Montauk Man, a 23-Year Resident, Faces Deportation

Wilson Fabian Guanga has made his home in Montauk for 23 years. He has been in a detention facility in Bergen County, New Jersey, since being picked up on Jan. 27 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency officers, and on Tuesday a hearing will be held in Manhattan at which a judge will decide whether he can remain in the United States or be deported.

Mr. Guanga, who will turn 40 in July, arrived in Montauk when he was 16. Originally from the Cuenca region of Ecuador, he has worked here as a carpenter, been married for 18 years, and has two children, with a third on the way. He has a government I-9 work permit, and said he pays all relevant taxes. But he has no documentation that would allow him to remain in the United States. And while he has never been convicted of a crime, he has been arrested twice.

“I come from a very poor family,” he said on Friday. “When I was 7 years old, I started to work. I was always told, work, work, work. When I was 12 years old, I was a good student, but I couldn’t go to school because my mother didn’t have support. I wanted to give a better life for my family. That is one of the reasons why I came to this country.” Mr. Guanga spoke by telephone from the Bergen County jail, which holds detainees “who are waiting for their immigration status to be determined,” according to the ICE website.

Mr. Guanga’s first arrest was on Oct. 6, 2015, in Old Westbury on a misdemeanor charge of driving while intoxicated. A breath test reading at police headquarters showed .08 of 1 percent alcohol in his blood, just enough to trigger the charge.

The Nassau County district attorney’s office agreed to drop the D.W.I. charge a few weeks later, with Mr. Guanga instead pleading guilty to driving with ability impaired by alcohol, a violation, and to perform 35 hours of community service. That meant Mr. Guanga could move forward without a criminal record. A reduced plea, however, is apparently irrelevant to ICE, according to several people interviewed for this article.

“The deck is stacked against an alien,” H. Raymond Fasano, Mr. Guanga’s immigration lawyer, said this week, as he commented on the Nassau County legal proceedings. “The prosecutor . . . already made a decision that Wilson’s not a public danger,” Mr. Fasano said, adding had been made to close the 2015 deportation case caused by the arrest. However, it placed Mr. Guanga on ICE’s radar.

Mr. Guanga’s second arrest was the result of a criminal complaint filed in January by a woman identified as a Ms. Sansez in court papers. She alleged that he choked her and grabbed her infant during a visit to her rental unit at Cozy Cottages in Wainscott on Jan. 13. Mr. Guanga denied the allegations after his arrest.

According to Edward Burke Jr., a lawyer who subsequently represented Mr. Guanga in East Hampton Justice Court, Mr. Guanga was headed to a soccer game that day when he stopped by to see her. They argued, Mr. Burke said, and Mr. Guanga left. East Hampton Town police arrested him on Jan. 16, with two misdemeanor charges, one of which was endangering the welfare of a child.

On Jan. 27, Mr. Guanga left his East Lake Drive residence early, headed for work. “They waited for me outside. Six officers. Two cars and a minivan. ‘We have a warrant for you,’ ” Mr. Guanga said he was told by ICE officers. “They pulled my van over on 27.” He has been in detention ever since.

Mr. Burke called the criminal charges against Mr. Guanga flimsy, and said he had worked with the district attorney’s office seeking to have them dismissed. After an investigation by Rudy Migliore Jr., the D.A.’s prosecuting attorney, Mr. Burke said it was agreed that the case against Mr. Guanga was to be adjourned for one year, after which all charges would be dropped.

On Feb. 9, Mr. Guanga was brought from the Bergen County jail to East Hampton Town Justice Court. With Mr. Burke standing by Mr. Guanga’s side, the prosecution announced it was adjourning the case in contemplation of dismissal. “The prosecutor was doing justice,” Mr. Burke said Tuesday.

The burden of proof in deportation proceedings shifts from the prosecutor to the defendant. Defendants must prove they are not a danger to society, and a person’s moral character, and his or her place in the community, are taken into account, according to Mr. Fasano. Whether deportation might create a substantial hardship for those left behind is to be taken into account, he said, as well as the length of time a defendant has been in the country. The charge itself, no matter what the result is during a criminal proceeding, is looked at anew during deportation hearings, however, which are administrative rather than criminal.

One possible character witness for Mr. Guanga is his sister, who also lives in Montauk. Last year, she was struck by a car there. It was Wilson, she told The Star last week, who kept her going, through months of treatment and rehabilitation and bouts of depression. She said he would look in on her daily. “He looked after my kids. He brought food. He pushed me. ‘You are my sister. You are strong. You can do this,’ ” she said he told her.

“Permanent exile from the U.S., that is what could happen to Wilson,” Mr. Fasano said. “Hopefully not, but it is a tough, tough case now.”

Mr. Guanga was picked up a week after Donald Trump became president. Two days before he was detained, President Trump signed an executive order requiring ICE to “detain individuals apprehended on suspicion of violating federal or state law, including federal immigration law, pending further proceedings regarding those violations.” According to Mr. Fasano and others, the order is a broad expansion of power. The president “is making every single arrest a priority, whether they are a public danger or not,” Mr. Fasano said.

In Mr. Guanga’s case, district attorneys’ offices in both Suffolk and Nassau Counties had decided that Mr. Guanga was not a danger to the public when they considered the charges he faced, Mr. Fasano said, adding that he believes the current ICE process oversteps the federal government’s powers, as enumerated in the Constitution, and violates states’ rights. Mr. Fasano also believes a stay of deportation following a hearing will ultimately increase the number of green cards, which provide legal-resident status.

The Star sat down with ICE officers at Federal Plaza in Manhattan on Monday. As far as they are concerned, it is the charge, not the outcome of a case, that can trigger deportation proceedings. They also said undocumented immigrants were in the country illegally, and thus had already committed a crime.

Tuesday’s removal hearing will be held at the Department of Justice’s Varick Street Immigration Court, in front of Judge Thomas Mulligan.

“I’m being held by immigration, but my family is paying the consequences,” Mr. Guanga said.