IFCO Systems enters into record $20.7 million settlement of claims related to employment of illegal aliens
ALBANY, NY - After one of the largest worksite enforcement operations conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, IFCO headquartered in Houston, Texas has agreed to pay $20.7 million dollars in civil forfeitures and penalties over four years, for employing illegal alien workers at its plants. John P. Torres, Acting Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); Andrew T. Baxter, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York; and Superintendent Harry J. Corbitt, New York State Police, made the announcement today.
IFCO Systems North America ("IFCO"). IFCO, headquartered in Houston, Texas, is the largest
pallet management services company in the United States. The settlement amount includes $2.6 million dollars in back pay and penalties relating to IFCO's overtime violations with respect to 1,700 of its pallet workers. IFCO is also paying $18.1 million in civil forfeitures that will be available to support future law enforcement activities. If IFCO fully complies with the terms of the settlement agreement, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York agrees not to pursue corporate criminal charges against IFCO for the conduct of its employees in hiring illegal alien workers at IFCO pallet plants prior to April 19, 2006. The government began its investigation of IFCO following a tip to ICE in February 2005, that illegal alien laborers at the Albany IFCO plant were observed ripping up their W-2 forms. On April 19, 2006, ICE agents, in concert with other federal and state authorities, conducted a work site enforcement action at over 40 IFCO pallet plants in 26 states, which resulted in the detention of 1,182 illegal aliens working at those plants. The United States Attorney's Office has prosecuted several IFCO managers and employees for criminal offenses associated with the employment of illegal alien workers at IFCO pallet plants. To date, nine IFCO managers and employees have entered pleas of guilty related to such criminal conduct. Four managers are currently pending trial on a felony indictment in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of New York1 and the investigation of IFCO employees is continuing. The IFCO settlement agreement concerns only the liability of the corporation and does not address any pending or possible future criminal charges against individual employees.
The government's investigation documented that several IFCO managers and employees harbored and transported illegal aliens, and encouraged and induced them to remain in the United States as pallet workers. An analysis of the payroll information IFCO submitted to the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") and the Social Security Administration ("SSA"), and the hiring patterns and practices at IFCO, suggests that during the time period from 2003 through April 2006, as many as 6,000 illegal aliens worked at IFCO pallet plants.
IFCO received repeated notice from the SSA and others, dating back to at least the year 2000, of the irregularities in the social security numbers used for employment purposes by many of its pallet workers. IFCO, its managers and employees, failed to take significant measures to verify the social security numbers of these workers, and in 2004 and 2005, failed to make any effort to address the use of invalid social security numbers by numerous pallet employees. Investigative entities further concluded that, at 30 of IFCO's pallet plants, back wages were due, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, to piece-wage pallet workers - the vast majority of whom were illegal aliens. Under the settlement agreement, IFCO acknowledges and accepts responsibility for the unlawful conduct of its managers and employees, as described in the agreement. The company further agrees to cooperate fully and actively with the U.S. Attorney's Office and the government entities involved in the investigation, as it has done since the date of the work site enforcement action. The agreement further includes a precedent-setting, compliance and reporting program, designed to prevent the employment of illegal aliens at IFCO plants in the future. The company will take remedial actions in hiring, such as use of DHS's "E-Verify" screening program for all new hires, and will verify the social security numbers of all IFCO employees through SSA.
IFCO is also required to maintain an employee hotline to receive reports of any suspected violation of law at the company. The agreement runs through the year 2012, at which time, if the company has been in full compliance with all of the agreement's terms and conditions, the United States Attorney's Office will not seek to prosecute the company for any criminal charges related to the conduct of its employees prior to April 2006.
"Today's announcement that IFCO Systems North America will pay the largest settlement amount ever in a work site enforcement case and the fact that nine IFCO managers have admitted their guilt related to the employment of illegal aliens will send a powerful message that ICE will investigate and bring to justice companies which hire illegal workers," said John P. Torres, Acting Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for ICE. "Companies who break the law by employing illegal aliens often exploit them and gain an unfair competitive advantage in the marketplace. By hiring illegal workers, these companies are unjustly able to undercut their law-a-biding competition."
Andrew T. Baxter, Acting United States Attorney stated, "This settlement accomplishes the government's objective of deterring employers who might seek to subvert the immigration laws of this country. The Agreement severely punishes IFCO for its serious immigration and employment violations; but it also allows the corporation to continue its operations, so that its lawful employees and innocent shareholders do not suffer the consequences of a business failure in this economy. It is our hope that the compliance and reporting requirements under the agreement will serve as a model for other businesses."
New York State Police Superintendent Harry J. Corbitt said, "The New York State Police commends all of the investigative agencies for their hard work in investigating IFCO Systems and prosecuting the individuals who engaged in illegal immigration and employment-related conduct. This agreement sends a strong message to corporations that exploitive and illegal business practices for the sole purpose of their own financial gain will not be tolerated." Acting U.S. Attorney Baxter expressed his appreciation to the New York State Police for their invaluable assistance in this nation-wide investigation.
The IFCO managers who previously entered guilty pleas, and the respective charges to which they pled guilty, are as follows:
Robert Belvin, of Stuart, FL (former General Manager, Albany IFCO plant): Conspiracy to Transport and Harbor Illegal Aliens and Conspiracy to Possess Identification Documents with the Intent to Use Unlawfully (felonies);
James Rice, of Houston, TX (former corporate New Market Development Manager): Conspiracy to Transport and Harbor Illegal Aliens (felony);
Steven Means, of Cincinnati, OH (former corporate New Market Development Manager): Conspiracy to Unlawfully Employ Illegal Aliens (misdemeanor);
Bryan Baily, of Nashville, TN (former corporate New Market Development Manager): Conspiracy to Unlawfully Employ Illegal Aliens (misdemeanor);
Abelino "Lino" Chicas, of Houston, TX (former Systems Manager): Aiding and Abetting the Transportation and Harboring of Illegal Aliens (felony);
Michael Ames, of Shrewsbury, MA (former General Manager, Westborough, MA IFCO plant): Unlawful Employment of Illegal Aliens (misdemeanor);
Craig Losurdo, of Arlington, TN (former Assistant General Manager, Albany IFCO plant): Unlawful Employment of Illegal Aliens (misdemeanor);
Dario Salzano, of Amsterdam, NY (former Assistant General Manager, Albany IFCO plant): Unlawful Employment of Illegal Aliens (misdemeanor);
Scott Dodge, of Elmira, NY (former Assistant General Manager, Albany IFCO plant): Conspiracy to Unlawfully Employ Illegal Aliens (misdemeanor).
The IFCO managers who are indicted on felony charges and pending trial are:
Charles Davidson, of San Antonio, TX (current Vice President - New Market Development; formerly, Director, New Market Development);
William Hoskins, of Cincinnati, OH (New Market Development Manager);
Thomas Soto Castillo, of Cincinnati, OH (Foreman, Cincinnati; operations manager for New Market Development);
Wendy Mudra, of Tampa, FL (Human Resources Manager).
The government's investigation of the involvement of certain IFCO's managers and employees in the hiring of illegal aliens and related conduct is continuing. The investigation is being conducted by ICE; the New York State Police, Special Investigation Unit; SSA, Office of Inspector General; IRS, Criminal Investigation; and the U.S.Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. The Guilderland Town Police Department and Schenectady Police Department also provided assistance during the investigation. The prosecution is being handled by Assistant United States Attorney, Tina E. Sciocchetti.
-- ICE --
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established in March 2003 as the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. ICE is comprised of five integrated divisions that form a 21st century law enforcement agency with broad responsibilities for a number of key homeland security priorities.
Last Modified: Friday, December 19, 2008
Showing posts with label Enforcement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Enforcement. Show all posts
December 19, 2008
Williamson commissioners set to vote on immigrant detention operator
Critics have condemned holding families in former prison, but some officials lean toward renewing contract.
By David C. Doolittled
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Williamson County commissioners are set to vote next week on renewing a contract with the company that operates a much-criticized immigrant detention center in Taylor.
Since 2006, the county has had a contract with Corrections Corp. of America and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to act as the intermediary between the two and disburse federal funds for the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, which holds immigrant families while they await decisions in their immigration cases.
That contract is set to expire Jan. 31, and commissioners will take up renewing the contract for another two-year term during Tuesday's meeting.
County Judge Dan A. Gattis and Commissioner Ron Morrison, whose precinct includes the detention facility, said they are leaning toward renewing the contract. Precinct 1 Commissioner Lisa Birkman and Precinct 3 Commissioner Valerie Covey said they are undecided. Several calls to Commissioner Cynthia Long were not returned.
"I'm leaning to renew because I did the last time," Morrison said. Commissioners voted to renew the contract in January 2007.
"I based it on touring the facility and looking at the situation. I like the idea that families stay together, are fed, clothed and in a comfortable place — as comfortable as an ex-prison can be. You can't hide the fact that it was once a jail cell."
Morrison said he has visited the former medium-security prison three times and plans to tour it again Monday.
The county's contract with Corrections Corp. and Immigration and Customs Enforcement allows for any party to terminate the contract within 120 days.
Gattis said that because of the 120-day period and because he expects some changes to immigration policy when Barack Obama becomes president, he'd rather renew the contract and wait to see what the new administration might do.
"Unless something jumps up and bites me, I will vote to renew," Gattis said. "I think we're going to need time to assess what the administration wants to do, and we'll support what they want."
Birkman, who voted for renewing the contract in 2007 "with reservations," said she understands the reasons for the facility. "But on the other hand, I would feel more comfortable if they were not in a prison setting," she said.
Covey said a tour of the 512-bed facility on Monday will help her make a decision.
Critics have protested the detention of children and have pushed for alternatives such as electronic monitoring and intensive supervision.
"There is the taint of using taxpayer dollars to pay a private company to do something that can be done more humanely and just as effectively at a much smaller cost," former Georgetown Mayor MaryEllen Kersch said. "The for-profit prison industry has benefited greatly from the demonization of immigrants."
