She has been rewriting a novel about her experience of living in a foreign land and working for a company that processes dragons. She also has written a three-page prayer about seeking refuge in God from the mistakes she has made.
"We ask you Lord to have mercy on us and ask for your forgiveness. I have felt your anger. I've grieved. I have felt hunger. My eyes are red and swollen from crying. I've been humiliated. . . . But I know you have not given us a spirit of fear but the power over our own lives in all circumstances."
Each day, Peñaranda recites the prayer along with fellow jail inmates who have been locked up since federal immigration agents raided a Swift & Co. meat processing plant in Hyrum in December.
Utah bound: When she could no longer pay for law school in Chile, Peñaranda came to the United States legally three years ago in hopes of saving some money.
She moved to Utah mostly because it was the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The former business owner also had heard about the peace and quiet, "good people" and job opportunities.
"It looks like everything is perfect, but the reality is different," she said.
Peñaranda overstayed her business visa, rented an apartment, worked as a maid and later got a $10-an-hour job cleaning cow intestines at the Swift plant.
But then Peñaranda was one of 158 undocumented workers arrested during the Dec. 12 roundup at the plant by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). When she was arrested, she already had a warrant for her arrest for forgery and identity charges in Cache County. She pleaded guilty and served a nine-day jail sentence. Since then, she had been under ICE custody at the Weber County Jail. Her final deportation order from the United States was Feb. 14, and she's been in removal proceedings since then, an ICE spokeswoman said.
"If I could do it again - I wouldn't do it," Peñaranda said of her identity theft conviction. "[But] the laws of this country force you to do it."
It cost taxpayers more than $5,000 to have Peñaranda incarcerated, said a jail official. Now, after spending some 105 days in jail, Peñaranda is being deported to Chile early this week.
Buying work: In a recent interview at the Weber County Jail, Peñaranda said she understands that buying a name and Social Security number for $850 was wrong but it was the only way she could work in the U.S. legally. She claims she never used the information for anything else.
"We were working, we weren't stealing," she said. "Not everyone can work at [Swift.] Not everyone can take the 12-hour shifts; it's very hard."
Peñaranda, who didn't have any close relatives in Utah, said she's excited about heading home to her husband of 15 years, 12-year-old son and daughters ages 23 and 8 - all who live in Iquique, Chile.
"I'm going to return happy," she said.
Kathy Arellano, Peñaranda's daughter, wrote in an e-mail to The Tribune last week that she is delighted that her mother will be home soon.
"She is not doing well, but thank God everything is finished," Arellano wrote in Spanish.
Peñaranda, 46, said the past few months in jail have been horrible because she never got to wrap up her life in Utah. She never got to clean and pack her apartment in Logan. She didn't get to say goodbye to her friends at work and church. She also hasn't been able to send the $1,000 that her family depends on each month for bills and college tuition.
Lost texts: But the worst part, Peñaranda said, is she has no idea what happened to about 30 handwritten pages of a novel she was writing called Mi nombre no es Isabel, My name is not Isabel, referring to the name she worked under. She also lost about 40 handwritten poems to God that she had compiled over the past 15 years. Rolando Murillo, a volunteer with the Latin American Cultural and Educational Association (ACELA) that is helping those caught up in the Swift raid, found out about Peñaranda in January and has been visiting her about once a week since then. When he went to her apartment to try to track down some of her belongings, it seemed as if most of her stuff was dumped and new people had moved in.
By looking at her personal belongings, Murillo said he could tell she was "obvious an educated and refined lady."
"I don't understand how someone like that would work at Swift," he said.
But, Murillo couldn't find anything she requested. No novel. No poems. No philosophy books.
"She [Peñaranda] cried her heart out for her writings," he said. "She didn't care about anything . . . she said losing her writings was like losing a child."
jsanchez@sltrib.com
