A few minor scrapes with the law brought Francisco Diaz into contact with the judicial system.
But his arrests for such crimes as breaking windows were resolved as few similar cases are–with Diaz, who is deaf and cannot speak–spending a total of two years in jail, untreated by social-service agencies. Eventually, he was set free after authorities threw up their hands in frustration.
Most frustrating of all is that Diaz probably never understood what was happening to him. In addition to his physical condition, the 34-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico is illiterate and, until only a few weeks ago, knew no sign language.
He has survived for years on the streets of Mexico and in the Cook County forest preserves near Wheeling. His inability to communicate has stymied police, the courts, social service agencies, the Mexican Consulate and even immigration officials.
It’s only because of a new-found friend that he recently has learned to sign the alphabet. But his long isolation may prove to have been his protection.
The small steps he has taken toward learning to communicate could get him deported.
“This is an example of what can happen to you when you have no one to count on and you happen to be deaf and mute,” said James Walsh, president of the Chicago Club of the Deaf, the oldest advocacy group for deaf people in the Chicago area.
“It’s terribly sad something like this could happen in an era when we all are supposed to be enlightened about the difficulties disabled people face,” Walsh said.
Diaz found his way to Chicago’s northwest suburbs from a tiny village in Mexico. His older brother, Jose, of Wheeling, took Diaz in for a while. But Diaz would fly into rages for no apparent reason, then run away.
Wheeling police said they would see Diaz sleeping in the woods and eating out of trash bins behind restaurants along Milwaukee Avenue.
His first arrest in Wheeling was at a video store, after he allegedly stole a videocassette.
Cook County Associate Judge Michael Pope, who was assigned most of Diaz’s cases in the Rolling Meadows branch of circuit court, gave Diaz six months of court supervision with the condition that he attend classes to learn sign language.
But as Diaz’s caseworker tried to find him a sign-language program, she kept hitting a roadblock: No program would take him without some kind of behavioral screening, an evaluation of his learning level and his health history.
He had never had any of these tests because no one could explain what the tests were and he couldn’t answer questions, said Lisa Jarolin of the court’s social services department.
“I don’t believe any one of (the sign-language programs) has ever had a case where someone couldn’t read, write or speak,” she said. “Usually there’s something, some way of communicating.”
Money also was a problem. As an illegal immigrant, Diaz couldn’t get any government help to get into a sign-language program.
“Every time we’d find something good, it was like a wall was thrown up in front of us,” Jarolin said.
Meanwhile, Diaz kept getting into trouble. Once, he was arrested for allegedly participating in a residential burglary. But the charges were dropped because prosecutors couldn’t prove Diaz intended to commit a crime.
“It’s very difficult,” said Assistant Public Defender James Paese. “It might have been a case of somebody pointing and him following.”
Diaz has had several mental fitness hearings, each of which found him unfit for trial because he lacked the language skills to understand the charges against him.
So criminal charges were dropped, and he was let go–but usually not until he had spent at least a month in jail.
Eventually, Jarolin grew concerned that Diaz’s crimes would get more serious, so she sought the help of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
But the federal agency told her that Diaz couldn’t be deported as a criminal because he’d never been convicted of a crime. And he couldn’t be deported as an illegal immigrant because officials didn’t think he could understand the proceedings.
In summer 1995, after Diaz was arrested again, a fed-up Jose Diaz agreed to place his brother in the government’s “voluntary departure program” to Mexico. Jose Diaz had opposed the idea before, fearing that his brother would be dropped off in the middle of nowhere and would disappear for good.
But it wasn’t until February 1996, when Jarolin was reviewing cases on the court clerk’s computer, that she discovered he was in Cook County Jail’s unit for the mentally ill, not Mexico. By the time he was released, he had spent nearly a year in custody.
The whole saga exasperated Judge Pope when he heard the details in a June hearing for Diaz’s most recent arrest in April.
“I have no authority to order Immigration to take him. I have no authority to force Immigration to issue him a green card. I have no authority to order one of these programs to provide services without funding,” Pope said wearily.
But, he added, “I believe that by holding him any longer, I’m violating his rights. The court does not know what to do with Mr. Diaz.”
Standing in front of the judge, Diaz formed an open book with his hands and then, shaking his head slightly, put his fists in front of his face. He appeared to be telling the judge that he wanted to learn, not go back to jail.
He finally has received that chance. After being released from jail that day, Diaz was befriended by a sign-language instructor. He hasn’t been back to the forest preserves or involved in crime.
He lives in a homeless shelter in Chicago and spends the weekends learning sign language from Arthur Tomlinson, a teacher at Columbia College. Tomlinson said he believes Diaz has made significant progress.
But Diaz’s belated progress may lead him back to Mexico. Immigration officials now think Diaz may be able to understand deportation proceedings. They have scheduled a deportation hearing for mid-October.
Diaz’s defenders see a cruel irony in this and hope a way can be found for him to stay.
“He has finally found a caring community where he can live a productive life, even though he is illegal,” Jarolin said. “Where he is and what he’s doing are all for the best now.”
