In brief: [4th item] Police discover illegals during dispute call
Published: January 24, 2010 10:51 pm
The Tribune-Democrat
When called to a domestic dispute on Virginia Avenue Sunday, Johnstown police instead discovered a group of illegal immigrants from Mexico, officers said.
Five men were sitting in the residence, drinking beer, police said, and could not produce proper identification.
Officers called federal Immigration and Naturalization authorities, who told police that the men would be deported.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Police discover illegals during dispute call (Tribune Democrat)
Confiscated roosters to be put down (Weatherford Democrat)
Confiscated roosters to be put down
Staff Report
Approximately 118 roosters seized in a weekend raid at a cockfight near Poolville are to be euthanized according to a Monday ruling by Parker County Justice of the Peace Jayne Choate.
A hen confiscated by law enforcement officials will be placed up for adoption.
Several dead and injured roosters were also found when law enforcement personnel crashed the illegal weekend event.
Some of more than 170 people arrested will face criminal charges ranging from gambling to animal cruelty. Others have been released after paying $300 fines. Immigration officials also arrested 65 following the raid.
Authorities began watching the Poolville barn about two weeks ago after receiving a tip cockfighting was held there.
Drugs and cash were also confiscated in the Saturday bust and Child Protective Services officials helped authorities with between 10 and 15 children at the cockfight. According to published reports, the children were all released to relatives.
Participating in the raid were sheriff’s deputies, Weatherford police, Texas Department of Public Service troopers, a team from the Humane Society, county emergency management team members and immigration officials.
Immigration agents stop vans taking workers to Gillette Stadium (Providence Journal)
Immigration agents stop vans taking workers to Gillette Stadium
01:00 AM EST on Friday, January 8, 2010
By Karen Lee Ziner
Journal Staff Writer
Sixty people stopped by immigration authorities in Foxboro early Wednesday morning had driven from Rhode Island to clear snow at Gillette Stadium, according to several of the workers who were detained and released.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulled over four passenger vans carrying the workers on Route 1 north in Foxboro, according to ICE spokeswoman Paula Grenier.
Seven of the 60 remain in custody, Grenier said, and 49 were released and ordered to go to ICE offices for further interviews about their immigration status. Two were charged with immigration violations and released pending a hearing before an immigration judge. One person who had legal documentation was released, and another is in removal proceedings.
“This was a targeted law-enforcement operation looking for specific fugitives,” Grenier said. “We have two individuals wanted on warrants of deportation and five who have illegally reentered the United States after having been deported.”
One of the van drivers, Gregorio Pablo, was among more than a dozen seeking assistance in Providence on Thursday.
He said he was driving 14 people to the stadium to shovel the snow off the seats. He said he believes all the workers are Guatemalan.
Through an interpreter, Pablo said, “We were close to the stadium — three miles away,” when he saw flashing lights behind him. Pablo said he pulled over to make way for what he thought was a police cruiser trying to move past him. Instead, he realized that he and others were being detained by immigration agents.
Pablo said he got a job driving the van this week through word of mouth, through “an office in Boston.”
“If the stadium needs to be cleaned, if there’s an event,” he said, then workers get called in. And on Sunday nights after a game, “they’ll pick up all the garbage.”
Stacey James, spokesman for Gillette Stadium and the New England Patriots, said, “We utilize multiple third-party vendors that hire a temporary work force for snow removal. So it’s a short-term temporary hire. We expect with any vendor that we use that they vet all employees, and as far as I am aware, everyone that came to work here is vetted.”
Grenier, the ICE spokeswoman, said, “We were looking for specific individuals. When we do conduct these, we often encounter other aliens during the operation. In this case, we did encounter a number of others in addition to the seven who are detained.”
Grenier said fugitive operations teams make it a priority to arrest people with criminal histories. In this case, those include domestic assault, obstructing a police officer, possession of a stolen motor vehicle and driving while under the influence.
She said the two people with outstanding deportation warrants will be deported. Federal authorities will review the cases of five others who reentered the country after they were deported for possible federal prosecution.
Immigration lawyer Roberto Gonzalez, of East Providence, said Thursday that he was working with other attorneys and the Guatemalan consulate in Rhode Island to provide legal representation and assistance for some of the detainees.
