Danbury man held on immigration detainer after DUI arrest (News Times)

Danbury man held on immigration detainer after DUI arrest
Updated 11:25 p.m., Saturday, July 2, 2011

DANBURY -- A city man was held on a federal immigration detainer after being arrested on a drunk driving charge early Saturday morning.

According to police records, Maynor Morales, 35, of Balmforth Avenue, was stopped by police at around 12:58 a.m. Saturday and charged with driving under the influence, driving without a license and failure to drive properly.

He was held on a $2,500 bond and a detainer from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

ICE to allow some undocumented immigrants to stay (Miami Herald)

ICE to allow some undocumented immigrants to stay

BY ALFONSO CHARDY
Posted on Saturday, 07.02.11

Karen Sánchez, a Honduran undocumented immigrant, lives under the constant fear of deportation — especially after immigration authorities recently attached an electronic bracelet to her ankle. Her Peruvian husband, Adolfo Tueros, is now in deportation proceedings at the immigration court in downtown Miami and could be ordered deported.

Until recently, the couple had few alternatives to fix their immigration problems despite having three U.S. citizen children, including one with a serious heart condition. But a recent shift in enforcement policies by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has given the couple hope.

A memo issued June 17 by John Morton, the ICE director, laid down new guidelines that could enable immigrants like Sánchez and Tueros to remain in the country.

The Morton memo, for the first time, gives ICE trial attorneys – the “prosecutors” who try cases in immigration court – discretionary power to dismiss charges against foreign nationals facing deportation such as Sánchez and Tueros. The document, some immigration experts say, amounts to a more lenient attitude by ICE toward certain undocumented immigrants.

Nicolás Olano, the couple’s Miami immigration attorney, said he plans to use the Morton memo to help Sánchez and Tueros remain in the United States.

“It would be a disaster for our family if we are deported, me to Honduras and my husband to Peru,” Sánchez said in a telephone interview this past week “The family would be destroyed and I don’t know what would happen to our three children.”

The memo focuses more sharply than before on what constitutes the agency’s enforcement priorities: detention and deportation of dangerous foreign criminals and foreigners deemed threats to national security.

It suggests that undocumented immigrants with no criminal record or who are caring for a sick child, who have been victims of domestic violence or crime, or who arrived in the country as children would not be a priority and thus could be offered a way to stay.

Morton said at a recent press briefing that ICE was going to rewrite the so-called detainers the agency issues to undocumented immigrants arrested by local police so they are not released on bail before the agency picks them up. Morton said the rewritten detainer would be issued when those arrested are convicted, not when they are charged.

The change would have benefited undocumented immigrants like Jorge Ortiz, an 18-year-old Salvadoran recently arrested in Miami and charged with driving without a license. Then Ortiz was detained by immigration agents and locked up at Krome.

Ortiz’s mother, Deysi, said she paid a bail bonds firm $600 to free her son from police custody, but Jorge was not released because of an immigration detainer. Deysi said the bail bonds firm refused to return the $600.

Jorge was released from Krome last week, a little more than a week after the Morton memo was issued.

Tens of thousands of undocumented foreign nationals, including young students in high school or college, could qualify for more lenient treatment under the Morton memo.

Immigrant rights activists are split over whether the memo is a significant shift or contains only cosmetic changes. But immigration law experts deemed the memo significant.

“It is a change,” said Eleanor Pelta, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). “But the proof will be in the pudding. Let’s see how they implement it. Nonetheless, this represents a strong effort to empower the field to make good choices.”

Ira Kurzban a Miami immigration attorney considered a national authority on immigration law, said clauses in the memo could give ICE trial attorneys more freedom to make decisions on cases.

“It’s a positive development that will have significant consequences in many immigration cases,” said Kurzban. “It certainly has the potential to assist persons who might otherwise face certain deportation.”

The ICE agents union, however, denounced the Morton memo as a “backdoor amnesty” for undocumented immigrants in a June 23 statement issued by Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council, which represents about 7,000 ICE agents.

“Any American concerned about immigration needs to brace themselves for what’s coming,” Crane said in the statement. “This is just one of many new ICE policies in queue aimed at stopping the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the United States. Unable to pass its immigration agenda through legislation, the administration is now implementing it through agency policy.”
Though critics have attacked the June memo, a previous Morton memo in March detailed the reasons for the change.

“ICE,” Morton wrote in the March 2 memo, “only has resources to remove approximately 400,000 aliens per year, less than 4 percent of the estimated illegal population in the United States.”

As a result, Morton added, ICE must be selective and is focusing its efforts on foreign nationals who pose a risk to national security, public safety and border security.

Sanchez and Tueros fit the profile of immigrants who could qualify for more lenient treatment.

Guidelines outlined in the Morton memo that could benefit the couple include the fact that they are the parents of U.S. citizen children and that one of them, four-year-old Enrique Tueros, suffers from congenital heart disease.

