Sounds of the Border

Jorge Gonzalez lies awake nights in a cramped, rented trailer in Great Bend, Kansas. He thinks about his three children, imagines them sleeping peacefully almost a hundred miles away in Newton, in an old house that was crumbling when he bought it cheap. Gonzalez fixed up the house himself, reshingling the roof, ripping off the old siding, putting in new floors. For years, he had worked at an IBP Inc. slaughterhouse, eviscerating cows for not much more than minimum wage, saving and scraping together money so his children could grow up in a house. For three years now, he has been away from his family, traveling all over Kansas to do hard labor -- roofing jobs for $10 an hour. It is grueling work, so Gonzalez needs his rest.

But sleep won't come. Night after night, he imagines the same scenario: Uniformed immigration officials show up at his door. They know he's in the country illegally and working without a permit. They handcuff him and haul him off to jail, then put him on a bus bound for the border.

Legal residency and a work permit would let the 42-year-old Gonzalez sleep peacefully (and use his real name for this story). When a friend told him about Alicia Morales, he thought maybe she was the answer. The friend said Morales was an attorney who could help him get his papers quickly and for very little money -- something that was important. On one income, the Gonzalez family hadn't been able to save much.

Gonzalez made an appointment for 6:30 p.m. on February 2, and he took his wife and children to the Wichita office of Phillips and Phillips, a law firm owned by Alicia Morales' husband. The Gonzalezes didn't find out until months later that Morales, who met with them, is not an attorney.

Gonzales' wife, Rosa, remembers that the family sat in the waiting room, crowded in with other families and fussing children, for three hours, until Morales finally arrived at the firm to meet with them at 9:30 p.m. An attractive woman in her forties, Morales was fluent in Spanish and had a crisp, easy way of putting the Gonzalezes, who don't speak much English, at ease.

Gonzalez says Morales told him that for $140 in cash, he could get protection under a general amnesty law. He handed over the money and received a handwritten receipt signed by Morales in scrawling, unintelligible letters. She also gave him a typed two-page "legalization questionnaire" with seven questions. The questions made reference to an amnesty law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1986 (a law that's now defunct) and asked whether the applicant had filed for legalization under that law, whether the applicant had visited INS and, if so, what happened on each visit. Gonzalez says Morales told him to overnight the form to the Legalization Claims division of the INS in Washington, D.C. Gonzalez did so, keeping his post office receipt.

By April, when he had received no reply from the INS, Gonzalez decided to take his copies of the form and receipts to a respected Wichita immigration attorney, Sandrine Lisk. On her next visit to the INS District Office near Kansas City International airport (the office serves western Missouri and eastern Kansas and is one of 33 such offices in the country), Lisk showed the form to a supervisor.

The form was so rarely used that even the supervisor did not recognize it. In fact, in order to benefit from filling out the form, an immigrant had to be party (before October 1, 2000) to one of three specific class-action lawsuits that had been filed in 1993, all charging that certain immigrants were unfairly denied amnesty under the 1986 provision. Gonzalez had never participated in that suit. For handing him the useless form and a few minutes of her time, Morales pocketed fourteen hours' worth of Gonzalez's salary.

The questionable document made Gonzalez even more anxious. He had sent the form directly to INS, with his name, address, birth date and alien registration number. On the form, he had admitted to being in the country illegally. He was now even more worried about getting deported.

"It's ugly what they did," Gonzalez says darkly. "I'm here in this country, working all the time, paying my bills, paying taxes, trying to live my life without any trouble, and these people don't care. All they care about is taking advantage of people so they can make a buck in ten minutes." In Wichita, the Phillips and Phillips law firm has drawn in clients through advertisements on Spanish radio. Now the firm, which also has branch offices in Liberal and Garden City, has opened up a new location at 535 Central Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas.

James Phillips Jr., Morales' husband, tells the Pitch he is the only attorney for three of the firm's four offices, and he races around the state meeting with clients in Wichita, Liberal, Garden City and Kansas City, Kansas. Phillips has a house in Wichita and a house in Moscow (near Liberal) and owns an apartment above the law firm's Kansas City, Kansas office.

One attorney, Carol Cline, works three nights a week and on weekends at the Kansas City, Kansas, office. Cline is a high school Spanish teacher in Oskaloosa, Kansas, who graduated from law school in 1999, specializing in education law. She says she plans to quit teaching in a few weeks to work full time at Phillips and Phillips.