Federal officials have said they have an obligation to ensure that those accused of being in the U.S. illegally show up for their court hearings.
Steve Owen, a spokesman for Corrections Corp., said if the contract is not renewed, families could be split apart waiting for hearings. He said the company has worked to make the facility safe and humane. Several calls to immigration officials were not returned.
ddoolittle@statesman.com; 246-0040
By David C. Doolittled
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Williamson County commissioners are set to vote next week on renewing a contract with the company that operates a much-criticized immigrant detention center in Taylor.
Since 2006, the county has had a contract with Corrections Corp. of America and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to act as the intermediary between the two and disburse federal funds for the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, which holds immigrant families while they await decisions in their immigration cases.
That contract is set to expire Jan. 31, and commissioners will take up renewing the contract for another two-year term during Tuesday's meeting.
County Judge Dan A. Gattis and Commissioner Ron Morrison, whose precinct includes the detention facility, said they are leaning toward renewing the contract. Precinct 1 Commissioner Lisa Birkman and Precinct 3 Commissioner Valerie Covey said they are undecided. Several calls to Commissioner Cynthia Long were not returned.
"I'm leaning to renew because I did the last time," Morrison said. Commissioners voted to renew the contract in January 2007.
"I based it on touring the facility and looking at the situation. I like the idea that families stay together, are fed, clothed and in a comfortable place — as comfortable as an ex-prison can be. You can't hide the fact that it was once a jail cell."
Morrison said he has visited the former medium-security prison three times and plans to tour it again Monday.
The county's contract with Corrections Corp. and Immigration and Customs Enforcement allows for any party to terminate the contract within 120 days.
Gattis said that because of the 120-day period and because he expects some changes to immigration policy when Barack Obama becomes president, he'd rather renew the contract and wait to see what the new administration might do.
"Unless something jumps up and bites me, I will vote to renew," Gattis said. "I think we're going to need time to assess what the administration wants to do, and we'll support what they want."
Birkman, who voted for renewing the contract in 2007 "with reservations," said she understands the reasons for the facility. "But on the other hand, I would feel more comfortable if they were not in a prison setting," she said.
Covey said a tour of the 512-bed facility on Monday will help her make a decision.
Critics have protested the detention of children and have pushed for alternatives such as electronic monitoring and intensive supervision.
"There is the taint of using taxpayer dollars to pay a private company to do something that can be done more humanely and just as effectively at a much smaller cost," former Georgetown Mayor MaryEllen Kersch said. "The for-profit prison industry has benefited greatly from the demonization of immigrants."
Federal officials have said they have an obligation to ensure that those accused of being in the U.S. illegally show up for their court hearings.
Steve Owen, a spokesman for Corrections Corp., said if the contract is not renewed, families could be split apart waiting for hearings. He said the company has worked to make the facility safe and humane. Several calls to immigration officials were not returned.
ddoolittle@statesman.com; 246-0040
November 19, 2008
Perry demands immigration action by feds
Perry demands immigration action by feds
After a Chronicle investigation, governor urges steps to ensure criminals here illegally don't avoid deportation
By SUSAN CARROLL Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Gov. Rick Perry and members of the state's congressional delegation called on the federal government Tuesday to take steps to help state and local officials ensure that illegal immigrants who commit crimes in Texas remain in custody until they are deported.
In a strongly worded letter to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, Perry said he was outraged to learn that many convicted illegal immigrants in Texas jails were released after they completed their jail sentences instead of being deported.
In a series of stories this week, the Houston Chronicle outlined gaps in the screening of inmates in local jails that allowed scores of violent criminals, including some ordered deported decades ago, to walk away from Harris County Jail despite the inmates' admission to Harris County jailers that they were in the country illegally.
"Texas has spent the last four years investing unprecedented amounts of state resources to secure our border with Mexico," Perry said in his letter to Chertoff. "To now learn that criminal aliens who have been jailed are being released back into our communities by federal authorities who have neglected to secure our border is infuriating and unconscionable."
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and U.S. Reps. John Culberson, R-Houston, Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, and Michael McCaul, R-Austin, called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to improve screening in the nation's jails and better coordinate efforts to identify illegal immigrants convicted of crimes while they are incarcerated. Brady asked for a meeting of the Houston-area congressional delegation to help ICE determine what resources are needed to "close the terrible gaps in detaining and deporting" illegal immigrants convicted of crimes.
The Chronicle examined arrest and immigration records for 3,500 inmates who told jailers that they were in the country illegally during a span of eight months starting in June 2007, the earliest immigration records available. In 177 cases reviewed by the Chronicle, inmates who were released from jail after admitting to being in the country illegally later were charged with additional crimes. More than half of those charges were felonies, including aggravated sexual assault of a child and capital murder.
At least 178 cases in the review involved suspects who absconded, meaning they had bail revoked for missing court dates or allegedly committing more crimes. Some 330 inmates who told jailers they were in the U.S. illegally were later sentenced to a form of probation.
This spring, ICE officials announced a plan to identify and deport the most serious offenders in the nation's prisons and jails, estimating it would cost roughly $930 million.
Agency defends work
ICE officials said they have made improvements in recent months, including providing the Harris County Sheriff's Office and six other law enforcement agencies in the U.S. access to a database that allows jailers to automatically check defendants' immigration history.
The agency also trained nine Harris County jailers in August to help file paperwork to detain illegal immigrants through its 287 g program, which allows local law enforcement to help ICE screen inmates in the nation's 3,100 jails. ICE also removed a record 107,000 convicted criminals from the U.S. in the 2008 fiscal year, which ended in September, officials said.
"I think the numbers speak for themselves," said ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel. "The number of criminal aliens in prisons and jails has more than tripled in the last few years. ... Can we do more? Absolutely. Are we committed to doing more? You bet."
U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, said the system "is breaking down in several places." Poe said he sent a letter on Tuesday to Adrian Garcia, Harris County's sheriff-elect, requesting that he "ratchet up" participation in the 287 g program. He said when illegal immigrants post bond, ICE should file a detainer and pick them up for possible deportation.
"I don't think ICE is trying to solve the problem," he added. "But if they need more money, Congress should certainly be helping to bail out ICE instead of people like General Motors."
Garcia did not return phone calls this week.
Harris County's newly elected district attorney, Pat Lykos, said ICE needs to be in the Harris County courthouse "24-7" and improve screening of illegal immigrants so prosecutors have more reliable information when making bond recommendations and considering plea agreements.
Houston Mayor Bill White said on Tuesday that he plans to call Chertoff to urge for more personnel to deport illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes and have finished serving their sentences.
"Most citizens would far prefer us to spend more money trying to get the violent criminals out of the country than trying to figure out how many years the person who's doing their landscaping has been in the country," White said.
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said the issue is a law enforcement problem, and added: "In a way it's kind of sad that it gets wrapped up in an immigration debate. The issue really is you've got criminals and you've got a way of getting rid of them. Do it. To me a system doesn't work if you have violent criminals who are just turned back out into society and they disappear. That's a flawed system. I don't think anybody would disagree with that."
Stewart Powell, Liz Austin Peterson, Clay Robison and Bradley Olson contributed reporting.
After a Chronicle investigation, governor urges steps to ensure criminals here illegally don't avoid deportation
By SUSAN CARROLL Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Gov. Rick Perry and members of the state's congressional delegation called on the federal government Tuesday to take steps to help state and local officials ensure that illegal immigrants who commit crimes in Texas remain in custody until they are deported.
In a strongly worded letter to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, Perry said he was outraged to learn that many convicted illegal immigrants in Texas jails were released after they completed their jail sentences instead of being deported.
In a series of stories this week, the Houston Chronicle outlined gaps in the screening of inmates in local jails that allowed scores of violent criminals, including some ordered deported decades ago, to walk away from Harris County Jail despite the inmates' admission to Harris County jailers that they were in the country illegally.
"Texas has spent the last four years investing unprecedented amounts of state resources to secure our border with Mexico," Perry said in his letter to Chertoff. "To now learn that criminal aliens who have been jailed are being released back into our communities by federal authorities who have neglected to secure our border is infuriating and unconscionable."
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and U.S. Reps. John Culberson, R-Houston, Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, and Michael McCaul, R-Austin, called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to improve screening in the nation's jails and better coordinate efforts to identify illegal immigrants convicted of crimes while they are incarcerated. Brady asked for a meeting of the Houston-area congressional delegation to help ICE determine what resources are needed to "close the terrible gaps in detaining and deporting" illegal immigrants convicted of crimes.
The Chronicle examined arrest and immigration records for 3,500 inmates who told jailers that they were in the country illegally during a span of eight months starting in June 2007, the earliest immigration records available. In 177 cases reviewed by the Chronicle, inmates who were released from jail after admitting to being in the country illegally later were charged with additional crimes. More than half of those charges were felonies, including aggravated sexual assault of a child and capital murder.
At least 178 cases in the review involved suspects who absconded, meaning they had bail revoked for missing court dates or allegedly committing more crimes. Some 330 inmates who told jailers they were in the U.S. illegally were later sentenced to a form of probation.
This spring, ICE officials announced a plan to identify and deport the most serious offenders in the nation's prisons and jails, estimating it would cost roughly $930 million.
Agency defends work
ICE officials said they have made improvements in recent months, including providing the Harris County Sheriff's Office and six other law enforcement agencies in the U.S. access to a database that allows jailers to automatically check defendants' immigration history.
The agency also trained nine Harris County jailers in August to help file paperwork to detain illegal immigrants through its 287 g program, which allows local law enforcement to help ICE screen inmates in the nation's 3,100 jails. ICE also removed a record 107,000 convicted criminals from the U.S. in the 2008 fiscal year, which ended in September, officials said.
"I think the numbers speak for themselves," said ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel. "The number of criminal aliens in prisons and jails has more than tripled in the last few years. ... Can we do more? Absolutely. Are we committed to doing more? You bet."
