Deputies: Immigrants Stashed In SUV (KPHO-AZ)

Deputies: Immigrants Stashed In SUV

POSTED: 7:30 pm MST November 1, 2010

PINAL COUNTY, Ariz. -- Pinal County sheriff's deputies apprehended nine suspected illegal immigrants Monday morning after a short pursuit near Eleven Mile Corner Road.

A deputy said he saw a 1998 Dodge Durango pass him on Arizona Highway 287 and noticed between 8-12 passengers in the vehicle.

Deputies said they tried to stop the vehicle, which they said was going 70 mph in a 35-mph school zone and even illegally passed a school bus trying to get away.

When he began to chase the car, the driver came to a stop and some of the passengers ran toward the closest town, according to officials.

Two people were found in the back seat and admitted to being illegal immigrants from Mexico, according to the sheriff's office. Seven other suspected illegal immigrants were found hiding in bushes, three under a trailer and four more under a pile of tires in a back yard.

The three under the trailer also admitted to being in the U.S. illegally, deputies said.

All suspects were turned over to Border Patrol agents.

The car was registered to a Manuel Alonso Inzunza Moreno, who said his cousin Eloy Fabricio Inzunza Moreno had registered the vehicle in his name without his permission, officials said.

Pinal officials say Eloy Fabricio Inzunza Moreno is a "coyote" suspected of transporting illegal immigrants into the United States.

Deputies said they are still investigating the case and are looking for Eloy Fabricio Inzunza Moreno.

Anyone with information about his whereabouts are asked to contact the Pinal County Sheriff's Office.

Deported Mexicans leave two small kids in Lodi (Sacramento Bee)

Deported Mexicans leave two small kids in Lodi

By Stephen Magagnini
Published: Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1B

LODI – Every day, 2-year-old Kimberly Vrabo peeks around her apartment complex for her mom. If she hears police sirens, she runs inside.

Kimberly's mother, Maria Magdalena Perez-Rivera, got into a fight with her boyfriend, Vicente Tellez, on a Saturday night.

The next morning, Perez-Rivera's sister called Lodi police. Two days later, the undocumented couple were deported to Mexico, leaving behind Kimberly and the couple's 3-month-old son Anthony Tellez.

Their swift removal has shattered the family. And Sacramento's Mexican Consul General Carlos González Gutiérrez and UC Davis Law School Dean Kevin Johnson question whether justice has truly been served.

More people are being deported than ever – 50,000 in Northern California in the last three years, compared to 17,317 from 2001-2003, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Half the deportees have been convicted of crimes.

But the Lodi couple, each charged with felony domestic violence, were never tried or convicted. Perez-Rivera, whose family claims she was beaten repeatedly, was not given the chance to apply for a U visa, which protects crime victims from being deported if they cooperate with law enforcement.

"This deportation scenario is all too common. It illustrates the potential pitfalls of local police cooperating with immigration authorities," said Johnson. "Immigrant women in particular are going to underreport domestic violence, and generally, immigrant communities are going to be less likely to cooperate with police for fear of being deported."

One third of Lodi's 65,394 people are Latinos.

"We do not deport people; we encourage victims and witnesses of crimes to feel free to speak with us," said police spokesman Eric Bradley. "Our interest is in protecting the community."

When the couple were booked into the Lodi jail on felony charges, their fingerprints were sent to ICE under the federal government's partnership with local law enforcement, Operation Secure Communities, designed to identify criminal aliens for possible removal.

"Instead of giving them a chance to talk to a judge and present their case for some type of legal relief to resolve the issue, two days later the ICE van picks them up and they are sent to Mexico," said González Gutiérrez. "The tragedy is that there are two little kids who remain with the grandmother."

Perez-Rivera's mom, Ana Maria Rivera, quit her $500 a week job at the cherry packing plant to care for her grandkids. "Maria's sad, she's afraid. She wants to come back, but she doesn't want to go back with Vicente," Rivera said.