Feds: Bar owner forced teenage girls to work as sex slaves (The Monitor)
Feds: Bar owner forced teenage girls to work as sex slaves
January 14, 2010 9:10 PM
Jeremy Roebuck and Jared Taylor
The Monitor
MISSION — A soiled white teddy bear and empty condom wrapper left at the now abandoned home on Lusby Street provide a stark reminder of what investigators believe went on there.
The nondescript structure northwest of the city served as home base for a group of teenage Honduran girls who claim they were forced into prostitution to pay off the debts they incurred when smuggled into the country.
And behind their servitude, law enforcement officials say, was a man who put them to work in his bar and for his customers.
“All three were forced to work ten hours a day, six days a week and were paid $20 per day,” U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Anson Luna wrote in the criminal complaint filed in the case. “All monies made were … supposedly applied to their debt.”
ICE agents raided the home Wednesday and discovered three girls ranging in age from 14 to 17.
Each told a similar story, according to court documents. They were brought from their home country to the United States by a man who told them they could pay off their $4,000 to $4,500 smuggling fees by working in a Rio Grande Valley restaurant where they would be “well taken care of.”
Instead, once they arrived they were kept under guard in the Lusby Street home and forced to work at El Paraiso Bar, a night club owned by 34-year-old Mexican national Beleal Garcia Gonzalez, the complaint states.
Garcia would often sell his wards for sex to his customers, night club employees told authorities.
A day after the raid, federal authorities remained tight-lipped about how they were first tipped off to the stash house. But the remnants of what they found there lay scattered about the premises.
Stiletto heels and gold-spangled purses were abandoned next to stuffed animals. A toy machine gun rested on a kitchen counter, next to half-eaten plates of food.
Both Garcia and a bartender at El Paraiso, 22-year-old Elizabeth Mendez Vasquez now face charges of harboring illegal immigrants — a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison upon conviction. Each remained in federal custody Thursday pending a detention hearing scheduled for next week.
It was unclear whether either had retained an attorney.
But as neighbor Marcos Segovia surveyed their rented home from his front yard across the street Thursday, he remembered the girls in high heels who returned to the residence late each night.
“We never saw any of their faces,” he said. “You never know what you get with the neighbors.”
Parents’ deportations divide long-time parish family (Catholic San Francisco)
January 20th, 2010 Gilbert Mejia and his sister Helen thought the end of the world had arrived when they said goodbye to their parents and Dulce, their four-year-old sister, at San Francisco International Airport in November.
By José Luis Aguirre
The two teenagers, 18 and 13 years old respectively, were witnessing the deportation of their parents to Guatemala. The couple had come to the United States without documentation 17 years earlier and had established a home of their own and a family. Both parents had good jobs: Salvador Mejia worked as a carpenter and Elida Mejia-Perez was a caregiver for children and older adults.
But despite what the couple accomplished in a starting a new life, they were sent back to Guatemala because they were living in the United States illegally, according to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) complaint that was upheld in court after a long fight.
“Mom and dad were very productive citizens,” said Precious Blood Father Dave Matz, a parochial vicar at St. Raphael Parish in San Rafael, where the Mejias are long-time members.
Advocates for immigration reform point to the breakup of families as one reason that current law is unjust and should be changed. Cases such as that of the Mejias are not uncommon, although most undocumented people who are prosecuted by ICE do not fight the charges as hard as the Mejias did.
“There are so many like them in the same situation,” said St. Raphael parishioner and Marin Organizing Committee activist Susan Brown, who is leading a community effort to assist the Mejia children. “It’s just that they fought it.”
According to current U.S. law, when Helen, a U.S. citizen, turns 21, she can petition to bring her parents back to the United States. However, because they were deported, they are barred from returning for 10 years.
The nightmare for the Mejias began in March 2007 when ICE officers knocked on the door of the sleeping family’s home in Novato. They had a warrant for someone the family did not know.
“Because we opened the door and they were already inside the house, they decided to ask for our documents,” Gilbert remembered.
“They entered in a very violent way,” Helen added. “There were eight agents in the house and some more in the backyard. They spoke loudly, had guns, and took me off the bed, pointing at me with their guns. Then I saw how they handcuffed my parents.”
ICE agents let Elida Mejia-Perez remain in the house to take care of her children. Salvador Mejia and an uncle were arrested and taken to a detention center in San Francisco. He was released on bail pending a hearing on his case.
While they awaited their court date, the couple had to wear electronic ankle bracelets and report frequently to immigration officers.
