Associated Press - Saturday, November 8, 2003
Randall Richard, AP National Writer

Marques has not seen them since July 13, 1996. That was the day, he says, that he hocked his diamond ring to buy party hats and noisemakers for his son's 4th birthday. At the time, he says, his daughter was 2 and he was "a little short on cash," but even when his car business was in a slump, he always managed to provide for them.

Marques, 43, says it saddens him to think he would not know them if they walked up to him today. But neither, he acknowledges, would they recognize their father.

In 1996, Marques says, he weighed 220 pounds, "all solid muscle." As a former boxer turned fitness trainer, he always stayed in top shape. But after a few years on the streets of Georgetown -- foraging for food and sleeping, most nights, in an overflow pipe at the city power plant -- his muscle has melted away. What is left is mostly bone and jaundiced flesh.

He was down to 147 pounds when he weighed himself last and has probably lost weight since. How much of that loss has to do with diet and how much with his HIV infection, he has no way of knowing.

Marques says he was 12 when he first came to the United States. He went to a Jesuit high school, traveled the world as a crewman on a cargo ship, and briefly attended the University of News Orleans before settling down to become a physical fitness trainer. He speaks several languages, he says, including Portuguese, Greek and Farsi. He lived in the United States for 21 years before his ex-wife told INS about an old drunken driving arrest -- his only criminal conviction, according to authorities. She never forgave him, he says, after he won custody of their two children.

Marques says he did not become a drug addict and did not test positive for the HIV virus until after he was deported. Since then, he says, he goes days at a time surviving on rainwater until he can get it together enough to drop by the Salvation Army office for a handout.

Unlike most criminal deportees, Marques says he managed to get a job soon after he arrived, working as a fitness trainer at one of Georgetown's top hotels. For a while he thought he might make a go of it.

But depression eventually set in, he says, and he found himself at an international festival drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and thinking of the children he would never see again.

"I just laid one on. I hadn't done that in years. Then a week later I started smoking weed -- and then doing cocaine. I just went on a binge and I didn't come back."

Marques says he wishes he could see his children again, if only to teach them how precious it is to live in America.

"We take so many things for granted in the United States," he says. "You can go to a church and say you're hungry and they will stuff you full of food. You can go to a soup kitchen."

As a certified fitness trainer at Bally's Total Fitness in Las Vegas, Marques says, "my cheapest session was a cardio boxing session -- a half-hour session for $80. Here, most people make maybe $10 a week. And at the Salvation Army it cost $12 a week just for a bed."

Marques says he would not be so bitter about his deportation if he had been convicted of a more serious offense. Then, he says, he could understand.

"I never sold drugs. I was a single father with a job. I supported my kids, sent them to school, did the best for them. And now my kids are in foster care. No mom. No dad," he says. "And I still had so much to offer. I still had so much to learn. And here I am sitting here waiting. Here I am sitting here waiting to die."

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