U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, said the system "is breaking down in several places." Poe said he sent a letter on Tuesday to Adrian Garcia, Harris County's sheriff-elect, requesting that he "ratchet up" participation in the 287 g program. He said when illegal immigrants post bond, ICE should file a detainer and pick them up for possible deportation.
"I don't think ICE is trying to solve the problem," he added. "But if they need more money, Congress should certainly be helping to bail out ICE instead of people like General Motors."
Garcia did not return phone calls this week.
Harris County's newly elected district attorney, Pat Lykos, said ICE needs to be in the Harris County courthouse "24-7" and improve screening of illegal immigrants so prosecutors have more reliable information when making bond recommendations and considering plea agreements.
Houston Mayor Bill White said on Tuesday that he plans to call Chertoff to urge for more personnel to deport illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes and have finished serving their sentences.
"Most citizens would far prefer us to spend more money trying to get the violent criminals out of the country than trying to figure out how many years the person who's doing their landscaping has been in the country," White said.
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said the issue is a law enforcement problem, and added: "In a way it's kind of sad that it gets wrapped up in an immigration debate. The issue really is you've got criminals and you've got a way of getting rid of them. Do it. To me a system doesn't work if you have violent criminals who are just turned back out into society and they disappear. That's a flawed system. I don't think anybody would disagree with that."
Stewart Powell, Liz Austin Peterson, Clay Robison and Bradley Olson contributed reporting.
November 16, 2008
'Why'd they let him go?' In killing blamed on immigrant, woman's kin want answers
Tina Davila murdered by an illegal immigrant
By SUSAN CARROLL
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
On a cloudy Monday afternoon in April, Tina Davila was buried according to her wishes: dressed in her favorite Dallas Cowboys jersey, with a photo of all five of her children tucked inside her coffin. In the picture, Kaylynn, the baby girl Davila died trying to protect, looks fussy, her chubby cheeks puckered into a pout.
Billy Brewer, Kaylynn's father, watched as Davila's coffin was lowered into a grave at San Jacinto Memorial Park Cemetery in Houston.
Brewer, a long-haul trucker, had a crush on Davila since he was a teenager. He loved her wide smile and how, he said, ''she wouldn't back down from nothing for nobody." Most especially on the day Davila, 39, tried to fight off the man who cornered her in a parking lot while Kaylynn was strapped into her car seat.
Witnesses told police Davila refused to hand over her car keys and screamed as she was stabbed in the chest: "My baby! My baby!"
In the days after her death April 16, Brewer couldn't bring himself to watch the surveillance camera video of the slaying. Not yet. He had a 4-month-old baby, just learning how to roll from her back to her belly, and a house full of memories.
On the TV news, Brewer learned that Timoteo Rios, the man charged with killing Davila, was an illegal immigrant with a criminal record. Rios had admitted to local law enforcement twice before the slaying that he was in the country illegally, but he wasn't deported, according to arrest and immigration records.
"I just want to know why," Brewer said. "If they were doing their jobs right, he wouldn't have been out there. Why'd they let him go?"
First arrest
Rios, now 24, was arrested for the first time in Harris County on May 29, 2007, a Tuesday afternoon. He attracted little attention. About 370 inmates pass through the intake division of Harris County Jail daily. Rios, who was living in a southwest Houston apartment complex, was charged with failure to identify to a police officer and marijuana possession, both misdemeanors.
He was fingerprinted, photographed and asked a series of questions. His answers were entered into the jail computer system. Birth date: Oct. 6, 1984. Height: 5 feet 11 inches. Weight: 162 pounds.
The jailer eventually asked: Are you a U.S. citizen? The records show that Rios said no, he was a Mexican citizen.
The jailer then asked: Are you an illegal immigrant?
Yes, Rios replied, according to jail records.
The jailer entered Rios' name into a database of inmates, set up in September 2006, who have admitted they are in the country illegally. The data entries are shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Houston, who have unrestricted access to the county's four jails. Agents routinely question and place "holds" on inmates in Harris County Jail they suspect are eligible for deportation.
Rios' name was the 15th of 20 added that Monday to the database. ICE officials confirm that they did not file paperwork to detain him.
Rios pleaded guilty to both counts against him and was released from jail June 5, 2007.
Second arrest
Twenty-two days later, Rios was back in jail, charged with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor. Police said he argued with his 18-year-old ex-girlfriend, the mother of two of his daughters, and punched out her apartment window. Then he threw a beer bottle at his ex-girlfriend's mother.
Rios was booked at 4:35 p.m. Again, Rios told jailers he was in the country illegally and, for a second time, was added to the database. He filled out paperwork for the court, writing that he was from Michoacan, Mexico, and worked in construction.
He pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 20 days with 11 days credit and was released July 6.
Kenneth Landgrebe, ICE's head of detention and removal for Houston, said ICE agents didn't have a chance to get to Rios.
"He was released before we had an opportunity to handle the case," he said. "We're in Harris County (Jail) every day, but we can't be in all places at the same time. I believe he was in a different part of the jail that we were working in. He was not where we were.
"We have to prioritize," he said. "Should we have been over there identifying him and letting a child molester get out? Or a pedophile or a bank robber or someone convicted of a serious drug crime? In a perfect world, if we had all the staff we needed, we could hopefully identify every alien that is unlawfully present in the U.S."
Ruth Alsobrook, Davila's grandmother, still lives in the house where Davila was raised in Galena Park, a 1950s-era neighborhood near the Port of Houston. Davila's parents died before she was 12.
"I loved that girl," said Alsobrook, 93, sitting in an armchair. ''I raised her in the church. Every time the church doors were open, we were there."
Davila attended Galena Park High School and rebelled as a teenager. She married her high school sweetheart, Eric Matt, in the spring of 1988. They had three children: Patrick, 20, Patricia, 18, and Payton, 16. Davila and Matt divorced after eight years but stayed friends. Davila later remarried and had another daughter, but that marriage also ended after a long separation.
One night about two years ago, she and Brewer ran into each other at Del's, a diner on the city's east side. Brewer asked her out for a date, and she said yes.
He said he felt lucky every day since, until April 16.
It was Brewer's 35th birthday. He had to drive a load out to Oklahoma City. He kissed Davila and Kaylynn, who was 3 months and 28 days old. It was early morning when he left for work.
At 5:02 p.m., Davila pulled into the parking lot outside the Cricket cell phone store on Uvalde Road near Wallisville Road, about a five-minute drive from her house in Houston. The next few moments were captured on the video surveillance camera outside the store.
Davila parked her white Chrysler Aspen SUV and stepped out. She started walking toward the store, leaving Kaylynn buckled into her car seat. An older model Ford Taurus pulled in behind Davila's SUV. A man jumped out and ran to block the door. He and Davila struggled over her purse and car keys.
A witness in the parking lot told detectives Davila screamed for her baby. The man stabbed Davila and ran back to his car, tossing the keys away. She stumbled inside the store, clutching her chest.
That night, Brewer tried Davila's cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail. Finally, his mother called him.
"Billy, come home," she said. "Tina's had an accident."
"How bad?" he asked.
"Just come home," she said.
Unanswered questions
Davila was taken to East Houston Regional Medical Center. She was pronounced dead minutes after arriving. By the time Brewer reached his mother's house that night, Davila's death was already on the TV news.
Days after the slaying, Harris County detectives arrested 18-year-old Kennedy Escoto, the suspected getaway car driver. Investigators said Escoto implicated Rios in Davila's death. Detectives say Rios may have fled to Mexico.
Davila's older children had questions about what happened. They saw on the news that Rios had been arrested twice before the slaying — and was in the country illegally.
"The kids just couldn't understand why he could be illegal and commit crimes and still be here. And I couldn't explain it to them," Matt said.
After Davila was killed, Brewer exchanged his long-haul job for one that keeps him closer to home. He asked his cousin to care for Kaylynn, temporarily, he said, until she gets a little bit older.
He put down a $150 deposit on a grave near Davila's and is paying $50 a month.
The more he learns about the man accused of killing Davila, the more his anger grows.
"He should have been deported after the first arrest," he said. "It's that simple. There's got to be a better way."
Brewer has started putting together a scrapbook for Kaylynn. He's saving Davila's high school jacket, a bunch of magnets he picked out for her over the years on the road, and the program from her funeral service. On the cover, there's a picture of Davila, with a warm, wide smile.
susan.carroll@chron.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Warning: Some may find this video distrubing and upsetting.
Store Security Video
The last few seconds of this video is the footage of Tina Davila's murder, and it is preceeded by a shoplifting theft.
A system's fatal flaws
Thousands of inmates admit they're in the U.S. illegally, but even those convicted of violent crimes are often r: Criminals avoid deportationeleased right back onto Houston's streets
By SUSAN CARROLL
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Nov. 16, 2008, 7:33AM
Mayra Beltran Chronicle
Inmates are interviewed by jailers in the booking office at the Harris County Jail, where officers maintain a database of inmates who tell jailers during booking that they are in the U.S. illegally.
This three-day Houston Chronicle investigation examines how scores of illegal immigrants cycle through local jails and fall through the cracks of immigration enforcement.
Federal immigration officials allowed scores of violent criminals — some ordered deported decades ago — to walk away from Harris County Jail despite the inmates' admission to local authorities that they were in the country illegally, a Houston Chronicle investigation found.
A review of thousands of criminal and immigration records shows that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials didn't file the paperwork to detain roughly 75 percent of the more than 3,500 inmates who told jailers during the booking process that they were in the U.S. illegally.
Although most of the inmates released from custody were accused of minor crimes, hundreds of convicted felons — including child molesters, rapists and drug dealers — also managed to avoid deportation after serving time in Harris County's jails, according to the Chronicle review, which was based on documents filed over a period of eight months starting in June 2007, the earliest immigration records available.
Other key findings in the investigation include:
•In 177 cases reviewed by the Chronicle, inmates who were released from jail after admitting to being in the country illegally later were charged with additional crimes. More than half of those charges were felonies, including aggravated sexual assault of a child and capital murder.
