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So what does the failed immigration system mean for ordinary people? Just ask Sister Helen Lynn Chaska. Actually, you can't. You will have to ask her family and friends.
It's the waning days of summer in 2002 in Klamath Falls, Ore., a city of about 19,000 on the eastern edge of the Cascade Mountains. Two nuns who belonged to the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Bellevue, Wash., had made one of their periodic trips to Klamath Falls to carry out missionary work. As they had in the past, Sister Helena Maria (her church name), 53, and Sister Mary Louise, 52, checked into a Best Western motel. On Saturday, Aug. 31, they spent the evening proselytizing and selling religious items outside an Albertsons supermarket.
After returning to the motel, the two set out on their ritual prayer walk shortly after midnight. They were dressed in the blue habits they always wore as they walked on a darkened bike path behind the motel, reciting their rosaries. As they reached the midway point in their prayers and turned back toward the motel, they heard a bicycle coming up behind them. A Hispanic male in his 30s or 40s got off, grabbed both women and began kissing them. The more they resisted, the angrier he became. He finally punched Sister Mary Louise in the right eye so hard that she fell and hit her head on a rock, leaving her dazed. While holding Sister Helena Maria so tightly by the rosary knotted around her neck that she gasped for breath, he raped her first and then raped and sodomized Sister Mary Louise and raped Sister Helena Maria a second time. The man pulled the veil over Sister Mary Louise, told her not to move or he would kill her, climbed back on his MTB Super Crown bike and pedaled off. Sister Helena Maria was dead. The rosary had been wound so tightly, its marks were embedded in her neck.
Later that day, police tracked a suspect to another motel, where they began questioning him. He gave his name as Jesus Franco Flores, which turned out to be one of many names he used. In the end, he confessed to beating and raping both nuns. He was not supposed to be in the U.S.; he had been deported at least three times. By his account, his unlawful entries into the U.S. began in 1986 at the age of 17. Under the name Victor Manuel Batres-Martinez, which may have been his legal name, he found his way to Oregon, where he was arrested for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. His sentence to a juvenile facility was suspended, with the understanding that the INS would deport him. The agency did so and in May 1987 granted him a voluntary return to Mexico, with a notation on government records that "subject has many good productive years ahead of him."