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Immigration See other Immigration Articles Title: Unnoticed at first in pool, a landscaper dies far from home Unnoticed at first in pool, a landscaper dies far from home Richard Ruelas Domingo Miguel was already dead when he was first noticed. He had tripped while trimming a hedge and had slipped beneath the crystal-blue waters of the swimming pool. Several minutes passed before a 20-year-old who lived at the home, according to a Phoenix police report, spotted a "shadow" in the deep end. That shadow was Miguel. He was 24. He had come to this country illegally about a year ago from a village in Guatemala, near the city of Coban. He left behind a wife and three children. But when he died, no one knew any of that. He was a John Doe, or a Jose Doe, as anonymous as the bodies of undocumented immigrants found collapsed in the desert. Except he was in the middle of a well-manicured neighborhood, hired to do the manicuring. The Border Patrol finds about 150 bodies or remains each year in the Arizona desert, presumably of people trying to cross into this country. Most die of exposure. It's unknown how many die while working as a shadow. It was March 25, a Friday, around 11:30 a.m. Miguel and a co-worker, Javier Luz, showed up at the house on East Desert Broom Way in Ahwatukee Foothills, just as they did every other Friday. Luz started on the front yard; Miguel went to the back. "That was normal. We worked that way," Luz said last week in a cellphone conversation. It was a brief one because he was at another landscaping job. It was also normal for the two to not knock on the door or let their presence be known to the homeowners. They would just start working. Sometimes the family's only clue the two had been there was the cleaned-up landscaping. Luz said he worked with Miguel for about a year. That's about as long as Luz had been in Arizona since crossing the desert from Mexico. They tended homes across the eastern part of metro Phoenix. "Ahwatukee, Fountain Hills, Mesa, Chandler, Queen Creek," Luz said. "A small house we could get done in a half-hour; a big one, an hour." They had been at the home for about 15 minutes, when Luz heard a cry for help. "When I got back there, he was already in the pool." The cry came from Elizabeth Durso, a 20-year-old student who was reading on the back patio. When she had come out to sit down, she noticed a power tool in the pool, according to the police report. She thought it was dropped by accident and started studying. Two or three minutes later, she noticed a dark shape in the water. She stood up and walked toward the pool and saw the body lying face down at the bottom. Durso didn't think she could pull the body out by herself. Luz communicated to her that he couldn't swim. Diane Durso, Elizabeth's mother, who was home recovering from chemotherapy, came out and jumped into the pool. She was able to lift the man to the edge, where Luz and Elizabeth Durso pulled him out. Luz called 911. The mother and daughter tried to resuscitate him. Paramedics showed up within three minutes and flew him to a hospital. Firefighters told the Dursos they did everything they could. Police found a pair of gloves and a baseball hat in the water. The gas-powered trimmer had sunk to the bottom. The hedge near the pool had been trimmed on one side. Miguel had $1.11 in his pocket but no identification. He was tagged as an unknown and held in the freezer at the Maricopa Forensic Science Center. "How many times do you find out if your landscaper can swim?" Diane Durso said, as we spoke last week. "I'm not pro or con or whatever about illegal immigration," she said. "But it's a shame. The government can't solve the problem, and in their country they can't get paid enough to stay." The language barrier kept Durso from finding out much about her landscaper. "I would say, 'Trim here. Get that tree.' He was always smiling. I never felt uncomfortable with him here," she said. She never asked about his legal status. "I never talked to him about that," she said. Same with his partner, Luz. When police showed up to question everybody, Durso said she asked the officer, "Is he going to be in trouble if he's undocumented?" The officer told her, "That's not our problem right now." Some friends of Miguel in Mesa got hold of a community activist named Domingo Felipe. Often Guatemalan immigrants from the same village will clump together in the United States, bonded by a common language. Felipe, who acted as the informal leader of the group, got in touch with Miguel's family in Guatemala and Phoenix police, giving officers a name to go with the unknown body lying in a body bag. On April 2, Miguel was sent back home to Guatemala. Before that, though, there was a service in Durso's back yard. The owner of the landscaping company, Juan Diego, also from Guatemala, asked Durso if he could hold a ceremony in her back yard to release Miguel's spirit from the pool. About 30 people gathered for the Catholic service. "It helped a lot," said Durso, who stood off to the side with her husband and daughter during the ceremony. The Dursos feel a bit creepy about using their pool. "Every time you walk out there, that's the first thing you think about," she said. The reminders are still there, including the hedge that hasn't been trimmed since the accident. The top and sides are overgrown. The side facing the pool, the part Miguel was trimming, is the only side that's square and even. After the service, some candles were left behind, meant to stay lit. They burned out after six nights. "Every night, I sat on this bench (by the candles) and prayed," Durso said. "I thought maybe he could hear me." The glass holders are still there. Durso is unsure what to do with them. "They took the flowers," she said. The flowers from the service had died and the landscaping crew had picked those up last time they did the home. She wants to send a dress to Miguel's widow in Guatemala, maybe some money. She wants to let her know that Miguel was not forgotten, that he was someone people cared about. "I don't want (his family) to think he died as some illegal who went to the county," she said. She's also worried about Luz, the partner. She doesn't know if he's still part of the crew working on her house or not. "I try to watch and see how he's doing," she said. "I don't know if they're coming this Friday." The wind was blowing leaves around the yard. Durso said, "I sure wish they'd come today." Luz should be deported and Durso should be arrested. Furthermore, the Durso's should be billed for the cost of the ambulance and such. Maybe then they'll start caring about the immigration status of their employees.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 6.
#3. To: Mr Nuke Buzzcut (#0)
If you hire someone directly, you should find out. However, if you hire a company out of the phone book, it is their responsibility to make sure their employees are legal. It sounds like the latter is the case in this article, so I'm willing to give the Durso's a pass.
Fair enough. She can have a pass for hiring a company -- provided the company is legit. She doesn't get a pass for trying to protect Luz, who she suspected of being illegal. Neither do the cops.
This whole story is just sad.
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