•About 11 percent of the 3,500 inmates in the review had three or more prior convictions in Harris County. Many had repeatedly cycled through the system despite a history of violence and, in some cases, outstanding deportation orders.
The investigation found that the federal government's system to identify and deport illegal immigrants in Harris County Jail is overwhelmed and understaffed. Gaps in the system have allowed some convicted criminals to avoid detection by immigration officials despite being previously deported. The problems are national in scope, fueled by a shortage of money and manpower.
In reaction to the Chronicle's findings, U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, said ICE needs more resources to target immigrants convicted of crimes.
"There's no question about it," Poe said. "Criminals from foreign countries who get caught after committing a crime and prosecuted should go to the top of the list of people we deport."
ICE removed 107,000 convicted criminals from the U.S. in the 2008 fiscal year, which ended in September. But during the same time frame, ICE sent home more than two times as many illegal immigrants without criminal records, prompting criticism from some members of Congress.
Kenneth Landgrebe, ICE's field office director for detention and removal in Houston, said officials are doing the best they can with the resources they have. ICE trained nine Harris County jailers this summer through a federal program that empowers local law enforcement to act as immigration agents.
The Houston ICE office set a record by removing 8,226 illegal immigrants with criminal records from Southeast Texas last year, an increase of about 7.5 percent from fiscal 2007.
"No agency has enough law enforcement officers to do the job the way they'd like," Landgrebe said. "If you look at law enforcement in general — at Houston or New York City or Los Angeles police — do they apprehend every criminal that commits a crime? No. Do they arrest every person that speeds in a traffic zone? No.
"We have to prioritize what we handle," Landgrebe said.
Missed opportunities
ICE officials estimated that between 300,000 and 450,000 inmates incarcerated in the U.S. are eligible for deportation each year.
Though ICE has improved screening in federal and state prisons in recent years, the agency estimates it screens inmates in only about 10 percent of the nation's jails.
This spring, ICE officials announced a plan to identify and deport the most serious offenders in the nation's prisons and jails, estimating it would cost between $930 million and $1 billion and take about 3 1/2 years.
Congress is pressuring ICE to move faster.
"The present situation is unacceptable," said Rep. David Price, D-N.C., chairman of the House Homeland Security appropriations committee.
"The highest priority for ICE should be deporting people who have proven their ability and their willingness to do us harm. Immigration is a very, very contentious issue, but this seems to be one thing almost everyone agrees is a priority."
Yet, the Chronicle's review found hundreds of missed opportunities to deport convicted criminals, perpetuating a cycle of crime and violence.
•Armando De La Cruz, a Mexican national, told jailers on two occasions in 2007 that he was undocumented. Both times, he was convicted of assaulting his wife and released after serving his jail time. De La Cruz is now back in Harris County Jail, charged with raping a woman at knife point behind a southeast Houston apartment complex in July, and attempting to rape another woman less than a week later. His defense attorney, Ricardo Gonzalez, did not return phone calls.
•Pedro Alvarez, a convicted sex offender from El Salvador who was first deported in 1991, racked up eight convictions in Harris County over a span of two decades and was allowed to walk free from jail multiple times — as recently as the spring of 2007. Immigration officials finally charged him with re-entry after deportation in February. Sandra Zamora Zayas, the attorney who represented Alvarez in federal court in South Texas, did not return phone messages.
"It's just amazing how long it took them to catch up with him," the mother of a 5-year-old girl Alvarez sexually assaulted in 1988 said in an interview with the Chronicle, after learning about Alvarez's extended criminal history.
'Never lied about who I am'
Miguel Mejia Rodriguez, 36, is locked up on the fifth floor of the San Jacinto Jail downtown, accused of raping and sodomizing a second-grader.
It is the fourth time in 12 years that Rodriguez, an unemployed drifter from Zacatecas, Mexico, has landed in Harris County Jail. Over the years, Rodriguez has served time for drug possession, theft, trespassing and indecent exposure. He told jailers he was in the country illegally in December 2006, after a security guard caught him touching himself in an apartment complex parking lot, records show.
But ICE officials did not file paperwork to detain Rodriguez. He was released after serving his 25-day sentence.
"I never lied about who I am, or where I'm from. I'm 100 percent Mexican," Rodriguez said in a jail interview with the Chronicle in September, after he was accused of the rape and sodomy of a 7-year-old.
According to court records, the girl told a friend Rodriguez started abusing her after her mother died in 2005, while he was living with her family.
The girl was hospitalized and treated for syphilis, court records show. In an interview with Houston police detectives, Rodriguez admitted to contracting syphilis from a woman he met in a Houston cantina, but he denied raping the girl. He said she was a "troublemaker" who lied because he punished her when she misbehaved.
When he was arrested on the sexual assault charge in July 2007, Rodriguez again told jailers he was in the country illegally, records show. In June, nearly a year after his arrest, ICE officials filed paperwork to detain Rodriguez, who is scheduled for trial in December.
Deadly consequences
Katherine Anne Bridges, deaf and mute, was just 19 in the fall of 2004 when she told Harris County authorities that Jeremias Fuentes, her boyfriend, tried to grab their 6-month-old baby boy from her arms and kicked her in the face. He hid her emergency phone so she couldn't call for help. Fuentes was sentenced to 20 days in jail.
Nearly three years later, in August 2007, Fuentes was arrested again, suspected of interfering with case workers trying to interview Bridges about abuse allegations. Fuentes, 36, told jailers he was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, records show. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail. He was released after ICE didn't file paperwork to detain him.
On the morning of Nov. 26, 2007, a medical examiner puzzled over the writing scrawled on Bridges' palm. It read in part: "Payback because ... help me."
The evening before, Bridges' body had been found facedown in the bedroom closet of her southwest Houston apartment complex. She had blood in her brown hair and a dozen stab wounds on her face, neck, chest and back. A knife rested on the baby crib.
Detectives questioned Fuentes, who admitted he stabbed Bridges, but he said it was self-defense. In December, immigration officials filed the paperwork to detain Fuentes, who declined a request for a jail interview. He is scheduled for trial in February.
Andy Kahan, director of the Houston Mayor Crime Victims Office, said he hoped Bridges' case could be a ''catalyst for change" and encourage local authorities to work more closely with ICE to ensure inmates with violent criminal histories are vetted before release.
"There were numerous opportunities to do the correct thing, and that's have him deported, and that didn't happen. And as a result, a woman paid dearly with her life," Kahan said.
Matthew Baker, an assistant field office director for ICE in Houston, said agents try to screen out as many violent criminals as possible to avoid preventable crimes. Many illegal immigrants are identified by ICE in the state's prison system, he added, even if they are not caught while in jail.
"No one can measure the cases where we picked up and removed someone and prevented that carjacking or that drunk driving accident that kills a family," Baker said. "There are hundreds of thousands of incidents that we prevent every year; those are not measured because they don't happen."
Facts vs. fears
While the Chronicle's review found cases involving hardened criminals who slipped through the deportation net, the investigation also revealed that 43 percent of suspects who were arrested and admitted being in the country illegally were charged with misdemeanors and had no prior criminal record in Harris County.
Immigrant advocates cautioned against stereotyping illegal immigrants based on high-profile cases. Most research has found that recent immigrants are far less likely than their U.S.-born counterparts to commit crimes and end up in prison.
In Texas, foreign nationals made up approximately 15 percent of the state's population in 2005, and about 7 percent of state prison offenders.
"Many people see it as a profound insult when someone who is here without permission commits a heinous crime," said Rebecca Bernhardt, director of policy development for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. "To be outraged at the individual who committed that crime is an appropriate response. But to be angry at everybody who is just here trying to work to support their family and comes from the same background as that defendant is a mistake."
Asking about status
The nation's system for identifying and deporting immigrants convicted of crimes is largely secretive. ICE officials refuse to disclose the names or basic immigration history of people detained and marked for deportation, citing privacy protections in federal law.
To better understand how ICE screens inmates, the Chronicle obtained a copy of a database, maintained by the Harris County Sheriff's Office, of inmates who tell jailers during booking that they are in the U.S. illegally.
The Sheriff's Office voluntarily started questioning inmates about their legal status and created the database in September 2006, after a previously deported felon killed Houston police officer Rodney Johnson. During the booking process, inmates are asked whether they are in the country illegally. If they answer 'yes,' their name and jail ID number is entered into a database that is shared with ICE agents in Houston.
The Chronicle compared the entries in the Sheriff's Office database with immigration ''holds" placed by ICE with the Sheriff's Office. An immigration hold is essentially a request by ICE agents that law enforcement notify them before releasing an inmate. ICE officials confirmed that jailers notify them before releasing immigrants who are marked for possible deportation.
The Houston Police Department, which runs the city's jails, notifies ICE only about suspects with immigration warrants and previously deported felons.
Of the more than 80,000 bookings into Harris County Jail during the review period, about 3,500 — less than 5 percent — admitted to being in the country illegally. ICE filed paperwork to detain roughly 900 of the 3,500. During the review period, the agency also filed paperwork to detain 2,500 suspects not included in the database, indicating that many immigrants who are eligible for deportation do not disclose that they are here illegally.
ICE, however, could not confirm whether the inmates marked for ''holds" actually were deported.
Landgrebe, the ICE official, also questioned the quality of the information in the Sheriff's Office database, because it was based only on inmate responses and was entered by some jailers without immigration training.
More removals
ICE officials would not answer specific questions about ICE staffing at the Harris County or city jails but said screening has improved in recent months. In October, the Sheriff's Office started testing a Homeland Security database that gives jailers access to millions of immigration records. The county's participation in the federal government's 287(g) program, which trains jailers to act as immigration agents, also is expected to help improve screening, ICE officials said.
Harris County Sheriff-elect Adrian Garcia, who defeated incumbent Tommy Thomas in the November general election, said he plans to evaluate the office's participation in the program after he takes office in January.