If Perez-Rivera, 21, is caught trying to return to the United States, she could face two to 20 years for illegal re-entry.

Tellez, a 21-year-old farmworker, and Perez-Rivera started going out about a year ago and moved into their own apartment, according to family.

At 11 a.m. Sept. 19, Lodi police got a call from Perez-Rivera's 17-year-old sister Ana. "I wanted to go to church with her and I saw her with bruises and scratches on her face and body," she said.

That Sunday afternoon Tellez contacted police "to share his version," Bradley said. "He had scratches, a cut lip and a possible bite mark. It looks like the argument escalated into mutual combat; that's why she was arrested as well."

Neither Perez-Rivera nor Tellez had prior contact with police, Bradley said.

Police referred the case to the San Joaquin County District Attorney's Office, which decided not to prosecute. The office did not return numerous calls from The Bee.

If the couple had been booked on lesser misdemeanor domestic violence charges, "ICE might not even have picked up on this because they're focusing on felonies," Johnson said. "But there's an incentive to charge them with the maximum and get them deported so you don't ever have to deal with the criminal charges."

On Sept. 21, Perez-Rivera was taken into custody by ICE agents, who are "routinely notified by jail officials when foreign nationals are booked," said ICE spokeswoman Lori K. Haley.

Perez-Rivera waived her right to an immigration hearing and signed documents agreeing to voluntarily depart the United States, Haley said. She was repatriated to Mexico later that day.

"She was told no bond was possible and she would have to stay in jail for an indefinite amount of time without her kids – the worst of both worlds," González Gutiérrez said. "Illegal immigrants have to make quick decisions with not enough information and no counsel. We asked ICE to grant her bail, but it was too late."

González Gutiérrez said the focus of the case should have been "on Maria as a victim of domestic violence, instead of deporting her."

The U.S. government has issued 10,000 U visas to immigrants who are crime victims or witnesses, said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman Chris Rhatigan. "It allows them authorization to work, and eventually apply for a green card."

But if an alleged victim of domestic violence is determined to be the aggressor, that could eliminate them as a U visa candidate, said ICE press secretary Kelly Nantel.

González Gutiérrez said Perez-Rivera's priority is to be reunited with her kids.

"She has two options," he said. "To try to come back into the U.S., pay a huge amount of money to a smuggler and run a much greater risk going through the desert, or get her kids to Mexico."

The consulate is trying to get permission from the fathers of both of Perez-Rivera's children to grant them Mexican passports and fly them to Mexico with a consular official, González Gutiérrez said.

Perez-Rivera wants her sister Ana to bring her kids to Mexico.

"She didn't want me to call the cops," her sister said. "But I don't regret making the call even though she's not here. She might have ended up in the hospital, or gotten killed."

Feds are set to deport Manhattan cabbie Eligio Valerio, 52, on old gun rap (New York Daily News)

Feds are set to deport Manhattan cabbie Eligio Valerio, 52, on old gun rap
BY Irving Dejohn, Barry Paddock and Erica Pearson
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Wednesday, October 27th 2010, 4:00 AM

A Manhattan cabbie who's had a green card for nearly 30 years is suddenly facing deportation - for a gun arrest in 1982.

Dominican immigrant Eligio Valerio, 52, didn't get any jail time for the ancient offense, but it could get him kicked out of the country he's called home for decades.

After digging up the old conviction, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents knocked on his door in Washington Heights last week.

Now he's in federal custody, awaiting a bond hearing, while his daughter is set to give birth to his first grandchild.

"I'm confused," said daughter Elibany Valerio, 30, a paralegal. "I don't know what's going on.

"He doesn't get in trouble. He didn't have anything to hide."

Valerio's family said that years ago, he bought an illegal gun for protection at his Washington Heights bodega.

After he was busted for it in 1982, he was sentenced to five years probation and ended up serving only three because of good behavior.

He's had no other brushes with the law, pays taxes every year and has traveled back and forth to the Dominican Republic with no problem, his relatives said.

