KAILUA-KONA — Nearly a month after a Kona coffee farmer returned to Mexico on orders to leave the United States, Andres Magana Ortiz’s attorney continues to fight for the man’s ability to return to Hawaii.
The attorney, Jim Stanton, Tuesday filed a notice to appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals, signaling his intent to dispute a decision by the Department of Homeland Security that denied a petition that would have put his client on track for permanent legal status.
Magana Ortiz came to the United States without a visa in 1989 at the age of 15, eventually making his way to Hawaii.
An immigration court originally found during removal proceedings in 2011 that the man could be removed from the country, but an employment authorization and deportation stays allowed him to remain on Hawaii Island and work.
In 2016, he married a woman he’d known for four years, and his new wife, a U.S. citizen, filed a petition to get her new husband on track for permanent residency in the United States.
Those petitions typically only take about five months to process, according to federal data, but in Magana Ortiz’s case, his wife still hadn’t received a response more than 14 months after it was received.
Stanton said Tuesday that the wife’s petition was ultimately denied on the grounds that there wasn’t sufficient evidence that the marriage was legitimate and not for immigration-related purposes.
Stanton’s filing appeals the decision of the DHS officer who denied the petition. The attorney said he expects to file a brief in the appeal within the next 30 days.
After that, it will go to the Board of Immigration Appeals, where Stanton said he expects it could take at least four to five months.
The appeal isn’t the only avenue Stanton said is open.
On Monday, he said, Magana Ortiz’s daughter turned 21, making her eligible to submit her own petition for her father. That petition was also filed Tuesday.
Aside from Stanton’s efforts in court, others have also taken on initiatives to advocate on Magana Ortiz’s behalf.
At the beginning of June, the state’s congressional delegation wrote to John Kelly, then-secretary of Homeland Security, asking him to intervene.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard also introduced a bill to make Magana Ortiz eligible for legal, permanent residency in the United States.
That bill was referred to a House subcommittee at the end of June.
Magana Ortiz’s case also caught the attention of Los Angeles filmmaker Robert Greenwald, founder of Brave New Films. The studio has produced a number of short and feature-length films on a variety of issues.
Greenwald said the case came to his attention after reading 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt’s “elegant and powerful” opinion issued in response to an emergency motion Stanton filed for a stay to halt his client’s deportation.
In that opinion, which brought national attention to the case, Reinhardt harshly criticized the move to deport Magana Ortiz even while acknowledging the court had no power to prevent it.
Greenwald said Reinhardt’s words pushed him to create a short film focusing on Magana Ortiz’s case.
“The first step on the way to change is putting a light on the problem,” Greenwald said Tuesday.
The film, available on YouTube, features Martin Sheen reading from the opinion interspersed with news footage of Magana Ortiz’s family, business associates and policymakers.
And by putting his film on YouTube, Greenwald said, they’re able to make it available to “literally every person who has access to the internet.”