Thomas said he believes the program is necessary — at least until ICE has the resources to improve screening.
''In a perfect world, I'd like to see our borders secured to where we have someone we find to be here illegally, we turn them over to ICE and have them deported," Thomas said. ''But that's not something that's happening at this day and time."
Chronicle reporter Chase Davis contributed to this report.
susan.carroll@chron.com
By SUSAN CARROLL
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Nov. 16, 2008, 7:33AM
Mayra Beltran Chronicle
Inmates are interviewed by jailers in the booking office at the Harris County Jail, where officers maintain a database of inmates who tell jailers during booking that they are in the U.S. illegally.
This three-day Houston Chronicle investigation examines how scores of illegal immigrants cycle through local jails and fall through the cracks of immigration enforcement.
Federal immigration officials allowed scores of violent criminals — some ordered deported decades ago — to walk away from Harris County Jail despite the inmates' admission to local authorities that they were in the country illegally, a Houston Chronicle investigation found.
A review of thousands of criminal and immigration records shows that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials didn't file the paperwork to detain roughly 75 percent of the more than 3,500 inmates who told jailers during the booking process that they were in the U.S. illegally.
Although most of the inmates released from custody were accused of minor crimes, hundreds of convicted felons — including child molesters, rapists and drug dealers — also managed to avoid deportation after serving time in Harris County's jails, according to the Chronicle review, which was based on documents filed over a period of eight months starting in June 2007, the earliest immigration records available.
Other key findings in the investigation include:
•In 177 cases reviewed by the Chronicle, inmates who were released from jail after admitting to being in the country illegally later were charged with additional crimes. More than half of those charges were felonies, including aggravated sexual assault of a child and capital murder.
•About 11 percent of the 3,500 inmates in the review had three or more prior convictions in Harris County. Many had repeatedly cycled through the system despite a history of violence and, in some cases, outstanding deportation orders.
The investigation found that the federal government's system to identify and deport illegal immigrants in Harris County Jail is overwhelmed and understaffed. Gaps in the system have allowed some convicted criminals to avoid detection by immigration officials despite being previously deported. The problems are national in scope, fueled by a shortage of money and manpower.
In reaction to the Chronicle's findings, U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, said ICE needs more resources to target immigrants convicted of crimes.
"There's no question about it," Poe said. "Criminals from foreign countries who get caught after committing a crime and prosecuted should go to the top of the list of people we deport."
ICE removed 107,000 convicted criminals from the U.S. in the 2008 fiscal year, which ended in September. But during the same time frame, ICE sent home more than two times as many illegal immigrants without criminal records, prompting criticism from some members of Congress.
Kenneth Landgrebe, ICE's field office director for detention and removal in Houston, said officials are doing the best they can with the resources they have. ICE trained nine Harris County jailers this summer through a federal program that empowers local law enforcement to act as immigration agents.
The Houston ICE office set a record by removing 8,226 illegal immigrants with criminal records from Southeast Texas last year, an increase of about 7.5 percent from fiscal 2007.
"No agency has enough law enforcement officers to do the job the way they'd like," Landgrebe said. "If you look at law enforcement in general — at Houston or New York City or Los Angeles police — do they apprehend every criminal that commits a crime? No. Do they arrest every person that speeds in a traffic zone? No.
"We have to prioritize what we handle," Landgrebe said.
Missed opportunities
ICE officials estimated that between 300,000 and 450,000 inmates incarcerated in the U.S. are eligible for deportation each year.
Though ICE has improved screening in federal and state prisons in recent years, the agency estimates it screens inmates in only about 10 percent of the nation's jails.
This spring, ICE officials announced a plan to identify and deport the most serious offenders in the nation's prisons and jails, estimating it would cost between $930 million and $1 billion and take about 3 1/2 years.
Congress is pressuring ICE to move faster.
"The present situation is unacceptable," said Rep. David Price, D-N.C., chairman of the House Homeland Security appropriations committee.
"The highest priority for ICE should be deporting people who have proven their ability and their willingness to do us harm. Immigration is a very, very contentious issue, but this seems to be one thing almost everyone agrees is a priority."
Yet, the Chronicle's review found hundreds of missed opportunities to deport convicted criminals, perpetuating a cycle of crime and violence.
•Armando De La Cruz, a Mexican national, told jailers on two occasions in 2007 that he was undocumented. Both times, he was convicted of assaulting his wife and released after serving his jail time. De La Cruz is now back in Harris County Jail, charged with raping a woman at knife point behind a southeast Houston apartment complex in July, and attempting to rape another woman less than a week later. His defense attorney, Ricardo Gonzalez, did not return phone calls.
•Pedro Alvarez, a convicted sex offender from El Salvador who was first deported in 1991, racked up eight convictions in Harris County over a span of two decades and was allowed to walk free from jail multiple times — as recently as the spring of 2007. Immigration officials finally charged him with re-entry after deportation in February. Sandra Zamora Zayas, the attorney who represented Alvarez in federal court in South Texas, did not return phone messages.
"It's just amazing how long it took them to catch up with him," the mother of a 5-year-old girl Alvarez sexually assaulted in 1988 said in an interview with the Chronicle, after learning about Alvarez's extended criminal history.
'Never lied about who I am'
Miguel Mejia Rodriguez, 36, is locked up on the fifth floor of the San Jacinto Jail downtown, accused of raping and sodomizing a second-grader.
It is the fourth time in 12 years that Rodriguez, an unemployed drifter from Zacatecas, Mexico, has landed in Harris County Jail. Over the years, Rodriguez has served time for drug possession, theft, trespassing and indecent exposure. He told jailers he was in the country illegally in December 2006, after a security guard caught him touching himself in an apartment complex parking lot, records show.
But ICE officials did not file paperwork to detain Rodriguez. He was released after serving his 25-day sentence.
"I never lied about who I am, or where I'm from. I'm 100 percent Mexican," Rodriguez said in a jail interview with the Chronicle in September, after he was accused of the rape and sodomy of a 7-year-old.
According to court records, the girl told a friend Rodriguez started abusing her after her mother died in 2005, while he was living with her family.
The girl was hospitalized and treated for syphilis, court records show. In an interview with Houston police detectives, Rodriguez admitted to contracting syphilis from a woman he met in a Houston cantina, but he denied raping the girl. He said she was a "troublemaker" who lied because he punished her when she misbehaved.
When he was arrested on the sexual assault charge in July 2007, Rodriguez again told jailers he was in the country illegally, records show. In June, nearly a year after his arrest, ICE officials filed paperwork to detain Rodriguez, who is scheduled for trial in December.
Deadly consequences
Katherine Anne Bridges, deaf and mute, was just 19 in the fall of 2004 when she told Harris County authorities that Jeremias Fuentes, her boyfriend, tried to grab their 6-month-old baby boy from her arms and kicked her in the face. He hid her emergency phone so she couldn't call for help. Fuentes was sentenced to 20 days in jail.
Nearly three years later, in August 2007, Fuentes was arrested again, suspected of interfering with case workers trying to interview Bridges about abuse allegations. Fuentes, 36, told jailers he was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, records show. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail. He was released after ICE didn't file paperwork to detain him.
On the morning of Nov. 26, 2007, a medical examiner puzzled over the writing scrawled on Bridges' palm. It read in part: "Payback because ... help me."
The evening before, Bridges' body had been found facedown in the bedroom closet of her southwest Houston apartment complex. She had blood in her brown hair and a dozen stab wounds on her face, neck, chest and back. A knife rested on the baby crib.
Detectives questioned Fuentes, who admitted he stabbed Bridges, but he said it was self-defense. In December, immigration officials filed the paperwork to detain Fuentes, who declined a request for a jail interview. He is scheduled for trial in February.
Andy Kahan, director of the Houston Mayor Crime Victims Office, said he hoped Bridges' case could be a ''catalyst for change" and encourage local authorities to work more closely with ICE to ensure inmates with violent criminal histories are vetted before release.
"There were numerous opportunities to do the correct thing, and that's have him deported, and that didn't happen. And as a result, a woman paid dearly with her life," Kahan said.
Matthew Baker, an assistant field office director for ICE in Houston, said agents try to screen out as many violent criminals as possible to avoid preventable crimes. Many illegal immigrants are identified by ICE in the state's prison system, he added, even if they are not caught while in jail.
"No one can measure the cases where we picked up and removed someone and prevented that carjacking or that drunk driving accident that kills a family," Baker said. "There are hundreds of thousands of incidents that we prevent every year; those are not measured because they don't happen."
Facts vs. fears
While the Chronicle's review found cases involving hardened criminals who slipped through the deportation net, the investigation also revealed that 43 percent of suspects who were arrested and admitted being in the country illegally were charged with misdemeanors and had no prior criminal record in Harris County.
Immigrant advocates cautioned against stereotyping illegal immigrants based on high-profile cases. Most research has found that recent immigrants are far less likely than their U.S.-born counterparts to commit crimes and end up in prison.
In Texas, foreign nationals made up approximately 15 percent of the state's population in 2005, and about 7 percent of state prison offenders.
"Many people see it as a profound insult when someone who is here without permission commits a heinous crime," said Rebecca Bernhardt, director of policy development for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. "To be outraged at the individual who committed that crime is an appropriate response. But to be angry at everybody who is just here trying to work to support their family and comes from the same background as that defendant is a mistake."
Asking about status
The nation's system for identifying and deporting immigrants convicted of crimes is largely secretive. ICE officials refuse to disclose the names or basic immigration history of people detained and marked for deportation, citing privacy protections in federal law.
To better understand how ICE screens inmates, the Chronicle obtained a copy of a database, maintained by the Harris County Sheriff's Office, of inmates who tell jailers during booking that they are in the U.S. illegally.
The Sheriff's Office voluntarily started questioning inmates about their legal status and created the database in September 2006, after a previously deported felon killed Houston police officer Rodney Johnson. During the booking process, inmates are asked whether they are in the country illegally. If they answer 'yes,' their name and jail ID number is entered into a database that is shared with ICE agents in Houston.
