Arnulfo Ibarra still can't bring himself to tell his four children where their mother's been for the past week-and-a-half.
He only knows he'd never have taken her to the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Salt Lake County if he'd known the visit would end with his wife's arrest for entering the United States illegally from Mexico.
A naturalized U.S. citizen, Ibarra said his family is now split apart, their future together in the United States uncertain because he feels INS officials tricked him into bringing his wife, Enriqueta, in under the auspices of signing paperwork to renew her expired work permit.
"They told me to bring her to the office because she's got to sign some papers," Ibarra said.
When his wife arrived, however, she was arrested and booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on an immigration hold. Ibarra said she is expected to be deported as soon as Thursday.
Officials who work with immigrant families in Utah say the Ibarras' case is not unique and decry the INS's practice of breaking up families over immigration violations.
"We have seen an increase in the number of these kinds of cases in the last probably six months," said Dr. Marie Green, director of Humanitarian Services for Centro de la Familia de Utah. "I'm not sure that's the kind of America I thought we were living in. . . . The kids without their mom — that's just not a good thing no matter what country anybody's from."
Green said her office receives complaints at least every other week from families in similar situations. Often a family's breadwinner is arrested, leaving them with no source of income.
"We get the families coming to us because they are in a serious state of crisis when this happens," Green said. "It's a tremendous hardship for the families."
While acknowledging such arrests are technically legal, Mexican Consul Martin Torres criticized the manner in which INS officials sometimes dupe or bully immigrant families.
"That's what they do. They trick them, because by bringing his wife what he did was basically give her up to immigration authorities," Torres said. "This is, of course, rough play, and things shouldn't be like that, but those are the tricks that INS uses sometimes to make it easier upon themselves to get numbers and justify their existence."
INS officials deny they trick people into being arrested. In Ibarra's case, she was detained because she re-entered the country illegally after an immigration official in San Diego removed her from the United States in 1996.
"As is customary when a person files an application they have to come in for an interview with their spouse," said Steven Branch, officer in charge of the INS Salt Lake City office. "In this case the husband appeared for the interview without the principal. We can't conduct an interview. We need the principal there."
Branch said that officers typically don't have information on an immigrant's history until they sit down with the person and review their file, as they did with the Ibarras. After discovering she'd re-entered the country illegally, agents arrested Ibarra. Besides being deported, Ibarra's wife could have also been charged with a felony for illegal re-entry, Branch said.
"It's nothing based on trickery," INS spokeswoman Nina Pruneda-Muniz said."If someone has been removed from the country, we need to enforce the law on those individuals."
Torres said his office advises immigrants to always have a legal member of their family work as the go-between with the INS.
"We advise them not to take the person that is undocumented," Torres said. "The person that needs to follow up on the procedures for requesting family unity is the one that is here legally."
Still, Torres acknowledges many immigrants don't learn that until it's too late.
"I think we need to do a better job of advising people," Torres said. "Right now we're in the process of editing and publishing some brochures to advise people on the different rights, the different services that we render as a consulate."
The consulate is also in the process of placing posters in jails to let Mexican nationals know they can call the consulate collect if they're arrested.
While acknowledging he helped his wife enter the United States illegally, Ibarra said the way immigration officials have left his family without a mother just doesn't seem right. He now wonders how his children, ages 5 through 12, three of whom were born in the United States and are therefore U.S. citizens, will be affected by the time away from their mother, or how they will adjust to life back in Mexico.
"They break up the family," Ibarra said Tuesday after spending 30 minutes talking with his wife through a visiting booth window at the Salt Lake County Jail. Ibarra's wife hasn't seen her children since she was arrested Nov. 22.
"They separate the mom and kids," Ibarra said. "That's my bad feeling."
The Ibarras are both from Aguascalientes, a town in central Mexico. They were married 12 years ago in their native country. Ibarra said he first came to the United States in 1981 and has lived in Houston, Texas, South Carolina, Maryland and California. After returning to Mexico and marrying his wife, the couple returned to the United States about 1990, where they had their first two children. They returned to Mexico, where they had their third child and tried to cross again in 1996. Ibarra's wife, however, was caught at the border in Tijuana trying to use another person's ID to enter the United States. Ibarra eventually found a different route. Seven years ago, he brought his family to Utah, where their fourth child was born.
They're still paying off their home in Riverton. Since his wife's arrest, Ibarra has had to quit his roofing job with Whitaker Roofing Services to care for his children, remove his children from school and arrange their return to Mexico.
Ibarra's boss, Shawn Whitaker, said his employee was "completely dependable."
"He was the type that I could turn a project over to and never have to worry about it being done right," Whitaker said. "He was a really good craftsman."
Whitaker said Ibarra will have a job if he returns to Utah.
But how soon that could happen is still unclear, Ibarra said.
His family has some land in Aguascalientes, and both their parents live there. Ibarra said his family will likely try to start a business in Mexico before he returns without his wife to the United States to work.
If that happens, Ibarra said he worries what will become of his children if they're reared without a father.
Meanwhile, INS officials say they do value keeping families together.
"We try to keep families together. We believe in unification of the family," Branch said. "But then again our hands are tied . . . That's something we wrestle with every single day."
E-MAIL: djensen@desnews.com