Summit High School grad who has been a legal resident since age 11 contemplates life after deportation.
Tony Lira remembers visiting Mexico twice.
He went once when he was a senior at Summit High School on a marine biology and ecology trip to Baja California and once when he was 11 to San Simeon, in Tlaxcala, where he was born.
In the coming week, he could be headed there for good because he pleaded guilty to a felony cocaine delivery charge stemming from a fall drug deal.
“It’s funny how a man can say he’s a Mexican without ever having lived in the country,” the 22-year-old said from inside the Teton County Jail last week.
He was preparing himself to be deported to Mexico, a country he lived in for just the first three years of his life. Lira, who has been a legal permanent resident of the U.S. since he was 11, was taken away by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, probably to one of 20 or so holding facilities in Wyoming or maybe to Craig, Colo., the next day.
Juan Antonio Lira Perez was arrested Oct. 3 for selling cocaine to a confidential informant working with the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigations. He was charged with two felony counts of delivery of a controlled substance.
He pleaded guilty, in accordance with an agreement, to only one of the counts. The other was dismissed.
Ninth District Court Judge Nancy Guthrie on Feb. 25 sentenced Lira to time served – 145 days – and five years of supervised probation. That might have been the end of the story for someone born in this country or a naturalized citizen.
Lira’s status as a permanent legal resident, however, was put in jeopardy when he committed the felony. Although there was little anyone could do to keep Lira in Wyoming, they still pleaded with Guthrie during the sentencing.
Lira’s father stood before the judge, backed by four full benches of relatives, and asked that his son be allowed to stay with his family.
“I will have nothing to do with that; I wish that I did,” Guthrie told the father, further explaining that the federal courts deal with immigration issues, not state judges like her. “I think this is an extreme example of someone who shouldn’t be deported.”
Lira moved with his parents and older brother to Jackson Hole from San Simeon when he was 3 1/2 years old, he said.
They stayed with family friends, and Lira remembers listening to Cinco de Mayo announcements on the radio and celebrating the holiday with the family friends who welcomed them.
He doesn’t remember the journey from Mexico. His father later told him they crossed the border uneventfully in about 10 minutes.
Later, he’s pretty sure, he was the only Latino in his kindergarten class at Jackson Elementary School. He has three younger siblings, all born in the United States, he said.
The family spoke Spanish at home. Lira’s father made him read books in Spanish and English.
The family gained legal permanent residency when Lira was 11, he said. He wasn’t sure how the family was granted residency, but he said his father had lived all over the United States for most of his adult life before bringing the family to Jackson Hole. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 could have granted his father amnesty, which would have opened a window for the rest of Lira’s family to apply for residency.
When family members got their residency status, they could legally travel to San Simeon and visit relatives. He met his grandparents on that trip.
Lira graduated from Summit High School in 2006, he said.
“Tony is so talented,” said Janet Radkey, his former social studies teacher at Summit. “He’s got all the manners. He could be working in a resort here in Jackson Hole.”
He’s completely bilingual and biliterate, she said.
He could have taken the test to become a citizen years ago, but he wanted to wait until his residency was about to expire so he could study as much as possible, though he got 94 percent on a practice citizenship exam. He planned to take the test this month, he said.
As a legal resident, Lira was protected from being deported for some misdemeanor crimes. Hundreds of Latinos have been removed from the valley by ICE officials after they were caught for violations such as driving without a license, driving under the influence and, in some cases, failing to wear a seat belt.
Lira committed what the federal government calls an aggravated felony when he sold cocaine.
Legal residents can be deported when they commit such crimes, said Lorie Dankers, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman.
The immigrations representative Lira talked to told him two felony drug convictions would get him deported. With just one conviction, Lira wondered if ICE would let him stay in the country, but the representative told him not to “get his hopes up.”
Radkey said Lira should have known better.
“I love that kid, but it honestly broke my heart,” Radkey said. “I have zero tolerance for anybody selling drugs and, I’m sorry, but they should be deported.”
Lira has a similar attitude. He knows that what he did was wrong. He said he’s gotten into a little trouble over the years, but nothing like this. He had misgivings about selling the drugs, but went through with it anyway. The person he sold the drugs to was his auto mechanic.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Lira said. “It was my mistake.”
He’s just sorry he messed things up so badly, he said. His older brother, who is 27, was deported after he was convicted of felony crimes. That occurred the same year Lira graduated from high school.
“I told my mom that wasn’t going to happen to me,” he said.
He wanted to be “honorable.” He volunteered at the free clinic to translate and assisted friends and family when they needed help with English, he said. He planned to attend Central Wyoming College locally and study English. But when his brother was deported, he got a job so he could help his family pay bills.
“I could have done better,” he said. “I did mess up this opportunity – all the work my dad put into bringing us here and the residency.”
Lira said he won’t fight deportation. He was told he could sign some papers and be sent on his way.
If he really is a legal resident, that’s not true, Dankers said. He will be required to appear before an immigrations judge to ensure that he’s aware of his rights and to find out if there are any options available to him.
Dankers said she could not confirm or deny that Lira is a resident. People in the immigration system are afforded privacy rights not granted to people in U.S. courts, Dankers said. That’s because it’s an administrative process rather than judicial.
When Lira’s brother was deported, he spent months waiting in jail to be told that he had to move to Mexico, Lira said.
“I already feel like I’m kind of wasting my life away in here,” he said from jail.
If he could sign away his right to become a U.S. citizen and get out jail, he would.
The thought of moving to Mexico was a little scary to Lira, but also exciting, he said.
His brother lives in the capital, where people can find work. That’s where Lira said he’ll go.
He thinks he might enroll in a university and study to become a teacher.
He’ll look for work teaching English or translating in the meantime, he said.
There’s still a chance he won’t be deported, according to the information Dankers provided.
But there’s no way to track his case without knowing his alien ID number.
His father brought the family to Jackson Hole for a better life, Lira said.
“I’ll go back to Mexico for a new life,” he said. “I’ll get my stuff straightened out. I’ll try to become a better person.”
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