The Chronicle compared the entries in the Sheriff's Office database with immigration ''holds" placed by ICE with the Sheriff's Office. An immigration hold is essentially a request by ICE agents that law enforcement notify them before releasing an inmate. ICE officials confirmed that jailers notify them before releasing immigrants who are marked for possible deportation.
The Houston Police Department, which runs the city's jails, notifies ICE only about suspects with immigration warrants and previously deported felons.
Of the more than 80,000 bookings into Harris County Jail during the review period, about 3,500 — less than 5 percent — admitted to being in the country illegally. ICE filed paperwork to detain roughly 900 of the 3,500. During the review period, the agency also filed paperwork to detain 2,500 suspects not included in the database, indicating that many immigrants who are eligible for deportation do not disclose that they are here illegally.
ICE, however, could not confirm whether the inmates marked for ''holds" actually were deported.
Landgrebe, the ICE official, also questioned the quality of the information in the Sheriff's Office database, because it was based only on inmate responses and was entered by some jailers without immigration training.
More removals
ICE officials would not answer specific questions about ICE staffing at the Harris County or city jails but said screening has improved in recent months. In October, the Sheriff's Office started testing a Homeland Security database that gives jailers access to millions of immigration records. The county's participation in the federal government's 287(g) program, which trains jailers to act as immigration agents, also is expected to help improve screening, ICE officials said.
Harris County Sheriff-elect Adrian Garcia, who defeated incumbent Tommy Thomas in the November general election, said he plans to evaluate the office's participation in the program after he takes office in January.
Thomas said he believes the program is necessary — at least until ICE has the resources to improve screening.
''In a perfect world, I'd like to see our borders secured to where we have someone we find to be here illegally, we turn them over to ICE and have them deported," Thomas said. ''But that's not something that's happening at this day and time."
Chronicle reporter Chase Davis contributed to this report.
susan.carroll@chron.com
November 12, 2008
Dallas County jails launch new system to check prisoners' immigration status
08:14 PM CST on Wednesday, November 12, 2008
By KEVIN KRAUSE / The Dallas Morning News
kkrause@dallasnews.com
The Dallas County jail system on Wednesday became one of the first in the nation to use a new federal database to identify illegal immigrants during the book-in process.
Normally, when prisoners are booked into jails, their fingerprints are run through a national database to check their criminal history. Under the new initiative, fingerprints also will be automatically run through a similar database to check the person's immigration status.
If the computer shows a prisoner is in the country illegally, he or she will be referred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which will determine whether to place an immigration hold on the person. The same applies to non-U.S. citizens who have been convicted of certain crimes while in the country legally.
After the person's criminal charges are resolved through probation or prison time, they will be referred to ICE for deportation.
"Nobody wants to live next to a criminal. It's all about making the communities safer," said Pablo Campos, assistant field office director for ICE in Dallas.
Currently, prisoners' immigration status is checked in jails only if they are referred to federal immigration agents or if they are questioned by agents who are stationed in the jails. For at least 10 years, Dallas County's main jail facility has had a small office for one or two ICE agents who randomly question prisoners to try to determine their immigration status.
The agents, however, would have to rely on prisoners truthfully answering questions about their name, place of birth and other information.
Now, as prisoners are being booked into jail, their fingerprints will be run through a database containing more than 90 million records – a process that is fast and accurate, Mr. Campos said.
The new database link is a key part of ICE's "Secure Communities" plan to identify and remove illegal immigrants from local communities.
The goal is to give all local jails in the U.S. a link to the federal government's databases. By next spring, ICE plans to make the database link available to more than 50 state and local law enforcement agencies.
The database, which includes people who were already deported by ICE, was created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.
Mr. Campos said ICE has increased its staffing to monitor computer terminals in anticipation of more referrals from local jails. The challenge, he said, will be to have enough space to hold prisoners before they're deported.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Secure Communities Program
Fact Sheet
By KEVIN KRAUSE / The Dallas Morning News
kkrause@dallasnews.com
The Dallas County jail system on Wednesday became one of the first in the nation to use a new federal database to identify illegal immigrants during the book-in process.
Normally, when prisoners are booked into jails, their fingerprints are run through a national database to check their criminal history. Under the new initiative, fingerprints also will be automatically run through a similar database to check the person's immigration status.
If the computer shows a prisoner is in the country illegally, he or she will be referred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which will determine whether to place an immigration hold on the person. The same applies to non-U.S. citizens who have been convicted of certain crimes while in the country legally.
After the person's criminal charges are resolved through probation or prison time, they will be referred to ICE for deportation.
"Nobody wants to live next to a criminal. It's all about making the communities safer," said Pablo Campos, assistant field office director for ICE in Dallas.
Currently, prisoners' immigration status is checked in jails only if they are referred to federal immigration agents or if they are questioned by agents who are stationed in the jails. For at least 10 years, Dallas County's main jail facility has had a small office for one or two ICE agents who randomly question prisoners to try to determine their immigration status.
The agents, however, would have to rely on prisoners truthfully answering questions about their name, place of birth and other information.
Now, as prisoners are being booked into jail, their fingerprints will be run through a database containing more than 90 million records – a process that is fast and accurate, Mr. Campos said.
The new database link is a key part of ICE's "Secure Communities" plan to identify and remove illegal immigrants from local communities.
The goal is to give all local jails in the U.S. a link to the federal government's databases. By next spring, ICE plans to make the database link available to more than 50 state and local law enforcement agencies.
The database, which includes people who were already deported by ICE, was created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.
Mr. Campos said ICE has increased its staffing to monitor computer terminals in anticipation of more referrals from local jails. The challenge, he said, will be to have enough space to hold prisoners before they're deported.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Secure Communities Program
Fact Sheet
September 23, 2008
Republican seeks sheriff post to fight corruption
By Adriana M. Chávez / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 09/22/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT
EL PASO -- George Rodriguez Stoltz, the Republican candidate for El Paso County sheriff, will be the first to admit he's the underdog.
Stoltz will face Democratic candidate Richard Wiles, a retired police chief, in the general election Nov. 4.
Stoltz, 42, has spent the last 18 months in Iraq as a contracted police adviser, and returned to El Paso on Sept. 14. Stoltz said that since then, he has hit the ground running to make strides in his campaign, which carries the motto "international experience for an international community."
"I have to," Stoltz said. "It's been an uphill battle to get things started with my campaign. It's hard to campaign when you're thousands of miles away."
Stoltz said he decided to run for sheriff because he tired of seeing "crime and corruption going out of control."
While he was in Iraq, Stoltz said, he would keep up with his hometown by visiting the Web sites of media outlets such as the El Paso Times and reading stories on the FBI's public corruption investigation and the area's crime trends.
"I went from (hearing) Americans saying Iraq was corrupt to seeing graffiti (in El Paso) going out of control and community leaders under investigation," Stoltz said. "I believe in my heart that El Paso deserves better, especially our outlying areas."
Although Stoltz may still be unfamiliar to many county residents, Wiles said he knows Stoltz very well. Stoltz was an El Paso police officer for 18 years before he resigned to work as a civilian
contractor in Iraq. Wiles said he was unable to grant Stoltz a leave of absence because it isn't commonly approved in the department.
Before becoming an officer, Stoltz was a U.S Marine who graduated from Ysleta High School in 1984. Stoltz said his family has roots in the Lower Valley, where he still lives with his wife, Nancy, and three children -- Nicole, 20; George Anthony, 17; and George Eric, 15. His two sons attend Socorro High School, where Stoltz is a member of the football team's booster club.
George Stoltz said he shares views similar to late Sheriff Leo Samaniego's on enforcing immigration laws. Last year, Samaniego was criticized for allowing deputies to check on the immigration status of drivers during traffic checkpoints.
Wiles said he doesn't believe local law enforcement should enforce federal immigration laws, and added that immigration laws should be enforced by officers specifically trained in immigration law.
Stoltz said he is against consolidating aspects of the Sheriff's Office and the Police Department and implementing DIMS, or District Attorney's Information Management System, which allows crime suspects to be jailed before appearing in front of a magistrate judge. Wiles said he supports both those issues.
Sammy Carrejo, who is involved with Stoltz's campaign as a publicist, said he decided to support Stoltz because of his position on DIMS and other issues Wiles has supported.
Stoltz "is doing this for the safety of El Paso. He's not worried about making his next career move like his opponent is," Carrejo said. "Wiles is not the type of person we need."
Wiles said he questions Stoltz's campaign motto, and is concerned that Stoltz is comparing Iraq to El Paso.
"I don't think Iraq can compare to El Paso. It's best to have actual experience here on an international border," Wiles said.
Eastsider Ann Marie Giron said she supports Wiles' campaign because she believes he's the most qualified based on his past experience as police chief.
"All citizens (have) benefited from his ability to manage not only a police department, but theÊadditional responsibilities therein, which affected our lives daily, such as budgetary constraints andÊthe development of aÊmore trusting relationship between citizens and the Police Department," Giron said. "These are the criteria that are relevant, not party-affiliation, gender, raceÊor ethnicity."
Adriana M. Chávez may be reached at achavez@elpasotimes.com;546-6117.
Wiles file
Name: Richard Wiles
Age: 46.
Experience: Retired El Paso police chief. Worked for 27 years for the city of El Paso, initially as a firefighter and then in various jobs in the Police Department. Retired in December.
Education: Master's in criminal justice from Sul Ross State, where he was named outstanding criminal justice graduate student. Bachelor's in criminal justice from the UTEP. Graduate of Andress High School.
Web site: www.wilesforepcounty.com.
Stoltz file
Name: George Rodriguez Stoltz
Age: 42.
Experience: Eighteen years experience as an El Paso police officer. Last assignment was with department's Gang Task Force. Resigned from the department to serve 18 months in Iraq as a contracted international police adviser. Former U.S. Marine.