That was a blow especially to Salvador Mejia, who lost work as a carpenter because he had to report to immigration officers three times weekly in San Francisco.
“With his hands and skills he was doing the American dream,” Brown said. “Unfortunately he didn’t come over on the Mayflower, so his papers are required.”
In October 2007, an immigration judge in San Francisco ruled in favor of the Mejias after family members testified that both Helen and Dulce were born in the United States and that the entire family would suffer if they had to return to Guatemala.
ICE appealed. The family continued to fight to remain in the United States, spending more than $30,000 on legal fees to contest the appeal. They also asked U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein to sponsor a private bill for them. She reviewed the case twice, but declined to intervene.
In the end, the couple lost their case and had to return to Guatemala, taking Dulce with them.
“It was the saddest day in my life,” said Gilbert, a student at Santa Rosa Junior College who wants to become an architect. “Now, I feel the solitude in the house.”
Helen, a ninth grader at Novato High School, said that watching her parents’ struggle was very difficult. “I felt very bad and was very angry that not even in the airport did ICE take the bracelets off,” she said. “They did that only when my parents were in the airplane. They treated them like criminals.”
Nobody told Dulce about the situation. Instead, her siblings told her she was going to meet her grandma in Guatemala where she was going to have a pet.
Since arriving back in their native Quetzaltenango in Guatemala’s western highlands, the couple has not been able to find a job. They continue to worry about their two children in the Bay Area.
The couple are now living in Xela, the second most important commercial city in Guatemala, but are still unable to find work, Gilbert said.
“Things are really, really hard there,” he said. “There are zero jobs.”
The teenagers live with another uncle in the same house their parents had bought, but the mortgage and other bills have to be paid. A December property tax bill is due.
Their relatives help, as do other concerned adults including Father Matz and Father Paul Rossi, pastor at St. Raphael Parish.
“The same week their parents were deported, we decided to start a fund with the help of some parishioners” Father Matz said. “For me it is such an honor to put my effort into helping these kids.”
Efforts to help the children are focusing on finding more employment for the uncle and an aunt, who have stepped in as caregivers. People helping the family are struggling to keep the household intact and to make sure that the aunt and uncle earn enough to cover the mortgage payments on the house.
“They go month to month trying to make the payment,” Father Matz said.
Father Matz has taken Gilbert to meetings and events where he can connect with people who might be able to help, especially with legal matters.
“We are talking about a family with a strong connection with the community, who have worked very hard for a better life,” Father Matz said. “Immigration officials should be conscious that they are separating families and leaving them with an open wound for the rest of their lives.”
Helen said the immigration authorities should consider the impact of their actions on families.
“Everybody in this country is an immigrant in a different way,” she said. “Immigration officials are not taking into consideration the feelings of the families when they are deported, when people don’t even know when they are going to see each other again. They should walk in our shoes because they have families, too. What would they think if they got separated against their will?”
Gilbert, who coordinates the youth group at St. Raphael Parish, added: “Family separation is very harmful. If I could send a message to the immigration officials, I would tell them that instead of spending millions of dollars on deportations, they should spend that money on comprehensive immigration reform.”
Asked to comment on the case, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said: “This family had access to due process and their case was reviewed, and ultimately it was determined that they didn’t have a legal basis to remain in the country. ICE doesn’t make the determination about a foreign national’s deportability. Those decisions are made by immigration judges.”
The law allows immigration courts very little discretion to suspend deportation for family reasons, said Francisco Ugarte, an attorney for the San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network.
“While ICE may say they take families into consideration in their law-enforcement decisions, that is simply not true,” Ugarte said. “I have seen countless families torn apart.”
Family unity would be a cornerstone of immigration policy under one measure in the current Congress, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009, HR. 4321, introduced by Illinois Democrat Luis V. Gutierrez.
The Mejias’ legal troubles are not over. On the day of the raid at the family’s home, the officers did not detain Gilbert because assumed that he was an American citizen. But three days later, they found out that he was born in Guatemala.
Gilbert is due in court in July, when a judge will decide if he can stay in the United States or if he must return to Guatemala, a country he doesn’t know. He said his lawyer weighs his chances at 50-50.
The Mejia-Perez Family Fund has been established at Marin Bank, l4460 Redwood Highway, San Rafael, CA 94903. The account number is 03-131026.
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