Jason Redmond / Star staff Karen Victoria of Oxnard holds her daughter Kiara, 4, as she attends a candlelight vigil against deportation on Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday evening. Victoria's father was recently deported.

Javier Victoria left keys for his car, home and work lined up on a table in the garage. The moment his family saw the orderly row, they knew it was a signal. Something was wrong.

The 51-year-old machinist from Oxnard was arrested on the last Tuesday in March by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for ignoring a 1999 deportation order. Within 24 hours, he was in Tijuana. He has told his family he never received the order, though he had been deported once before in a work raid.

The deportation of people who have jobs, families and no criminal records aside from crossing the border, but have not obeyed court orders to leave the country, is at the leading edge of the nation's struggle over immigration policy. Today at noon, protesters will march in downtown Los Angeles, making demands that include a halt to deportation raids.

ICE fugitive teams arrested 1,198 immigration violators in the Los Angeles region that includes Ventura County over a nine-month period beginning last May. Officials say 701 of those people, like Victoria, have outstanding removal orders and were arrested in a ramped-up effort that will bring one more fugitive enforcement team the region's fifth by the end of the year.

"There are estimates that there are 600,000 immigration fugitives in the country, and we're endeavoring to locate as many as we can," said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice, noting many of the cases involve orders issued in the last year or two but others, like Victoria's, date back a decade. "These orders do not expire."

Arguments rage over the right to see a lawyer, enforcement strategies that make people with jobs and families a deportation priority and the contention that immigrants who have clearly broken immigration law deserve sympathy.

"Any time anyone breaks the law, it has an effect on the family," said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates tougher enforcement and more deportations. "You know whose fault that is, it's your fault."

But people on the other side of the debate contend cases like Javier Victoria's show the inequities of the deportation process. His removal has left his adult children trying to figure out how to financially support the family, why exactly he was deported and if it can be undone. His wife, Silvia Victoria, is in hiding out of fear she'll be deported, too.

"All along we thought everything was going to be OK," said Karen Victoria, the eldest child and a U.S. citizen by marriage, acknowledging optimism is disappearing. "I feel pretty confused. I feel pretty hopeless."

More than 20 years in the U.S.

Victoria first came to the country in 1985 and brought his family a year later. They lived in a garage at first but now own a three-bedroom home in south Oxnard. Two of Victoria's three children are U.S. citizens. Karen Victoria, a graduate of Oxnard College with dreams of being a television news director, was sponsoring her parents' application for permanent residency.

Photo courtesy of the Victoria family Javier and Silvia Victoria, seen in a photo taken last year, have been in the U.S. since the 1980s.

They thought they were on the right path, in part because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued work permits to Javier and Silvia Victoria last year. But Immigration Services officials say work permits allow people to stay in the country while a decision is being made on their case but are no guarantee of legal status.

Gabriella Navarro-Busch, a Ventura immigration lawyer, said some people file for asylum because an adviser has incorrectly told them it is the best path to legal residency. They do get work permits, but if asylum is denied, they may also get deportation orders.

ICE officials said Javier Victoria was issued a voluntary departure order in 1999, meaning he could leave on his own. When he stayed, that voluntary order became a deportation.

When he was deported in March after receiving a letter of warning in late February, he asked to see a lawyer or a judge but was told he didn't have the right. Kice said those due process rights were fulfilled eight years ago.

"He was ordered to leave the country by the judge. He had his day in court," she said. "This is a closed case."

Call to family not allowed

Carlina Tapia-Ruano, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, acknowledged the government's argument is legally valid, and people who have ignored deportation orders can be denied a chance to talk to a lawyer or to even call family members. She thinks the policies need to be changed, especially when deportations are carried out eight or nine years after a court date.

"It's a procedure that results in unnecessary and irrevocable harm," she said, noting that people are separated from family, work and everything else.

"They're being ripped away, and when you rip something, it leaves an uneven and harmful residue."

After he was deported, Javier Victoria told his family he knew nothing of the 1999 departure order, never saw a judge and thinks the notices may have been sent to a previous address. But he acknowledged being deported in 1995 in a workplace raid and then crossing the border again to return to Oxnard.

He wasn't caught, but the act constitutes a felony.

"I can certainly understand why someone comes to this country illegally, but you still have to hold someone accountable for their actions," Mehlman said.

He rejected the argument that removal cases should be handled differently if the deportation order happened several years ago.

"It just says he's gotten away with flouting the law for eight years now," he said. "There is this thought that if you get away with breaking the law long enough it should be OK."

Deportation can hurt

But advocates of undocumented immigrants say deportations too often victimize people who have lived here for decades, raised their children to be citizens and haven't committed any crimes other than crossing the border. They say families are separated and children are left without parents.

"They arrest them real early in the morning between 4 and 5," said Navarro-Busch. "By that evening, they're in Mexico."

ICE officials said the fugitives operations began in 2003 and are being expanded as part of a plan to step up interior enforcement. They say that of the 701 fugitives arrested in the Los Angeles area over nine months, 157 had criminal records.

They make no apologies for arresting people without records.

"U.S. law says that if you're in the country illegally, you're subject to removal," said ICE public relations officer Lori Haley. "ICE is committed to enforcing immigration law. We're sworn to do it."

Some people are convinced the fugitive operations are part of a political strategy. Mehlman said he believes the Bush administration is trying to convince the public that it will enforce immigration laws even if guest worker programs are approved.

In addition to the scheduled march today, advocates of undocumented immigrants plan an April 29 protest where they'll create a human chain around a federal building in Los Angeles.

As for the Victoria family, they keep looking for answers.

When they first found the keys in the garage and learned of the deportation, they thought somehow things would work out. Now, it's getting hard to feel any hope.

"It's something I don't want to wish on anyone," said Karen Victoria.