Education: Attended Sul Ross State, where he was a cornerback on the school's football team, from 1985 to 1987. Studied criminal justice at El Paso Community College and American Military University, an online university.
Web site: www.georgestoltz.com.
Article Launched: 09/22/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT
EL PASO -- George Rodriguez Stoltz, the Republican candidate for El Paso County sheriff, will be the first to admit he's the underdog.
Stoltz will face Democratic candidate Richard Wiles, a retired police chief, in the general election Nov. 4.
Stoltz, 42, has spent the last 18 months in Iraq as a contracted police adviser, and returned to El Paso on Sept. 14. Stoltz said that since then, he has hit the ground running to make strides in his campaign, which carries the motto "international experience for an international community."
"I have to," Stoltz said. "It's been an uphill battle to get things started with my campaign. It's hard to campaign when you're thousands of miles away."
Stoltz said he decided to run for sheriff because he tired of seeing "crime and corruption going out of control."
While he was in Iraq, Stoltz said, he would keep up with his hometown by visiting the Web sites of media outlets such as the El Paso Times and reading stories on the FBI's public corruption investigation and the area's crime trends.
"I went from (hearing) Americans saying Iraq was corrupt to seeing graffiti (in El Paso) going out of control and community leaders under investigation," Stoltz said. "I believe in my heart that El Paso deserves better, especially our outlying areas."
Although Stoltz may still be unfamiliar to many county residents, Wiles said he knows Stoltz very well. Stoltz was an El Paso police officer for 18 years before he resigned to work as a civilian
contractor in Iraq. Wiles said he was unable to grant Stoltz a leave of absence because it isn't commonly approved in the department.
Before becoming an officer, Stoltz was a U.S Marine who graduated from Ysleta High School in 1984. Stoltz said his family has roots in the Lower Valley, where he still lives with his wife, Nancy, and three children -- Nicole, 20; George Anthony, 17; and George Eric, 15. His two sons attend Socorro High School, where Stoltz is a member of the football team's booster club.
George Stoltz said he shares views similar to late Sheriff Leo Samaniego's on enforcing immigration laws. Last year, Samaniego was criticized for allowing deputies to check on the immigration status of drivers during traffic checkpoints.
Wiles said he doesn't believe local law enforcement should enforce federal immigration laws, and added that immigration laws should be enforced by officers specifically trained in immigration law.
Stoltz said he is against consolidating aspects of the Sheriff's Office and the Police Department and implementing DIMS, or District Attorney's Information Management System, which allows crime suspects to be jailed before appearing in front of a magistrate judge. Wiles said he supports both those issues.
Sammy Carrejo, who is involved with Stoltz's campaign as a publicist, said he decided to support Stoltz because of his position on DIMS and other issues Wiles has supported.
Stoltz "is doing this for the safety of El Paso. He's not worried about making his next career move like his opponent is," Carrejo said. "Wiles is not the type of person we need."
Wiles said he questions Stoltz's campaign motto, and is concerned that Stoltz is comparing Iraq to El Paso.
"I don't think Iraq can compare to El Paso. It's best to have actual experience here on an international border," Wiles said.
Eastsider Ann Marie Giron said she supports Wiles' campaign because she believes he's the most qualified based on his past experience as police chief.
"All citizens (have) benefited from his ability to manage not only a police department, but theÊadditional responsibilities therein, which affected our lives daily, such as budgetary constraints andÊthe development of aÊmore trusting relationship between citizens and the Police Department," Giron said. "These are the criteria that are relevant, not party-affiliation, gender, raceÊor ethnicity."
Adriana M. Chávez may be reached at achavez@elpasotimes.com;546-6117.
Wiles file
Name: Richard Wiles
Age: 46.
Experience: Retired El Paso police chief. Worked for 27 years for the city of El Paso, initially as a firefighter and then in various jobs in the Police Department. Retired in December.
Education: Master's in criminal justice from Sul Ross State, where he was named outstanding criminal justice graduate student. Bachelor's in criminal justice from the UTEP. Graduate of Andress High School.
Web site: www.wilesforepcounty.com.
Stoltz file
Name: George Rodriguez Stoltz
Age: 42.
Experience: Eighteen years experience as an El Paso police officer. Last assignment was with department's Gang Task Force. Resigned from the department to serve 18 months in Iraq as a contracted international police adviser. Former U.S. Marine.
Education: Attended Sul Ross State, where he was a cornerback on the school's football team, from 1985 to 1987. Studied criminal justice at El Paso Community College and American Military University, an online university.
Web site: www.georgestoltz.com.
September 13, 2008
Irving ISD enrollment has grown despite worries of a decrease
By KATHERINE LEAL UNMUTH / The Dallas Morning News
kunmuth@dallasnews.com
Irving school enrollment appears to be growing slightly instead of taking a hit as officials had feared.
Last year, the school district suddenly began losing hundreds of students at the end of September, after the deportation of illegal immigrants arrested by local police frightened residents.
Several substandard apartment complexes were also shut down by the city, prompting families to move.
Though the city's Criminal Alien Program and crackdown on code enforcement continue, school enrollment appears to be strong.
Officials counted 33,183 students on Friday, the 14th day of class. That's 35 more students than on the same day last year. District officials had predicted a peak enrollment of 32,764 this year, and a loss of about 425 students.
"I think those worries proved to be unfounded," school board president Jerry Christian said. "If kids left, somebody came in to take their place."
The school district always compares its peak enrollment, the point of highest enrollment, which usually happens within the first six weeks of school. The current enrollment is almost equal to last year's high.
The district's peak last year, which occurred on Sept. 25, was 33,189 students. Shortly after, enrollment quickly dropped. At the time, Superintendent Jack Singley expressed concerns that parents were pulling their children out of schools because of fears about immigration enforcement.
"People just picked up and left the district because they had concerns about what was going on at the city level," said Whit Johnstone, the district's director of planning, evaluation and research.
Officials cautioned that it's still early in the year and enrollment trends are still shifting. But so far the district is gaining a lot of older students. There are about 433 more middle- and high-school students than predicted, while there are 15 fewer elementary students.
Irving officials continue to focus on substandard complexes where many of the district's students live. The week before school started, they shut down the Vista Del Lago apartments.
But school officials worked to make sure homeless students could continue to attend nearby John Haley Elementary.
They also believe that some families affected by apartment closures are moving to different school attendance areas within the district.
kunmuth@dallasnews.com
Irving school enrollment appears to be growing slightly instead of taking a hit as officials had feared.
Last year, the school district suddenly began losing hundreds of students at the end of September, after the deportation of illegal immigrants arrested by local police frightened residents.
Several substandard apartment complexes were also shut down by the city, prompting families to move.
Though the city's Criminal Alien Program and crackdown on code enforcement continue, school enrollment appears to be strong.
Officials counted 33,183 students on Friday, the 14th day of class. That's 35 more students than on the same day last year. District officials had predicted a peak enrollment of 32,764 this year, and a loss of about 425 students.
"I think those worries proved to be unfounded," school board president Jerry Christian said. "If kids left, somebody came in to take their place."
The school district always compares its peak enrollment, the point of highest enrollment, which usually happens within the first six weeks of school. The current enrollment is almost equal to last year's high.
The district's peak last year, which occurred on Sept. 25, was 33,189 students. Shortly after, enrollment quickly dropped. At the time, Superintendent Jack Singley expressed concerns that parents were pulling their children out of schools because of fears about immigration enforcement.
"People just picked up and left the district because they had concerns about what was going on at the city level," said Whit Johnstone, the district's director of planning, evaluation and research.
Officials cautioned that it's still early in the year and enrollment trends are still shifting. But so far the district is gaining a lot of older students. There are about 433 more middle- and high-school students than predicted, while there are 15 fewer elementary students.
Irving officials continue to focus on substandard complexes where many of the district's students live. The week before school started, they shut down the Vista Del Lago apartments.
But school officials worked to make sure homeless students could continue to attend nearby John Haley Elementary.
They also believe that some families affected by apartment closures are moving to different school attendance areas within the district.
September 8, 2008
We the People - Iced Donuts
Iced Donuts
Dear Editor:
On Aug. 25, ICE conducted another raid. This time the target was the Howard Industries transformer plant in Laurel, Miss. resulting in the arrest of nearly 600 illegal aliens. Again, ICE released about a hundred of them for so called ‘humanitarian reasons’ (pregnant women and women with dependent children). No company officials were arrested. Company officials not on record of having used the ‘e-verify’ program to check their workers immigration status as required by law, should have been arrested there and then. They richly deserve a nice jail vacation at taxpayer’s expense. I don’t believe in this so called ‘humanitarian’ nonsense. Did these people act humanitarian when they deliberately and illegally crossed our borders and took jobs away from American workers? We are making some progress, but ICE should change their ‘humanitarian’ and ‘hands of company officials’ nonsense policies. The majority of Americans want all illegal aliens out of the country. These aliens can protest all they want in their own countries and against their own government, but not here in our country.
On Aug. 28, prosecutors announced that Lawrence Shipley III, president of Shipley Do-Nuts, was placed on probation for six months and fined $6,000 after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of allowing illegal aliens to be hired. This is nothing more than a slap on the wrist and an insult to the American people. It only sends a message to employers of illegal aliens that they can continue hiring illegals, because in case they are caught, they pay a small fine, lay low for 6 months and continue their hiring practices as if nothing had happened. The prosecutor in this case is wasting taxpayer’s money. He will probably enjoy free do-nuts for the rest of his life, compliments of Shipley Do-Nuts.
