A Honduran in Miami who crossed the Rio Grande illegally is under threat of deportation -- one of more than a 400,000 migrants allegedly in hiding. But she says she was not aware she was ordered expelled.

BY ALFONSO CHARDY

Esmeralda Martinez does not consider herself a fugitive. She admits she entered the United States illegally but says that when an immigration judge released her in 2000 pending a decision, she believed she was being given permission to stay.

A year later she was ordered deported.

Today, she lives in constant fear that she could be detained and deported at any time.

Martinez says she now understands her case. But she wants to publicize her plight so people can help her.

Jose Lagos, president of Miami-based Honduran Unity, advised The Herald about her case because she does not qualify for Temporary Protected Status, a program for certain Honduran and Nicaraguan nationals.

Almost 100,000 illegal Hondurans and Nicaraguans were allowed to stay under TPS, begun after Hurricane Mitch devasted Central America in 1998. Martinez arrived in Texas on Jan. 1, 1999, two days after the eligibility period lapsed.

Martinez's long, complicated trek to illegal status started, she said, with the hurricane. She said her mother died during Mitch and that her house was destroyed.

Martinez decided to head north, following the example of a former husband who moved to Los Angeles years earlier.

''He sent me money for a year, $70 a month, and stopped,'' she recalled.

She caught a bus to the Guatemalan border with about $25 in Honduran lempiras in her purse. She says she paid a bribe of about $3 in Guatemalan quetzales to a border guard who let her into Guatemala.

From there Martinez caught another bus to Tecun Uman, a Guatemalan northern border town just south of Tapachula, a city on the Mexican side of the border.

Eventually, she made her way to Mexico City, where she met a man who asked Martinez to care for his four small children as a live-in baby sitter in exchange for room and board, and some money. Martinez agreed, but left after only a few weeks

because she was never paid. Then she met another man. She fell in love and became pregnant.

A short time later, Martinez resumed her trek north. By then she had saved enough for a plane ticket to Matamoros, a Mexican city across the Texas border.

One day Martinez went to the river's south shore outside Matamoros.

`AT THE RIVER BANK'

''At the river bank, I saw a 13-year-old boy with a pneumatic tube in one hand,'' Martinez recalled.

She paid him the $10 and he helped her cross the river. She floated with the tube around her waist while the boy swam alongside, steering.

Once they reached the U.S. side, Martinez said, the boy advised her to proceed cautiously -- walk in a crouch behind bushes or trees until she reached city streets.

Martinez walked for almost two hours before reaching a supermarket where she rested awhile. Then she hailed a cab and the driver took her to McAllen. There, she said she slept for three nights in an abandoned house.

''I had run out of money and I was hungry,'' she said. She scavenged for food in garbage cans. ``I ate scraps of all kinds for several days. That's how I survived.''

She said that she met a family who agreed to pay her for baby-sitting their infant twins, a boy and a girl. Martinez saved enough to buy a plane ticket to South Florida.

On July 4, 2000, she attempted to board a plane at the McAllen airport. Immigration officers demanded her papers.

She was taken to Harlingen and put before the immigration judge who started the proceedings but released her the next day, she said.

''I thought I was free to stay,'' she said.

She added that after being released, an immigration official called a cab to take her to the airport, where she caught a flight to Fort Lauderdale.

She was given documents in English and Spanish by the immigration authorities who released her, but Martinez says she cannot read or write in any language.

Immigration court records show that an immigration judge in Harlingen ordered Martinez deported on March 5, 2001 -- more than two years after she crossed the border.

Martinez said she expected the court to notify her about actions in her case, but she insists she never got a notice. She gave the immigration service an address, but she acknowledges that she has since moved several times and did not advise authorities. She says a friend who let her stay at her Fort Lauderdale home told her that a letter from immigration arrived one day, but that the document was lost.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, immigration authorities stepped up efforts to track down foreign nationals who have ignored deportation orders.

At present, special teams of immigration officers are operating in U.S. cities, including Miami, assigned to track down the so-called absconders.

A woman Martinez knew from Honduras hired Martinez shortly after she arrived in Fort Lauderdale to clean homes in the area. But Martinez soon left her employ.

''She never paid me,'' she said.

BATTLE WITH CANCER

Martinez then moved to Miami. A few months later, she began experiencing extreme pain in her right breast. She was diagnosed with breast cancer. The breast was removed in September 2000. Two months later, her daughter Diana Melisa, was born.

Martinez not only has to support herself and 4-year-old Diana Melisa, but she also has to pay off a $3,500 debt to a fellow migrant who lent her money so her other 20-year-old daughter could pay a smuggler to reach the United States. Martinez said her daughter was fleeing from an abusive relationship in Honduras.

Martinez earns about $600 a month, selling homemade sausages and cleaning other people's homes.

She pays $330 in rent, while the rest goes to food, medicine and to cover installments of the debt.

She still owes about $600, she said last week.

''I want a better life for my children,'' Martinez said.

``That's what this is all about, the future of my children.''