Judge to rule: Did illegal immigrant threaten prosecutor? (AP c/o Witchita Eagle)

Judge to rule: Did illegal immigrant threaten prosecutor?

Posted on Thu, Apr. 09, 2009

Associated Press

A federal magistrate judge heard testimony Wednesday on prosecutors' case against a Mexican citizen living in Kansas who allegedly talked of harming a federal prosecutor in Arizona.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Donald Bostwick did not rule immediately whether there was probable cause to proceed with the prosecution of 60-year-old Angela Ramos-Ocana, saying he would review the evidence presented in the preliminary hearing.

Ramos-Ocana, who lives in Dodge City, was charged last week with felony obstruction of justice and misdemeanor illegal entry into the United States.

The charges stem from an investigation of phone conversations last September between Ramos-Ocana and her nephew Freddy Ovando-Ocana. The nephew placed the calls from a Phoenix detention center where he was being held in connection with a human smuggling case.

In the calls, prosecutors said, Ramos-Ocana told the nephew to get the name of the assistant U.S. attorney handling his case in Arizona to see "what we can do here, to shut her mouth up."

Carl Hummell, a special agent with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, testified Wednesday that when agents contacted her on March 26, Ramos-Ocana admitted she had been in the country illegally for four years.

Hummell also testified that two jailhouse calls recorded in September in Spanish matched the translated transcript submitted as evidence in the case, and that a son-in-law identified Ramos-Ocana's voice on the recordings.

"She wanted the name to stop the prosecutor," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brent Anderson argued during the preliminary hearing.

Defense attorney David Freund argued that the government presented no evidence that Ramos-Ocana tried to harm the prosecutor. Freund also suggested that the name of the prosecutor on any case is a matter of public record and that knowing the name is not illegal.

Along with Ramos-Ocana, agents also arrested her two sons-in-law who were found in her residence. Wilson Mandujano-Diaz and Juan Estrada-Santiago were charged last week with possession of fraudulent documents and aggravated identity theft.

Mandujano-Diaz worked at Cargill Meat Solutions and Estrada-Santiago worked at National Beef under assumed names, according to the criminal complaints. Both men had earlier waived their preliminary hearings in those cases.