Now it seems his American dream has become a casualty of a federal push to ship immigrants with criminal records back to their homeland.

Deportations hit a record high of 392,862 in the 12-month period that ended Oct. 1. Homeland Security officials boasted about half of those were ex-cons.

ICE declined to comment on Valerio's case or how his old conviction came to the agency's attention.

Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan) is calling on Gov. Paterson to intervene on Valerio's behalf.

"He's an active person in the community ... . I don't know how the agency picked him," Rodriguez said. "That's the big question - what did he do?"

Peter Markowitz, director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, said the law has long allowed for the deportation of legal residents convicted of minor offenses, no matter how far in the past.

Lately, though, he said, he has noticed a "disturbing trend" of people like Valerio sent packing.

"The sad trend that I've seen is an increased focus on pumping up numbers of deportations of people that they can claim are 'criminal aliens' without any attempt to look at the particulars of the situation," Markowitz said.

He fears there could be even more deportations with the advent of Secure Communities, a program that shares police department fingerprints with the feds.

It hasn't been implemented in New York City yet, but the state signed on in the spring.

Meanwhile, Elibany Valerio is worried that her father will not be in New York for the arrival of her baby, due in the next few weeks.

"I want him to be there for my labor - that's what upsets me, that he might miss it," she said.

Southampton Town Police Report: Nov. 2, 2010 (Riverhead News-Review)

Southampton Town Police Report: Nov. 2, 2010
Posted: Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Giedrius Karvelis, 30, of Forge Road in Calverton reported his boat becoming disabled in the Shinnecock Canal in Hampton Bays and was towed to a boat ramp by the Coast Guard last Thursday afternoon on Dune Road in Hampton Bays, after which officers performed an immigration check and found that Mr. Karvelis had an expired visa. The Coast Guard then contacted Southampton Town Police, who held Mr. Karvelis for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Call for help leads to possible deportation for Hyattsville mother (Washington Post)

Call for help leads to possible deportation for Hyattsville mother

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 1, 2010; 3:33 PM

Last Christmas Eve, Maria Bolanos made a decision she would later regret: During a fight with her partner, she called the Prince George's County police and sought their protection.

The call for help had disastrous consequences for Bolanos, a 28-year-old undocumented immigrant from El Salvador. Within months, she found herself ensnared in an increasingly controversial immigration enforcement program designed to deport undocumented criminals.

Bolanos now faces deportation and possible separation from her 21-month-old daughter, who was born here and is a U.S. citizen.

Her case illustrates what immigrant-rights advocates and some local officials consider the shortcomings of Secure Communities, the centerpiece of the Obama administration's immigration enforcement efforts and a program that has helped generate a record number of deportations.

Secure Communities, which already operates in the District, Maryland, Virginia and will soon be running nationwide, relies on the fingerprints collected by local authorities when a person is charged with anything from a traffic violation to murder.

In Bolanos's case, the officer who responded to the domestic dispute at her apartment in Hyattsville later charged her with illegally selling a $10 phone card to a neighbor - an allegation she denies. The charge was eventually dropped, but by then Bolanos had been been fingerprinted and found by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be in the country illegally.

She has been told she probably will be deported after a Wednesday hearing before an immigration judge in Baltimore.

Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said removals during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 included more than 1,000 murderers, nearly 6,000 sex-offenders, 45,000 drug-offenders and 28,000 drunk drivers. The number fell short of the agency expectation of 400,000 deportations but still surpassed the 2009 total of 387,790, the previous record.

Although ICE officials have touted the large numbers of criminals who are being deported via Secure Communities, they are unapologetic about the significant number of non-criminals being removed as well. In the past year, more than half of the 392,000 immigrants deported were convicted criminals; the rest had overstayed their visas or entered the country without authorization.

"ICE cannot and will not turn a blind eye to those who violate federal immigration law," said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Brian Hale. "While ICE's enforcement efforts prioritize convicted criminal aliens, ICE maintains the discretion to take action on any alien it encounters."