Specific factors listed in the memo, which officials can weigh now to dismiss or modify cases include whether the immigrant has a “U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse, child, or parent” and whether he or she “is the primary caretaker of a person with a mental or physical disability, minor, or seriously ill relatives.”

Olano, the couple’s attorney, said he will try to convince ICE officials to agree to reopen Sanchez’s case so that the original charges can be dismissed. As for her husband, Olano said he would seek cancellation of removal.

“This memo actually gives an opportunity to people like Karen and the family to remain together,” Olano said.

11 arrested in border crossing by boat; 5 others sought (Orange County Register)

11 arrested in border crossing by boat; 5 others sought

By SONYA QUICK
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Published: July 2, 2011
Updated: July 3, 2011 9:25 a.m.

CRYSTAL COVE – Sixteen people tried to illegally cross into the United States from Mexico by boat Saturday, and five people are still at large.

This attempt is one of five migrant and drug cases seen in the past 72 hours when people crossed from Mexico to Southern California, said U.S. Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Sean Arumae.

The border crossing involved a "panga" – a 20- to 25-foot powerboat. The 16 people landed at Moro Beach at 5 a.m. with U.S. Border Patrol pursuing them and the Coast Guard pursuing the boat, Arumae said.

Border Patrol was able to apprehend 11 people, who will be interviewed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deported to Mexico.

Arumae said Border Patrol will continue to check known safeguard areas in Orange County for the other five people. The Coast Guard was unable to find the boat.

"They were able to escape under the cover of heavy fog and darkness," Arumae said.

Immigrants not targets, officers say (Athens Banner-Herald)

Immigrants not targets, officers say
By MERRITT MELANCON
Published Sunday, July 03, 2011

When a federal judge last week enjoined Georgia authorities from using a new immigration law to check the citizenship status of suspects, most local law enforcement agencies shrugged.

The state law never was going to really change the way local officers did their jobs, many sheriffs said -- not when they barely have money to patrol the streets and catch burglars.

"We're going from call to call," said Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith. "I don't expect the Barrow County Sheriff's Office to stop someone or go into an area where we think there might be illegal immigrants. ... We're not going to go out and look for anybody."

Every jail in Georgia already is required to check immigration status of a suspect when he's booked on serious charges.

The new law -- House Bill 87 -- would have allowed police officers on the street to hold someone suspected of a crime long enough to check his immigration status even if they don't yet have probable cause to arrest him for a crime. Opponents of this part of the bill worried that local deputies and officers could feign criminal suspicion to justify detaining individuals or families because of their race or the language they were speaking.

Even if the law had not been put on hold last week by a federal judge, local officers would have been hard-pressed to use the law correctly much less harass people with it, said Terry Norris, president of the Georgia Sheriff's Association. No one has the jail space, manpower or the money to let that happen, he said.

"I think that we're going to do what we've always done," Norris said. "I think there are a lot of people who believe that the sheriff's office and other law enforcement groups are actually going out there rounding people up, determining they're not here legally, calling the feds and then transporting them to some facility that the feds operate. The reality is, that's not going to happen."

Since January, Barrow County has been partnering with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain people who ICE asks them to pick up. Deputies will forward tips to ICE if they find out that someone may be an undocumented immigrant, but deputies don't pick up people just so they can check their citizenship, Smith said.

Oconee County Sheriff Scott Berry's office has the same partnership with ICE, but deputies have contacted the feds only a handful of times in the past year -- and the state law likely wouldn't affect the department.

"As far we could see there's nothing in the law that would change anything operationally for us," Berry said.

But the law already has changed the relationship between immigrant communities and their local deputies and officers in some places.

Last week, a woman contacted Athens-Clarke police to report that she had been raped a week before. She told detectives that she waited to report the rape because she was worried officers would detain her and her family, police Chief Jack Lumpkin said.

"The victim was hesitant and reported late because she was afraid we were going to question her and her family members over their immigration status," Lumpkin said. "The anxiety level is high. ... We do not want to create a situation where individuals are fearful of reporting crimes to the police, creating voids in communication.

"But under Georgia law, which we were are sworn to enforce, we will not create the atmosphere of an immigration sanctuary."

Though a federal judge Monday temporarily blocked a part of the law that authorizes police to check the immigration status of suspects, the rest of the law took effect Friday.

Among those provisions are sections that make it a felony to use false information or documentation when applying for a job and create an immigration review board to investigate complaints about government officials not complying with state laws related to illegal immigration.

Starting Jan. 1, businesses with 500 or more employees must use a federal database to check the immigration status of new hires. That requirement will be phased in by July 2013 for all businesses with more than 10 employees. Also starting Jan. 1, applicants for public benefits must provide at least one state or federally issued "secure and verifiable" document.

