Joe Arpaio's goons busted her jaw. Now U.S. Army mom faces deportation (2024)

Handcuffed to a table at Estrella Jail, Celia Alvarez was in severe pain.

She spoke almost no English, although talking hurt in any language. About a month earlier, during a raid of her workplace by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's deputies swung her against a wall, injuring her jaw.

That was in 2009, but the 46-year-old Alvarez still carries scars 15 years later. The left side of her face no longer sags, but it’s still damaged. It hurts to eat, and it hurts to laugh — but Alvarez survived. Though she lacked permanent legal status at the time, she was allowed to remain in her adopted country. And in more than one way, she wound up serving it.

Alvarez testified before Congress about Arpaio’s raids and cooperated with an investigation of the sheriff by the U.S. Justice Department. She sent her eldest child off to serve in the U.S. Army. She learned English, obtained a work visa and was hoping to become a citizen.

But now, 15 years after Arpaio’s goons arrested and assaulted her and nearly 30 years after she first entered the country, Alvarez may be forced to leave it. In late April, during a meeting to discuss her application to become a permanent legal resident, a U.S. immigration official told Alvarez she would be deported if she remained in the U.S.

Because she’d twice entered the country illegally — the last time more than 20 years ago — Alvarez was now “permanently inadmissible” to the United States.She must return to Mexico and remain out of the country, and away from her four U.S.-born children, for 10 years before applying for reentry.

With the help of an attorney, Alvarez is fighting to stay. But America's immigration laws can be cruel and unforgiving. Arpaio may no longer be raiding Latino neighborhoods, but Alvarez can’t help feeling like little else has changed.

"I don't know what I will do," she said of the possibility of being exiled to Mexico. "Honestly, I'm scared because I know it's not my country. You see all those bad things over there. I have nothing there."

A busted jaw

Phoenix New Times first interviewed Alvarez while she was cuffed to that table, her jaw swollen and saggy. Her injuries have mostly healed, but sitting in her south Phoenix home 15 years later, she looks much the same.

Alvarez stands about 5 feet tall and has thick, curly brown hair. Though she was treated for a torn meniscus in the joint that connects her jaw to her skull, the joint remains permanently damaged. "If I try to eat an apple, it dislocates," she said. "Can you hear it?" Opening her mouth wide, her jaw made a loud clicking sound.

"Or when you laugh and open your mouth," she said. "It's very painful."

Pain is hardly unfamiliar to Alvarez. She was raised in Mexico by a stranger, she said, and has never met her mother or father. Her childhood home was abusive, and in 1997 she fled across the border from Agua Prieta to Douglas, Arizona. During that crossing, she met her husband, and together they built a life in Phoenix.

Then Arpaio’s deputies began sweeping Latino neighborhoods and raiding local businesses under the guise of enforcing immigration statutes. Shortly after Alvarez arrived at work one day, deputies in ski masks poured into the offices of her employer — and county landscape contractor — Handyman Maintenance Inc.

Alvarez tried to hide beneath a bed located in a trailer on the property but was found. In the process, one deputy grabbed her arm and swung her around, smacking her face into a wall. Her jaw was busted. While she was waiting to be processed along with dozens of other arrestees, another deputy hit her arm with a clipboard, causing severe bruising.

Charged with the state crime of forgery for using a fake ID to gain employment, Alvarez was jailed for three months and, due to her immigration status, held without bond. It took 15 days to see a jailhouse medical provider, who prescribed only ibuprofen, which Alvarez had to purchase herself from the jail canteen. For her bruised arm, she was given Preparation H to ease the swelling.

As she later testified before a U.S. House Committee, Alvarez was separated during her imprisonment from her four children — one of whom had asthma and almost died and another who was still a breastfeeding newborn. She also was cavity-searched by a female detention officer, with a male guard and a male prisoner looking on. In other instances, somefemale detention officers called Alvarez a "bitch" and another took her Bible and threw it in the trash.

The stress from her imprisonment led to recurring nightmares, depression and ulcers. Her family — especially her oldest daughter, who had to take care of the other children — suffered as well. But eventually, Alvarez’s torment ended.

After three months in jail in 2009, Alvarez pleaded guilty to one count of criminal impersonation and was sentenced to one year of probation. Released into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she was given an immigration court date and cut loose. While that case was pending, she was issued a work visa and identification. Normalcy returned.

Then came a meeting earlier this year, ostensibly a step toward permanent legal residency. Instead, she was right back where she was 15 years ago: facing deportation.

C-Barred

Only 26, Staff Sgt. Heidi Portugal has spent the last seven years in the U.S. Army. She’s served in Afghanistan and is currently stationed in Hawaii with the 25th Infantry Division, where she teaches her fellow soldiers how to rappel from helicopters. She is Alvarez's oldest child.