Not surprisingly, immigrant-rights groups have been critical of the administration's efforts to ratchet up deportations without delivering on the president's campaign promise to create a path to citizenship for the country's 11 million undocumented immigrants.

But Secure Communities also has come under attack in Arlington County, the District and other jurisdictions, where local officials worry that it is discouraging undocumented immigrants who are crime victims and witnesses from coming forward.

Those concerns are well justified, said Bolanos, speaking through a translator.

"You would have to be crazy to call the police," she said. "I would never call the police again."

Detained and desperate

Maria Bolanos works two jobs to pay her bills. She does janitorial work at an apartment complex Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. and pulls a 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift at a restaurant Thursday through Sunday.

"Dora the Explorer" plays endlessly on the TV in her second-floor apartment, in deference to the wishes of her daughter, Melisa Arellano-Bolanos.

Framed pictures of the the Last Supper and of Jesus and Mary hang above the dining table. A photo of Bolanos's partner, Fernando Arellano, hugging Melisa is tucked into one corner of one of the frames.

Bolanos said she came to the United States in 2004 in search of a better life. She paid $7,000 to coyotes to help her cross the border via the Arizona desert.

The first time her party was caught, she said. She was released in the desert across the Arizona border from Mexico after being fingerprinted and photographed by authorities--and almost immediately crossed the border again.

She found her way to the Washington area and met Arellano at a restaurant where she worked. Arellano, now 34, was also undocumented and from Mexico. They fell in love and moved in together. Melisa was born in January 2008 at Washington Hospital Center.

The couple's fight began when Arellano came home late on Christmas Eve, Bolanos said, and quickly escalated into a shouting match.

By the time police arrived, Arellano had left the apartment.

Police charged Arellano with assault. That charge was dropped when neither Bolanos nor the police officer showed up in court, according to a spokesman for the Prince George's states attorney's office.

Months later, the fight forgotten, Bolanos found an arrest warrant waiting for her on the charge she was selling phone cards without a license.

"You would have to be crazy to call the police," she said. "I would never call the police again."

Authorities determined that she was in the country illegally and ordered her detained. Her ankles and wrists were shackled, she said, and she was moved to a detention facility in Upper Marlboro.

Bolanos said that she told authorities she was still breastfeeding her daughter but that they initially disregarded her plea to be released. After a doctor found that her breasts were engorged with milk, she was fitted with a locator ankle bracelet and sent home, pending the deportation hearing Nov 3.

Dual deportation

In August, Arellano was booked by police for making an illegal traffic turn. Police found he did not have a driver's license and arrested him. His fingerprints went to ICE, too - and he was detained. Now he is also facing deportation.

"In both of these cases, Secure Communities functioned exactly as it was designed to, allowing ICE to identify individuals booked into jail for a state crime and who were also present in the country unlawfully," said ICE spokesman Hale.

But that's not how immigrant rights group see it.

"ICE is misrepresenting the program in order to implement a nationwide deportation instrument, said Gustavo Andrade, organizing director at CASA de Maryland, which has been trying to help Bolanos. "Even one family destroyed because of this kind of program makes it unacceptable."

Prince George's State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey also expressed concern about a phone card charge leading to a deportation proceeding.

"We should target our limited state and federal law enforcement dollars on killers, rapists, child molesters, human traffickers and violent gang members," Ivey said in a statement. "This kind of defendant should not be a high priority."

If Bolanos and Arellano are both deported, he would have to go to Mexico and she to El Salvador, meaning Melisa would be left without at least one of her parents. In El Salvador, Bolanos said, her family has faced death threats from gangs, and her brother was killed a year ago.

As she talked, Melisa played with the charger attached to her mother's ankle bracelet. Bolanos spends two hours every day charging the device, which looks like a BlackBerry attached to her leg with a thick band of black rubber. It hurts when she walks.

Bolanos wears long jeans to cover the ankle bracelet.

"I'm really ashamed to show it in public," she said. "People see it and think I'm a murderer. I try to keep it covered at all times."