No Home for the Holidays

Deseret Morning News, Saturday, December 17, 2005

No home for the holidays
Ogden woman couldn't pay for house after husband deported

By Dennis Romboy
Deseret Morning News

OGDEN — A woman who has scrambled to make ends meet since U.S. immigration authorities deported her husband may not have a home for the holidays either.

Rita Fernandez cries in front of her Ogden home. The mortgage company has foreclosed on the house and it will be sold.

Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret Morning News

The house Rita Fernandez and Humberto "Bert" Fernandez-Vargas shared for more than 20 years is scheduled to be sold at public auction Wednesday, just four days before Christmas. The mortgage company foreclosed on the house after she was unable to keep up the monthly payments.

"I don't know where we're going to go or what we're going to do from here," said Fernandez, whose birthday is Tuesday. "Some birthday present, huh?"

Fernandez lives with the couple's 16-year-old son, Anthony. Her mother lives across the street, but moving in with her would bring other complications. She has other family members in the area who she said have helped her all they can.

A homemaker with few job skills, Fernandez found work at a local market about six months ago. She earns $800 a month. The monthly house payment is $700. The tiny, two-bedroom home surrounded by manufacturing plants on Ogden's industrial west side is valued at about $60,000. The couple rented it before buying it in 2000.

"It's not a rich house, but I love my house. I do," she said.

Metwest Mortgage Services initiated the foreclosure, and Salt Lake-based Lundberg & Associates is handling the trustee's sale. A spokeswoman for the firm declined to talk about the property.

Fernandez earlier sold her furniture and other household items, including her artificial Christmas tree, at a yard sale to pay bills and keep food in the cupboard.

She's now thinking about selling her cherished glass vases and other collectibles.

Anthony worked part time at a restaurant but was let go after school started in the fall.

The family was featured in the recent Deseret Morning News series "Life in the Shadows," which examined illegal immigration in Utah.

The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Fernandez-Vargas in September 2003 during a routine interview on his application to become a permanent resident. Unbeknownst to him, the government had reinstated a 1981 deportation order.

Humberto Fernandez-Vargas, who was deported to Mexico, earns only $10 a week.

Tyler Sipe, Deseret Morning News

He first came to the United States as a teenager around 1970. He was deported three times, most recently in 1981. He returned in 1982, eventually settling in Ogden, where he married Rita, an American citizen, fathered a son and owned a trucking business. By all accounts, he was an upstanding and taxpaying member of the community.

Fernandez-Vargas mounted a legal challenge to his deportation that has worked its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Oral arguments are expected next spring. The outcome could clarify the rights of hundreds of thousands of longtime illegal immigrants to seek permission to remain in the United States.

Fernandez talks to her husband twice a week on the telephone. She dreaded telling him about the house, but finally did this past Wednesday. "He was really, really upset," she said.

Fernandez-Vargas, who lives in Cuauhtemoc, Mexico, recently found a job installing heaters in homes for $10 a week. Much of his income goes to rheumatoid arthritis medication.

Workers at Misc. Pickins' Mercantile where Fernandez works help her out as much as they can. Owner Lesley George is thinking about having a sale with part of the proceeds going to Fernandez.

Donations to the Fernandez family are being accepted at c/o Lesley George, P.O. Box 444, Roy, UT 84067 or by calling 801-334-6345.