Ordered to be deported, but confined at MSOP (Duluth News Tribune)

Ordered to be deported, but confined at MSOP
Of the dozens of men who believe they should be released from the Minnesota Sex Offender Program in Moose Lake, perhaps Hayden Michael Richards has the strongest case.
By: Brandon Stahl, Duluth News Tribune
Published July 03, 2011, 12:00 AM

Of the dozens of men who believe they should be released from the Minnesota Sex Offender Program in Moose Lake, perhaps Hayden Michael Richards has the strongest case.

He shouldn’t even be in the country.

Richards, 37, is a citizen of Trinidad and has had an order to be deported back there by the U.S. Department of Immigration and Homeland Security since 1999, according to court records.

Richards served 10 years in prison for beating and raping two women and attempting to rape two more in the mid-1990s in the St. Paul area.

Before his release in 2006, Ramsey County petitioned to have him committed for treatment at MSOP, which spends an average of $120,000 a year on each offender, about 3½ times the cost of prison.

And while in Moose Lake, Richards fathered a child with a security counselor at the facility.

That woman, Lindsay Wood, who now lives in the Twin Cities area, told the News Tribune last week she had a consensual sexual relationship with Richards for eight to nine months inside the Moose Lake center.

“I can’t deny that I love him,” she said. “He’s a good person. I feel he’s a good person. I found the good in him. And he’s a great father.”

Though she’s no longer allowed inside the facility, Wood said she speaks to him almost daily on the phone. Richards also speaks daily to their daughter, now 2, Wood said. Their daughter also has visited him three times at Moose Lake.

Wood, who grew up in Moose Lake, was 22 when she started working at MSOP. She said she advanced to security counselor lead worker, where part of her role was to work one-on-one with some of the clients and have “healthy therapeutic relationships with them,” including talking with them about their goals and playing games with them.

“It was to provide some sort of normalcy,” Wood said. “It started out as talking, just being on the unit and interacting.

“And one thing led to another,” she said, “and a relationship began.”

She said the two were able to have sex because they found places away from the facility’s cameras and “other staff weren’t paying attention.”

The two were discovered after Wood said she confided to another employee about the relationship. That employee went to administrators, Wood said.

Wood was fired in February 2009; Richards was sent back to prison for violating conditions of his parole.

He was returned to MSOP. He declined an interview request last week with the News Tribune.

Wood, 26, who says she now works as an administrative assistant and lives in the Twin Cities area, said Richards wants to be deported, something she supports. If that happened, she said she believes he could have a better relationship with their daughter in Trinidad. Wood said she probably wouldn’t move there, but would allow her daughter to visit him there.

“At least she could go to see him once or twice a year and have a relationship with him, without it being in a room (at MSOP),” she said.

Wood said she would trust Richards with their daughter.

“He’s not a pedophile, for one. …. Obviously, I wouldn’t allow my daughter to go see him if I thought he was having sexually deviant fantasies,” she said. “He cares. He has a heart. He is thoughtful, gives great advice. I’d bet you a million dollars that he’s the smartest guy inside MSOP.”

That’s a far cry from testimony Richards’ victims gave when he was sentenced for rape.

According to records, Richards’ victims were strangers, picked as they were walking alone early in the morning or late at night. In the two cases where he succeeded with the rape, he punched the women and forced them to the ground before raping them. In the two cases of attempted rape, passersby stopped him and he fled.

According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, one of his victims testified against him in 1997, saying she said she no longer felt safe and sometimes started crying when she thought about the attack.

“I wish he could somehow experience what we did,” she said.

His crimes were so severe that it was clear he was a sexually dangerous person who needed to be committed to MSOP, said Susan Gaertner, the former Ramsey County attorney who petitioned for his commitment.

While her office was aware of the deportation order, Gaertner said it was irrelevant.

“One, the feds in our experience do not always follow through when they can deport someone,” she said. “Two, we did not want to inflict Hayden Michael Richards on the women of Trinidad, nor did we want him sneaking back into the country to be a threat to Minnesotans.”

After he was committed, Richards appealed, arguing that the purpose of MSOP is to treat sex offenders and release them back into the community. But because his release would be back to Trinidad, he argued that he wasn’t a proper candidate for treatment.

The appeals court denied Richards’ request, finding that because he was clearly a sexually dangerous person and psychopath, he met the statutory criteria for commitment.

They also noted that U.S. immigration can deport him back to Trinidad at any time.

But that doesn’t appear likely to happen. Shawn Neudauer, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs, said for Richards to be deported, he’d have to be released from state custody first.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot effect deportation of criminal aliens who are currently in state custody until the state releases them from custody,” he said in a statement.

Richards is in the custody of the Minnesota Department of Human Services, which runs MSOP.

Since it opened in the mid-1990s, no offender has ever been permanently released from the program.