Gov. Newsom pardons Santa Rosa man facing deportation

Imagine the worst mistake you made at the age of 21 was still hanging over your head three decades later.

Carlos Vasquez Salazar, 52, of Santa Rosa views his 1990 arrest and conviction for cocaine sales as a youthful humiliation that he says came “right in time” to turn his life around. He worked in the trades, got married, raised two children and bought a home.

But it has put his life and career in the United States in jeopardy ever since a 2009 trip back from visiting his mother in Mexico when a customs agent asked if he’d ever been arrested. Vasquez Salazar, who became a legal resident of the United States after his conviction, did not anticipate the consequences of his honest answer.

The agent took Vasquez Salazar’s green card, triggering an 11-year fight to stay with his family and avoid deportation to Mexico, a place he left at age 14 to work on turkey ranches in Sonoma County.

“It’d be like split a rock in two,” he said.

Preventing family separation is among Gov. Gavin Newsom’s motives in considering petitions for pardons from people who say they have been rehabilitated from past crimes, according to a statement from his office.

Vasquez Salazar’s plea for relief, submitted about 1½ years ago, reached the governor’s desk. He was among 10 people Newsom pardoned this week to “prevent unjust collateral consequences of conviction, such as deportation and permanent family separation,” according to the Governor’s Office.

Pardons are a form of post-conviction relief that help restore a person’s ability to do things like apply for professional licenses, lift barriers to employment and help immigrants who have earned legal residency status defend themselves against deportation.

The pardon will not automatically end his immigration fight because his crime involved a controlled substance, according to his attorney, Chris Kerosky. People with drug-related convictions face even more barriers in immigration court than those with violent crimes because of the federal government’s harsh stance toward narcotics cases.

Vasquez Salazar said he briefly turned to selling cocaine after getting hooked using it as a newly minted adult, one who had lived on his own and worked as an agricultural laborer in Sonoma County far from family since early adolescence.

“My career as a drug dealer was very stupid and very short,” Vasquez Salazar said.

He was arrested, served less than a year in jail followed by three years probation and court-ordered drug treatment. He acquired permanent legal residency status in the United States shortly after his conviction.

He got involved in 12-step programs and remained a regular group attendee and leader for nearly 15 years. He worked in the trades, construction and landscaping. He married in 1997 and started a family.

“The most trouble he ever got into was a red light ticket,” said his wife, Maria Valdovinos.

His children were just 11 and 16 years old when Vasquez Salazar’s green card was confiscated at Oakland International Airport.

They tried to shield their children from the threat of his deportation. But Valdovinos recalled reading a school essay her son wrote describing his grief after learning about the immigration case against his father.

“For my children, separating from their father would be catastrophic,” Valdovinos wrote in a declaration the family submitted to the court.

Kerosky has been representing Vasquez Salazar for the last decade pro bono, launching two unsuccessful bids to appeal his conviction based on the belief his client wasn’t properly informed about how pleading guilty would threaten his legal status in the country.

He helped Vasquez Salazar get his record expunged and obtain a certificate of rehabilitation from Sonoma County Superior Court.

“He’s had a completely clean record, has his own business, has a family, children that are now grown,” Kerosky said. “He has lived a sterling life for 30 years. He not only joined AA but became a counselor for other AA members. It’s a pretty extraordinary story and yet he was put into deportation proceedings.”

Kerosky commended the Newsom administration for being “vigilant” and taking steps "to try to protect California residents from having families separated by a very aggressive federal government.“

With the pardon, the next step is to file a motion to terminate the deportation case and notify the court of the governor’s clemency.

U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement has the option to terminate the case due to the pardon or an immigration judge has the discretion to dismiss it, Kerosky said.

“If it wasn’t a narcotics conviction it’d be an automatic dismissal,” he said.

The phone call from the Governor’s Office came out of the blue Tuesday morning while Vasquez Salazar was driving on Highway 101 near Cloverdale. When he realized who was calling, he pulled over at the nearest exit and thanked the state staffer profusely.

He called his wife at her job as a research and development technician with Medtronic.

“It was a huge surprise. I cried,” Valdovinos said. “I said, ’Look Carlos, it shows there is hope.’ “

Valdovinos and Vasquez Salazar had similar experiences coming to work in the United States as children. Valdovinos came at age 15 through the same agricultural worker program for immigrant laborers in the 1980s.

“It was tough,” Valdovinos said. “It was the toughest thing.”

Vasquez Salazar, who was 14 when he came to the U.S., recalled the bus trip to Tijuana with a childhood friend, finding a “coyote,” or smuggler, to bring them to Sonoma County where they had already secured jobs. Vasquez Salazar and his friend moved into an RV and started working. All of his earnings went toward the $600 he owed his smuggler before he could start sending money to his mother and four sisters in Mexico.

Valdovinos’ brother enrolled her at Piner High School and she was at first incredibly resentful because she spoke no English and found school terrifying. But she graduated in 1991 and "now I thank him for it.“

Vasquez Salazar never went to school. He lost his footing and started using drugs after years of hard labor and pretending he was older than he actually was, as many laborers had to do to get jobs.

“I am a pretty tall guy and pretty big so they believed I was old enough to work,” he said. “My biggest problem was that I never attended school.”

Vasquez Salazar still remembers the name of the counselor who approached him when he first entered a drug rehabilitation program.

“He walked up to me and said ’I’m here to help you,’ “ Vasquez Salazar said. ”I told him I was afraid I was going to fail. But I kept going, I liked the way I was feeling. I kept going for 14 years.“

He’s kept moving forward ever since. Vasquez Salazar said the mere fact that his case made it to the governor’s desk is remarkable.

“With all the stuff going on in the world, for him to take a little time to look at my case, that’s a win right there,” Vasquez Salazar said.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.