Shoplifting suspects didn't wait for sales (Post-Tribune)

Shoplifting suspects didn't wait for sales

November 30, 2010
BY ERIN GUERRA, POST-TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT

Christmas shoplifting season appears to have begun, with stores in Portage and Valparaiso reporting an increased number of thefts.

Among the more unusual arrests was that of Susan Agent, 39, of Lake Station, who allegedly watched as the two juveniles she brought to Kmart, 6050 U.S. 6 in Portage, hid toys, BBs and candy in her diaper bag. As store security detained the juveniles around 11:40 a.m. Friday, Agent -- whom police later saw on the security video witnessing and ignoring the thefts -- allegedly tried to flee.

She went to her vehicle, presumably to put away items she had purchased, but instead got in and attempted to drive away, with a 1-year-old child unsecured next to her in the front seat, according to the police report. Agent reportedly fled from the squad car that pursued her in the parking lot until a second police car pulled in front of her. In addition to theft, she also was charged with felony neglect of a dependent and misdemeanor driving with a suspended license.

In a separate incident, two men were arrested for allegedly stealing 12 cans of powdered baby formula, worth $173.88, intended to be a gift for family members in Mexico.

Santiago Espinosa, 23, and Juan Olivares Callada, 20, admitted being illegal immigrants when they were arrested at about 12:15 p.m. Wednesday while leaving Town and Country Market, 1605 Calumet Ave., Valparaiso. Each had half a dozen cans of formula secured in girdles they wore under their clothes. The men gave an Indianapolis address but said they've been working in the Valparaiso area. U.S. Immigration Services has been notified of the felony theft arrests.

Also arrested for felony theft stemming from attempted shoplifting were:

* Tonya Leudtke, 33, of Portage, arrested at 7 p.m. Friday at Cartronix, 6441 U.S. 6 in Portage, after employees called police saying she had been in the store for more than two hours, was talking to herself and appeared drunk. A cell phone case, still in its factory plastic, was in her purse. Leudtke also is charged with public intoxication and possession of a controlled substance.

* Deanna Reid, 39, of Valparaiso, arrested at 2:15 p.m. Saturday at Town and Country Market in Valparaiso for felony theft after allegedly hiding $27.85 worth of groceries -- including dog food, gum and candy -- in her purse.

* Kenneth Campbell, 50, of Valparaiso, arrested at 11:40 a.m. Wednesday for felony theft for allegedly stealing a hammer, pliers and glue from Menards, at 351 Silhavy Road in Valparaiso. The shoplifted items were worth $13.48.

* Janice Bennett, 19, of Portage, arrested at 8:30 p.m. Sunday at Kohl's, 6495 U.S. 6 in Portage, where she also is an employee. Bennett allegedly stole two pairs of underwear, worth $16, after clocking out for the day, according to the police report. Bennett told police she did not pay for the items because she is "trying to save money for the holidays."

54 deported immigrants who returned arrested in NY (AP c/o Wall Street Journal)

54 deported immigrants who returned arrested in NY
* NOVEMBER 20, 2010, 1:08 P.M. ET

NEW YORK — Federal immigration authorities in the New York City area have arrested 54 illegal immigrants with criminal records who had previously been deported but re-entered the United States.

Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the arrests came as part of a four-day sweep conducted in recent days that was the largest operation of its kind.

The arrests were made in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester and Orange counties. Those arrested are now in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.

Authorities said the arrested include a 39-year-old Dominican Republic man convicted of multiple counts of sexual assault involving a child and a 31-year-old Bahamas man convicted of robbery.

Six undocumented/illegal immigrants arrested in Tamworth and Jackson (New Hampshire Union Leader)

Six undocumented/illegal immigrants arrested in Tamworth and Jackson

By MICHAEL COUSINEAU
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
Thursday, Nov. 25, 2010

JACKSON – Authorities arrested six undocumented/illegal immigrants this week in Tamworth and Jackson. They were turned over to the custody of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents, state police said Thursday.

Four from Honduras were arrested around 11:20 a.m. Wednesday by state and local police at an undisclosed construction site in Jackson.

They were identified as Linsi Teller Martinez-Turcios, 29; Nestor Humberto Ramirez Rivera, 45; Cristopher Gustavo Martinez-Martinez, 25; and Rufino Contreras, 32.

