WEST CHESTER, Pa. (AP) He sees his life story in the buildings and streets
and storefronts of the only place he has called home.

A rundown store he converted into a restaurant where wellheeled lawyers
loiter. A downtown office he rebuilt for a judge's brother after a fire. The
houses he restored after years of neglect.

And the street corner where he made a deal that threatens his future.

Charlie Jaramillo born in Colombia, raised in America faces deportation
for selling $40 worth of cocaine eight years ago.

``It's a death sentence,'' said Jaramillo, 32, who has never left the country
since immigrating as a toddler. ``It's like being dropped in the desert and
being told `Find your way.'

``I just don't have a chance there.''

When tough new immigration laws went into effect, most Americans did not
expect that they would ensnare people like Jaramillo otherwise lawabiding
immigrants with limited criminal records, sometimes in the distant past.

But thousands have been trapped.

There is the 31yearold Manhattanite who emigrated from England as an
infant, batted .388 for his college baseball team, went into finance then
sold an ounce of cocaine; the Mexican in Texas arrested twice with a
marijuana joint; the 64yearold alien twice convicted of drunken driving.

``If you use the term `criminal alien,' most people are going to say, `You're
right. Let's throw 'em out of the country.' But if you look more closely, the
answer is not so clear,'' said Steven Morley, Jaramillo's immigration
attorney.

Too bad, says Allen Kay, spokesman for Rep. Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican
who shaped the new laws.

``Do you want to live next door to someone who has been convicted as a drug
dealer?'' Kay asked. ``What the law says is, `We're not going to make
citizens of criminals. We're going to deport them.'''

Since 1917, laws have allowed the United States to deport criminal aliens. In
the past decade, Congress has increased the number of applicable crimes: A
law that once covered three offenses in a paragraph now details more than 50
crimes in four pages.

Congress last year also vastly diminished the power of judges to waive
deportation in extraordinary cases. And Attorney General Janet Reno ruled
that the laws apply retroactively, no matter when a person broke the law.

In the past, immigrants could win a reprieve if they had lived here for a
long time, had family ties or had rebuilt their lives. They also received
special consideration if they faced oppression in their native lands.

``The bottom line is the immigration courts had discretion to grant the
relief and they granted it in a very responsible and some would say miserly
fashion,'' said Kenneth Schultz, a Manhattan immigration lawyer.

For most criminal aliens, Congress largely took that discretion away.

``We had huge loopholes in this system,'' Kay said. ``People would play the
system to stay in the country as long as possible.''

Immigrants found guilty of aggravated felonies now have no chance of avoiding
deportation. Under the new laws, rape and sexual abuse are considered
aggravated felonies, as are virtually any drug conviction, including a minor
marijuana arrest, any crime of theft or violence that results in a oneyear
sentence and the transport of prostitutes.

The law could apply, some attorneys speculate, even to turnstilejumpers or
people who fail to report a change of address on time.

Charlie Jaramillo Carlos, to his friends is a wiry man who wears the
boots of a construction worker and the buttondown shirts of an ambitious
company director.

He was 24 when a friend asked if he could get him some cocaine. Jaramillo
knew a supplier. On a West Chester street corner, he handed over a third of a
gram and got two 20s in return.

``I felt like it was a macho thing. I felt like it was a challenge,'' he
said, repeating an explanation he has given time and again, one he knows
falls short. ``And after it happened, I paid dearly for it.''

He pleaded guilty, did 200 hours of community service and planned to move on.
Then, last August, he went to an INS office to apply for citizenship. He
checked the `Yes' box indicating he had been arrested, and INS officers told
him he would be deported.

``I kept telling them, `I already did my time,''' he said.

They cuffed him as his father wept, remembering the tough country where he
tried to scratch out a living three decades ago. His angst continued on a
visit to Colombia; Jamie Jaramillo had a heart attack as he worried how his
son would survive.

Whatever the truth, the government and the average Colombian would still
consider him a drug trafficker. And without a college degree, Jaramillo would
struggle to find a wellpaying job just like his father before him.

``There's not a lazy bone to be found in the Jaramillo family,'' said Stan
Zukin, who owned a local drugstore and gave Jaramillo his first job, when he
was 12 years old. ``I mean, this guy works better than any four people
around.''

Legal bills have sent Jaramillo, his wife and their two teenage children
back into his parents' home in nearby West Goshen. He knows that if he is
deported, he will make his next move alone.

``She just can't pick up and go with two kids who don't speak Spanish,'' said
Jaramillo's older sister, Dorris.

Since his arrest, Jaramillo has stayed clear of the law. Perhaps the most
telling example of his rehabilitation: The brother of the judge who sentenced
Jaramillo hired him to rebuild his office after a fire.

Later, the brother, William Wood, wrote a letter of support: ``I believe he
would be a good citizen of the United States, if given the opportunity.''

Morley expects to lose in immigration court and before an INS appeals board.
Under the law, Jaramillo can be deported immediately afterward, even if he
challenges the ruling in federal court. Meanwhile, he is seeking a pardon
from Gov. Tom Ridge.

Jaramillo has no argument with those who think criminals should be thrown out
of the country. His only complaint is that the law is reaching back into a
past he thought he had long since buried, a crime for which, he thought, he
had paid.

``If I'd known, I would have never taken the plea bargain,'' he said. ``I
would have fought it.''

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