Portugal joined the military, she told New Times in a phone interview, hoping to rectify her parents’ immigration statuses. Under an Obama-era program called Military Parole in Place, family members of U.S. military personnel may remain in the country while they seek permanent legal status.

Alvarez was granted the MIL-PIP designation in March, seemingly ending her deportation fears. She then applied for permanent legal status, setting a meetingfor April 27 at a local office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to discuss her application. But she was in for a shock.

There, an official informed Alvarez that she must leave the country or be deported. In 2000, agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protectionapprehended her at a McDonald’s in Douglas and removed her from the country. Alvarez had reentered without authorization, triggering what immigration attorneys call a "C" bar.

The name refers to a part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, added in 1996 to punish those who have resided in the U.S. for more than a year and have illegally reentered the country more than once. According to USCIS's website, a C-barred immigrant is "permanently inadmissible" to the U.S. and must spend 10 years outside the country before reapplying for admittance.

The news blindsided both Alvarez andJillian Kong-Sivert, her immigration attorney. Kong-Sivert said Alvarez's immigration file and the federal agencies involved had been "remarkably consistent" about Alvarez's immigration history up to that point. There was nothing to indicate Alvarez's illegal reentry in 2000.

But it did happen. According to Kong-Sivert, a stunned Alvarez told her interrogator, "I literally forgot about that."

"So we're walking in thinking this is a nice, clean, plain vanilla military parole in place/adjustment of status," Kong-Sivert recalled. "And then they say, 'Oh, well, what about this other time you entered?' And she's like, 'What are you talking about?'"

Alvarez told New Times that she didn't remember the 2000 reentry. Since her 2009 arrest, the events of 24 years ago are foggy. According to Phoenix immigration attorney Delia Salvatierra, such memory gaps are not uncommon.

"People undergo a lot as immigrants," Salvatierra said. "I think people underestimate the kind of trauma individuals go through."

Many of Salvatierra’s clients also have been C-barred. It’s “the single most common and tragic way in which noncriminal undocumented people are barred from being able to adjust their status," the attorney said.

Soon after her meeting at USCIS,Alvarez received a letter stating she must leave the country within 33 days or risk deportation proceedings.

She’s in limbo once again.

Hail Marys

A C bar is a hard thing to overcome.

Salvatierra said the statute was written to override most immigration waivers, including a MIL-PIP. That troubles Portugal.

"This morning, I had a dream, and in it, my mom was handcuffed," Portugal said. "It's not the first time I've been thinking like this. It's the fact I'm not there."

As bleak as things look for Alvarez, there are a couple of possible Hail Mary outcomes.

Alvarez believes she could be eligible for a U visa or an S visa. The first protects undocumented immigrants who have been a victim of certain crimes. The latter protects law enforcement informants from deportation. After all, Alvarez is a documented victim of one of Arpaio's deputies. She also gave information on Arpaio to the DOJ, which promised to help her in return.

From 2009 on, Alvarez cooperated with the DOJ during its investigation of Arpaio, meeting more than a dozen times with attorneys from the agency’s Civil Rights Division. She's kept several voice messages from a DOJ investigator on her phone. In the most recent, left in November 2020, a DOJ lawyer promised the department would do something to help her family.

Either type of visa would supersede Alvarez's C bar,Salvatierra said, although neither is a slam dunk to obtain. S visas are so rare that Salvateirra said she's never seen one granted. U visas are more common but must be sought by a law enforcement agency such as the DOJ.

A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment for this story. Alvarez said the investigator who left messages on her phone has since retired.

Alvarez’s plight may not be over, but Arpaio’s reign of terror is. After carrying out more than 80 raids on Valley employers between 2008 and 2014 — and arresting more than 800 people suspected of lacking legal status to be in the country — the Melendres lawsuit brought an end to his bigoted enforcement of immigration laws. However, ICE still maintains a presence in the agency’s jails.

While Arpaio may be a political nonfactor, plenty still carry his anti-immigrant banner. State Republicans just placed on the November ballot a bill that once again gives local cops the ability to police immigration. And Jerry Sheridan, Arpaio’s former second-in-command, is running for sheriff.Arpaio’s misdeeds cast a long shadow.

"It's sad what he's done," Alvarez said of Arpaio. "Separating families, sending people back to Mexico."

Alvarezalso thinks of the former sheriff in another context, though. For several years, Alvarez has worked as a caregiver to the elderly, even taking in one octogenarian client during the COVID-19 pandemic. The woman still stays in Alvarez's living room.

Arpaio turns 92 next month. And if he ever needed her care, she would offer it. Even to the man who,more than any other, put her in this situation.

"If he needs my help, why not?" Alvarez said with a smile. "That's what we're supposed to do for others."