Information received from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol led state police to believe that Martinez-Turcios was working in the Jackson area for a local construction company and that he was wanted for a subsequent illegal immigration violation after he had previously been deported from the United States for a similar violation, according to state police.

This tip came after state police arrested two other undocumented/illegal immigrants on Route 16 in Tamworth on Monday.

The two men from Mexico were identified as Jose Robles-Carrera, 32; and Luis Manuel Ramirez, 21.

Norcross man jailed in Alabama on human-trafficking charge (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Norcross man jailed in Alabama on human-trafficking charge
Gwinnett County News 12:56 p.m. Tuesday, November 30, 2010
By Jeremy Redmon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A Norcross man is being held in an Alabama jail, accused of transporting a suspected illegal immigrant from the Atlanta area to Florence to sell him as a restaurant laborer.

Florence, Ala., police have charged Ming Zhang, 49, with second-degree human trafficking for allegedly trying to sell a Honduran man to a restaurant.

Police arrested Zhang on Nov. 23. He is being held at the Lauderdale County Detention Center, in northwestern Alabama. Police have not identified the Honduran man. They said they suspect he is in the country illegally but have not confirmed that.

FBI and Homeland Security authorities have been assisting with the case, Florence police said.

“While in Florence, the Honduran male realized what was going on and objected to the sale and called police,” said Florence Police Detective Justin Wright. “This is the first case that we have had of this nature. ... This is totally new from the Atlanta area.”

Zhang’s court-appointed attorney, Jeff Austin, declined to comment Tuesday. And a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had no immediate comment.

Arizona employer law nets immigrants, not companies (Stateline)

Arizona employer law nets immigrants, not companies
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
By Daniel C. Vock, Stateline Staff Writer

PHOENIX — The video footage on the Phoenix morning news one Monday in mid-November showed dozens of heavily armed sheriff’s deputies breaking in on a business to round up and haul off illegal immigrants. The target of the morning raid was a landscaping company, but this was the 40th time in the past two years that the Maricopa County sheriff had raided a workplace. Among those previously targeted were McDonald’s franchises, a military contractor, sellers of printer cartridges, a meat packing plant, specialty metalworkers and trash collectors.

Like the other raids, the move on Nunez Creative Landscaping was a show of force that played well in front of TV cameras. Dozens of deputies stormed the premises. Suspects were handcuffed and led away. A news helicopter hovered overhead. Later, Joe Arpaio, the controversial lawman who brands himself as “America’s toughest sheriff,” held a press conference on the scene in time to make the early morning shows. Arpaio said half of the company’s 52 employees were suspected of being in the country illegally. His officers nabbed 17 of them that Monday and have taken away nearly 500 from various businesses since the workplace raids began.

The raid had another familiar aspect: The company’s owners were not targets, even though Arizona has the country’s toughest law against employers who hire illegal immigrants. The sheriff said his officers did not have enough evidence to go after the owners. Arpaio defended the raid when asked about it by a local reporter. “If we don’t get the employer,” he said, “we’re sure going to continue to get the employees that are here illegally using false identification.”

In fact, despite the dozens of raids, only two companies have ever been forced to close their doors under Arizona’s three-year-old employee verification law. The punishments in those cases were trivial: A Subway sandwich shop agreed to close on Easter and Thanksgiving, and a water park agreed to a 10-day suspension, but only after it already had gone out of business.

The Legal Arizona Workers Act may be tough, but even its supporters say it has been a disappointment. It faces plenty of opposition here in Arizona, especially among business owners and civil rights advocates.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case next month to decide whether the Arizona law is legal, which could decide the fate of other state immigration laws, including Senate Bill 1070, the Arizona law passed this spring to give police more power to crack down on illegal immigration.

But just as important a question still lingers over Arizona’s employee verification law: Is it even effective?

New checks required

The 2007 law requires companies with Arizona workers to screen new hires using E-Verify, the online tool from the Department of Homeland Security that checks the legal status of applicants. On paper, the penalties for an employer failing to comply are steep: a 10-day shutdown for the first offense and, for a second violation, the loss of a business license, what is often called the corporate “death penalty.”

Thanks to the law, Arizona now has 70,000 company sites signed up for E-Verify. Even though Arizona accounts for only one out of every 50 people in the country, it has one-sixth of the nation’s companies using E-Verify.

