Judge who ordered immigrant mother to learn English relents

Juvenile Court Judge Barry Tatum told Felipa Berrera during a closed hearing in October that she would need to show basic English proficiency when she returned to court in six months. But in an about-face at Monday’s hearing, which Tatum opened to the public, he didn’t require English responses to questions such as where she works, lives and how long she’s been in the U.S.

The judge also challenged her attorneys over using the word “test” to describe the order he had issued.

Berrera speaks only Misteco, a dialect spoken in parts of Mexico, and hasn’t seen or spoken with her child in more than year, said Jerry Gonzalez, a Nashville civil rights attorney involved in the case.

“Termination of parental rights has nothing to do with what language you speak at home,” Gonzalez said. “You can be a deaf mute and speak nothing but sign language. That doesn’t mean you lose your child.”

The daughter, who’s been living with a local foster family for nearly a year, accused her mother of hitting her and yanking her by the ear, according to testimony read in court Monday. The case’s entire record, like most Juvenile Court proceedings, is confidential and more details were not available.

Tatum said in the hearing that he did not have jurisdiction to set a trial to decide whether to terminate Berrera’s parental rights because a separate custody case is now in Circuit Court.

Gonzalez said he now expects to ask the Court of Appeals to order Tatum to set the termination of parental rights case for trial or to recuse himself.

Berrera, who communicated through Gonzalez after the hearing, said she did not want to comment about the case.

The mother has lived in the United States, first in Virginia and later in Tennessee, since the early 1990s. According to testimony read in court, the girl was born in Mexico and raised for a significant amount of time by her grandmother there before immigrating to the United States. Lawyers for Berrera said the girl moved to the United States sometime in the mid-1990s.

Tatum, who hears child abuse and neglect cases, also has been in trouble with Tennessee immigrant and civil rights advocacy groups about similar learn-English-or-else orders to immigrant women in Lebanon, a Nashville suburb that has seen its foreign-born population grow significantly in the last several years.

About 500 immigrants from the Mestico community currently live in the area.

Melody Fowler-Green, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, said immigrants often cannot have interpreters at court proceedings and courts don’t always inform consulates even though they’re required to do so.

In particular, courts in the Southeast — which has seen its immigrant population swell over the last decade — are not often equipped to handle the special demands involved with non-English speakers, she said.

“I think what Judge Tatum wanted to do raises serious constitutional issues,” Fowler-Green said.

Antonio Villa, 40, and a half dozen others with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition protested the judge’s orders outside the courthouse Monday afternoon. Villa, who immigrated from Mexico to the United States nine years ago, was holding a sign that said, “We are a nation of immigrants.”

Villa said he went door to door this morning in the Mestico community in Lebanon trying to drum up support. Most were too afraid to join in the protest, he said.

“They don’t trust government. They try to stay apart,” he said. “I think it’s wrong what this judge is doing.”