"You don't know how much I miss my Anthony," he said, surprised to learn his son is now taller than him. "How is he going to turn out? That's what I got in my head is my son. Nothing else."

You know I don't understand imigration (sic) and guess maybe someday I will. But I don't get mad about what happened to us because I know my dad and I am very proud of him. — Letter from Anthony Fernandez to an immigration attorney

Fernandez-Vargas really didn't have much of a father or a mother, for that matter. The sixth of seven children, his parents handed him off to his grandparents shortly after birth. When they died, he returned to his parents. He didn't attend a day of school. He ran the streets of Cuauhtemoc.

His father used to beat him for no reason, including hitting him in the head with a hammer and whipping him with a rope. The welts left him wishing he were dead.

He'd had enough as a teenager and crossed the border for the first time to escape.

Due to some stupid mistakes, Fernandez-Vargas has a somewhat checkered past. He has been deported at least three times. But other than immigration violations he has no criminal record, according to his FBI rap sheet. A computer search of Utah state courts showed three traffic citations, the last one in 1994.

In July 1970, the former INS apprehended him near Nogales, Ariz., driving 13 undocumented immigrants to Boise. He didn't drive them across the border, but he had climbed a border fence to pick up an employer's van at a pre-arranged spot. He then drove it to a hospital where he picked up the others. His employer paid him $100, according to an INS report.

The government deported him in October of that year but did not charge him with a crime related to transporting illegal aliens.

In the early 1970s, he entered into a marriage of convenience with a 40ish woman in Wyoming, believing it would be a path to permanent residency. The former INS denied his visa application because he indicated he had never been incarcerated when, in fact, he had spent 90 days in an Arizona jail for being in the country illegally. The woman later died.

Fernandez-Vargas was last deported in December 1981. He returned to the United States without documentation through El Paso, Texas, in January 1982. He cavorted and drank a lot in those days and didn't think life was worth living. One night in a drunken stupor, he turned a rifle on himself. He bears a scar where the bullet pierced his abdomen.

He considers that a turning point in his life — that moment and moving in with relatives on Kershaw Street next to the woman he eventually married.