The federal government sets rules for participation in E-Verify. First, employers can screen only new workers; they cannot go back and check out existing employees. Second, the companies can use E-Verify only for people they actually have hired. That is, the employers cannot run checks of candidates to “pre-screen” them before hiring them. And companies cannot use the tool to discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity.

Bonnie Newman, a Phoenix lawyer who specializes in E-Verify issues, says some companies have hired additional personnel to handle the new requirements. Others are using outside vendors and some are simply adding it to the duties of their current human resources staff. “It does require for most companies a reengineering of their new hire process,” she says. “It adds a step and it adds complications.”

Newman is concerned that the reliance on E-Verify will spur identity theft. The E-Verify system is not foolproof. An independent analysis released last winter showed that the database flagged only about half of the applicants that it should have. The other half got through by using fake IDs of real people. For the most part, the system shows whether a person’s name, Social Security number and other vital information match federal records. It does not confirm whether an applicant is who he says he is.

In one case, making the system friendlier to legal workers opened up a vulnerability for identity theft. The Social Security Administration, whose records are used for E-Verify, now allows combinations of different components of a name to be used as a match, so “John James Smith” would match with “James John Smith” as long as the Social Security numbers are identical. Unfortunately, identity thieves have caught on and started issuing IDs with multiple names that will still clear E-Verify. Anecdotally, observers say identity theft is on the rise in Arizona as a result of the law. Last year, Arizona trailed only Florida for the most identity theft complaints per capita.

One of the sponsors of the law, Republican state Representative John Kavanagh, says the law has been a “toothless tiger” in that it does not give law enforcement enough tools. Specifically, Kavanagh, a former police officer, says prosecutors need subpoena power to investigate employers. The law does not give it to them. But business groups fought fiercely against that idea and could have derailed the whole bill had it remained, Kavanagh says.

A darker side

Lydia Guzman, president of Somos America (We are America), an immigrant rights coalition in Arizona, says the employee verification law has trapped undocumented workers in their current jobs. Companies cannot check the status of their current workers using E-Verify, but if the employee quits and tries to get another job, he or she will have to have their records checked. Some unscrupulous bosses know this, and use it against their employees, Guzman says. In one instance, she says, a cook at a Chinese restaurant was reluctant to complain when her boss slapped her and shoved her hand in a pot of hot soup. Another woman Guzman helped complained of sexual harassment at work but would not quit her job.

The raids have also hit home at Phoenix’s Neighborhood Ministries, where the father of four children who participate in the Christian group’s youth activities was arrested in one of the sweeps. Ian Danley, a pastor there, notes that, while 24 people were taken in that raid, no action has been taken against the employer. “As a person of faith, it is a justice issue,” he says. “If we are just going to punish the weakest, most vulnerable people, I have a problem with that.”

Although only two companies have been punished under the law, prosecutors are still pursuing a case against a third. That case, against Scottsdale Art Factory, has bounced between federal and state courts. As part of the back-and-forth, the company is now accusing the sheriff’s office of civil rights violations.

According to David Selden, a Phoenix employment lawyer who represents the company, some 50 sheriff’s deputies entered the firm’s buildings through multiple doors with guns drawn, pointing at employees and even the elderly mother of one of the owners. The officers separated Hispanics from whites and processed them separately. They took photos of the Hispanic suspects but not the white ones. In fact, one of the white workers spoke little English and needed a Bosnian translator but did not undergo the same scrutiny as the Hispanic workers. Some of the white workers were not asked for identification, Selden alleged in court documents. He says the differential treatment rendered the raid unconstitutional.

The employer verification law is one of several measures Arizona has enacted since 2004 to try to stem the tide of illegal immigration. The state imposed rules to require voters to prove their citizenship when they registered (a law struck down last month), limited state-funded services to illegal immigrants, passed the employee verification law and, this spring, gave police more power to enforce immigration law (a law now largely put on hold by federal courts).

When Arizona legislators passed this spring’s immigration enforcement law, they explicitly stated that their goal was to encourage illegal immigrants to leave the state. Indeed, the Pew Hispanic Center recently concluded that the population of unauthorized immigrants in a three-state region that includes Arizona was decreasing even before that law passed.

But Danley, the pastor, says most families he knows are staying put. The people who are leaving Arizona likely had not been there for long, he says. The moribund economy makes it hard for families to save up enough money to be able to move. “Right now,” Danley says, “people are in survival mode, and survival comes before escape.”