
other's appeal is pending.

The 1996 law was a huge package of changes to immigration regulations. The
part that expanded the list of crimes for which noncitizens could be
deported was added at the last minute.

Some politicians who voted for the changes now say they didn't realize the
effect the changes would have on noncitizens convicted of crimes --
particularly on long-term legal immigrants. They have begun an effort to
soften the law.

"It certainly happened to enough people to where we've seen injustice," said
Susan Dryden, press secretary to Rep. Bill McCollum. The Florida Republican
was a co-sponsor of the 1996 law, but last fall he created a bill to amend
it.

Any changes, however, might not come in time to help Wigent, whose
deportation date next Thursday has been indefinitely postponed while her
appeal is considered.

Vows to stay

Wigent expresses both shame and defiance as she tells her story in an
interview room at the Wyoming County jail in Warsaw.

"I never left Rochester for any reason. I never went on vacation," she says.
"I'm going to keep fighting this until I get old and gray because I'm not
leaving."

The 38-year-old woman, who speaks almost no Italian, says she remembers
little about the small Italian town where she was born -- not even its name.
But her parents said the place was Albi, in southern Italy.

Anna and Francesco Gaglianese left in March 1968 and came to the United
States in search of better opportunities. Francesco found a factory job, and
Anna stayed home with the children, Maria and her two brothers and two
sisters.

The Gaglianeses faced problems common to new arrivals, including the
struggle to support a large family. Francesco changed jobs a few times, and
Anna went to work as a custodian in downtown offices and then the city
schools.

Wigent attended city schools but dropped out in the 10th grade to start
working in clothing stores. She married Larry Wigent at the age of 20 and
soon had two sons, Larry Jr. and Louis, now 15 and 14.

As a teenager, Maria Wigent dabbled in alcohol and drugs. Later, she's not
sure when, she discovered cocaine, which she says eventually took over her
life.

She began shoplifting to support her addiction. Her lawyer, Jeffrey Jayson,
has also argued in court that she suffers from kleptomania, a compulsion to
steal.

"The drug had me going. ... I wanted more, and I did what I had to do,"
Wigent says now.

On May 12, 1994, Wigent was arrested and charged with stealing five packs of
cigarettes and a bottle of pain relievers from the Wegmans grocery store on
East Avenue. Four days later, police charged her with trying to take two
packs of cigarettes from the Tops grocery store on Winton Road.

A City Court judge sentenced Wigent to 28 days in the Monroe County jail.

Over the next four years, police picked up Wigent 10 more times and charged
her with petit larceny and trespassing. They were all low-level charges,
either misdemeanors or violations.

By May 1995, Wigent had been banned from all Tops stores because of her
record. She continued making short trips to jail.

In August 1998, Wigent's trouble landed her in jail for a significant stint
- -- 15 months.

In the meantime, Wigent's convictions got the attention of the Immigration
and Naturalization Service's Buffalo office, which regularly checks local
jails for noncitizens. They sent Wigent a notice dated Jan. 14, 1998, to
report to immigration court in Buffalo.

Wigent had believed that marrying an American automatically made her a
citizen, so she never took the steps that her parents eventually did to
become citizens.

Police arrested Wigent two more times for shoplifting, on Jan. 11 and Feb.
11, 1998.

When Wigent finished serving time for those charges, immigration officials
transferred her to the Wyoming County Jail. An immigration judge ordered on
Dec. 14, 1999 that she be sent back to Italy.

Most are illegal

Since 1996, the number of noncitizens kicked out of the country for having
criminal records has jumped 72 percent. But immigration officials say the
vast majority of the 62,359 noncitizens deported in 1999 for their crimes
were not legal immigrants like Wigent. The Immigration and Naturalization
Service estimates 90 percent of those people were in the country illegally,
said spokesman Russell Bergeron Jr.

Under the 1996 immigration law, Wigent is considered an "aggravated felon,"
even though all the charges against her were misdemeanors or violations.

Lawyers for immigrants say that term was originally meant to cover
murderers, rapists and drug traffickers. But Congress has several times
expanded the definition, and it now also covers people convicted of such
crimes as theft if they were sentenced to a year or more in jail.

Another critical change was made in 1996: Aggravated felons lost the right
to appeal to an immigration judge to stay in the United States.

The past resurfaces

In a twist some find especially severe, the law was written so that it could
be enforced retroactively. That means that legal immigrants who travel
outside the country and then try to return, or who apply for citizenship,
are finding themselves in deportation proceedings for crimes that are years
or decades old.

Daniel Campbell spent two years in jail after he was convicted of breaking
into an Alcoholics Anonymous office with teenage friends in 1969.

Campbell, the Michigan contractor, was recently charged with another crime,
but the charge was dismissed. That brought his old conviction to the
attention of immigration authorities. They started the process of deporting
him to France, the country he left when he was 7.

Campbell's lawyer persuaded an immigration judge to postpone the case for a
year while Campbell applies for citizenship.

Stephen Brent, an immigration lawyer in Brighton, has tried other strategies
to keep legal immigrants from getting kicked out.

In one case, he convinced a judge that a man convicted of two drug
possession charges was not an aggravated felon.

Brent is still trying to help a man from Jamaica who has lived here for 20
years. He faces deportation for a conviction in the early 1990s for selling
drugs.

"It's a tremendously unjust law," Brent said. "You look for technical
reasons to try and defeat these things."

An Atlanta woman gave up on legal tactics after spending a few months in a
county jail there. Although she had never been sent to jail for her crimes
- -- shoplifting and forgery -- immigration officials detained her as they
prepared to deport her to Guyana, a place she left when she was 8.

The woman, then 21, decided not to fight and was deported last year, said
her lawyer, Bob Beer.

Although those kinds of cases are getting increasing attention, not everyone
believes the law should be changed.

"We're talking a few hundred cases a year," said Allen Kay, spokesman for
Rep. Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who sponsored the 1996 law in the
House. "You don't change policy to deal with the exceptions."

Smith's position is that immigration officials should selectively enforce
the law and target noncitizens convicted of bigger crimes.

"We have a serious crime problem from those who have come here from other
countries," Kay said. He said a quarter of inmates in federal prisons are
not U.S. citizens, while legal immigrants make up 9 percent of the overall
population.

Bergeron, the immigration service's spokesman, said members of Congress also
wanted to make room for law-abiding foreigners on waiting lists to get into
the United States. "If you do not live honestly, then you run the risk of
forfeiting the privilege that was granted to you."

But Wigent says the punishment she faces greatly outweighs her crimes.

"It's been a living hell," Wigent said of the last few years. "It's not like
I wanted to get high. It's something that the drug pulled me towards.

"I did it, and I can't blame anybody for it but myself."

Wigent says she has not used drugs since she has been in jail and vows to
remain sober when she gets out. She wants another chance to be a mother to
her teenage sons, who are now staying with her mother and with friends.

"I'm a criminal in a sense, but I didn't kill anyone, I didn't bring drugs
into this country, I'm not a terrorist. I'm just a housewife that needs to
be home with their kids."