A.N.M. Geldens
Kingwood
Dear Editor:
On Aug. 25, ICE conducted another raid. This time the target was the Howard Industries transformer plant in Laurel, Miss. resulting in the arrest of nearly 600 illegal aliens. Again, ICE released about a hundred of them for so called ‘humanitarian reasons’ (pregnant women and women with dependent children). No company officials were arrested. Company officials not on record of having used the ‘e-verify’ program to check their workers immigration status as required by law, should have been arrested there and then. They richly deserve a nice jail vacation at taxpayer’s expense. I don’t believe in this so called ‘humanitarian’ nonsense. Did these people act humanitarian when they deliberately and illegally crossed our borders and took jobs away from American workers? We are making some progress, but ICE should change their ‘humanitarian’ and ‘hands of company officials’ nonsense policies. The majority of Americans want all illegal aliens out of the country. These aliens can protest all they want in their own countries and against their own government, but not here in our country.
On Aug. 28, prosecutors announced that Lawrence Shipley III, president of Shipley Do-Nuts, was placed on probation for six months and fined $6,000 after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of allowing illegal aliens to be hired. This is nothing more than a slap on the wrist and an insult to the American people. It only sends a message to employers of illegal aliens that they can continue hiring illegals, because in case they are caught, they pay a small fine, lay low for 6 months and continue their hiring practices as if nothing had happened. The prosecutor in this case is wasting taxpayer’s money. He will probably enjoy free do-nuts for the rest of his life, compliments of Shipley Do-Nuts.
A.N.M. Geldens
Kingwood
August 29, 2008
Doughnut exec pleads guilty in immigration case
Aug. 29, 2008
DALLAS (AP) - The president of family-owned Shipley Do-Nuts has pleaded guilty to a federal charge in one of the latest crackdowns on employers who hire illegal immigrants.
Lawrence W. Shipley III pleaded guilty Thursday in Houston to a misdemeanor charge of continuing to employ unauthorized workers and was placed on six months probation, officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
Shipley Do-Nuts - which includes Shipley Do-Nut Flour and Supply Co. and Shipley Properties - was expected to plead guilty next week to knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, ICE said. The company would forfeit $1.3 million and be placed on probation, ICE said.
The case is one of several brought recently against employers and managers who hire illegal immigrants. Since October 2007, ICE agents have made more then 1,000 criminal arrests - of workers and others- connected to worksite investigations. Out of those arrests, 116 involved company owners, managers, supervisors or human resources employees.
Immigrant advocates have long criticized ICE, saying the agency too often targets undocumented workers while letting the employers who hire them go unscathed.
DALLAS (AP) - The president of family-owned Shipley Do-Nuts has pleaded guilty to a federal charge in one of the latest crackdowns on employers who hire illegal immigrants.
Lawrence W. Shipley III pleaded guilty Thursday in Houston to a misdemeanor charge of continuing to employ unauthorized workers and was placed on six months probation, officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
Shipley Do-Nuts - which includes Shipley Do-Nut Flour and Supply Co. and Shipley Properties - was expected to plead guilty next week to knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, ICE said. The company would forfeit $1.3 million and be placed on probation, ICE said.
The case is one of several brought recently against employers and managers who hire illegal immigrants. Since October 2007, ICE agents have made more then 1,000 criminal arrests - of workers and others- connected to worksite investigations. Out of those arrests, 116 involved company owners, managers, supervisors or human resources employees.
Immigrant advocates have long criticized ICE, saying the agency too often targets undocumented workers while letting the employers who hire them go unscathed.
August 23, 2008
Border Star: Organizing against organized crime
BY TARA BOZICK - TBOZICK@VICAD.COM
August 23, 2008 - 12:00 a.m.
A constant flow of money, guns and illegal immigrants spill across the Texas border.
A clampdown of major state thoroughfares – U.S. highways 77 and 59, for example – increasingly push smugglers to ranch land and county roads.
In response last year, Texas created Operation Border Star – an intense multi-agency effort that attacks crime in targeted regions affected by the dangerous spillovers.
Sheriff’s coalitions work with the U.S. Border Patrol and border-area police departments – and receive state funding to do so.
Victoria County Sheriff T. Michael O’Connor is a key player in this alliance.
He was the driving force in forming the Coastal Corridor security sector, one of five state sectors that receives special attention and Border Star funding.
O’Connor also played a major role in creating a Joint Operations Intelligence Center in Victoria, said Steve McGraw, director of Texas Homeland Security.
Critics say the operation is failing. Instead of curbing illegal flows, critics say joint efforts simply push the crimes into even more dangerous areas – and force immigrants and smugglers to take desperate measures.
They say joining sheriffs with border agents increases the fears of immigrants, who won’t report crime if it’s likely they’ll be deported.
Everyone agrees these crimes, and the state’s vast, porous border, need more federal attention. As McGraw noted, the state’s border is only as safe as its weakest link.
Texas’ border covers about 65 percent of the country’s land union with Mexico. The state is a transshipment center for organized crime. Steep profits attract organized gangs.
“You’re seeing a militarization of the mafia,” McCraw said. “In a post-Sept 11 environment, we’ve got an obligation to secure our borders from all threats.”
Before Operation Border Star, the governor provided resources to local law enforcement through Operation Linebacker – a 2005 initiative that paid the way for increased patrols in high-threat areas.
Still, though, coyotes earned as much as $2,500 for smuggling a Mexican, and up to $55,000 for smuggling an immigrant from overseas, into the U.S.
“Their motive is money,” McCraw said. “We want to make it unprofitable for them to operate. We can say it’s not fair, it’s a federal responsibility. We can throw rocks or in this instance the governor can say, ‘We’re going to do something about it.’ ”
In 2007, and at Gov. Rick Perry’s prompting, the Texas legislature became the first to allocate funding for border security, authorizing $110 million to the fight.
“By joining together with our local, state and federal partners, we will support the men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol, and protect our communities by dominating the border,” Perry said in 2007.
Allison Castle, a spokeswoman for the governor, said no one incident sparked the state funding. Rather, ongoing problems demanded money, she said.
“You can’t have Homeland Security without border security,” Castle said. “We’re not going to wait for the federal government to do what they should have been doing since the beginning.”
Perry appointed O’Connor to the Texas Border Security Council, which oversees border security and allocates funds to Operation Border Star.
Council members refuse to disclose each sector’s funding for fear such numbers would tip crime rings as to which regions to avoid – or which to exploit.
Funding is divvied every six months.
Clara Ramos, founder of Mexican Americans Joined in Community Affairs in Victoria, said state leaders are throwing money in the wrong directions.
“That’s our tax money going toward fighting something that is federal,” Ramos said. “We’ve got a lot of problems within our own city.”
Money isn’t the only painful costs, she said. Often, law enforcement pursuits end with dead illegal immigrants. Since O’Connor took office, she counts five such deaths.
Ira Mehlman, spokesman for Federation for American Immigration Reform, said more focus should be placed on employers.
If illegal immigrants cannot access jobs and services, they won’t risk their lives to come illegally, he said.
Ramos added that if Texas can be on the front line in border security, the state should lead in arranging work visas. In the form of a visa fee, Texas could charge immigrants the money they pay to smugglers.
“They come whichever way they can,” Ramos said. “You can’t control that. Look how long they’ve tried to stop illegal immigration, and it has never succeeded.”
Elizabeth Garcia is a member of the Coalition of Amigos in Solidarity and Action, a group in The Valley that opposes a border wall.
Violence among smugglers is on the rise, and the victims fear turning to U.S. sheriffs, she said. Undocumented workers now know sheriffs have close ties to border agents, a group that can deport immigrants.
And for unified crackdowns on the highways?
“What do you think immigrants will do? Try to go through the less-patrolled, more dangerous areas,” Garcia said.
Most Border Star supporters say efforts are working.
Law enforcement along the traditional trafficking routes report fewer attempts to cross in their areas.
“It’s gone tremendously down ever since Border Star,” Kleberg County Sheriff Ed Mata Sr. said. Instead of traveling on U.S. Highway 77 through urban areas, the traffickers use county roads.
Goliad County Sheriff Robert DeLaGarza agreed. His office records fewer bailouts and pursuits, he said.
Because traffickers see highway patrols, they’re trying northern routes through DeWitt and Karnes counties, he said.
Goliad has the lowest crime rate in the Golden Crescent, according to the Department of Public Safety Uniform Crime Reporting data.
More funding from Operation Border Star increases this success, DeLaGarza added.
It appears these crimes were just pushed elsewhere. DeWitt County Sheriff Jode Zavesky said his deputies see a carload of illegals every other day.
DeWitt County witnessed a spike in activity after sheriffs launched Border Patrol last year.
Still, Zavesky said teaming with Border Star is a must. If not, “smugglers will know they can come through here and have free reign,” he said.
Lavaca County, a new smuggling route north of Victoria, is active, too. Sheriff Micah Harmon said they frequently cross traffickers.
McGraw, the state’s Homeland Security director, said as efforts have increased arrests have dipped.
From 2005 to 2006, this former longtime FBI agent said 66 percent fewer illegal immigrants were arrested in Texas as compared to historical numbers.
Fewer illegals, then, are crossing the Texas border and into traditional areas, he said. Traffickers look for more cost-efficient ways into the country, which is most likely why 200 Border Patrol agents were reassigned to Arizona, he said.
“It’s working,” McCraw said.
O’Connor agreed.
“We’re fooling ourselves if we think we should only concern ourselves on crime in our county. The crime is mobile,” he said. “I do see a reduction in the corridor, but it’s not to the point we know the reason why. Because we’re putting on more pressure? Have we just diminished the flow into Texas?”
While the sheriff learns those answers, he said one thing is certain.
“The only way we’re going to shut it down is to be united in our efforts and aggressive in our nature. If we’re not aggressive – and we think it’s overwhelming now – it’ll definitely be overwhelming in years to come.”
Operation Border Star evolution:
2005: Governor’s office provides $9.8 million to 16 sheriffs’ departments on the border in Operation Linebacker.
February 2006: Operation Rio Grande teams local, state and federal law enforcement to conduct massive surge of operations along border.
January 2007: Operation Wrangler conducts surges statewide in known drug and crime corridors, using 6,000 local, state and federal personnel, 35 maritime patrollers, 45 helicopters and 33 fixed-wing aircraft.
September 2007: Operation Border Star receives $110 million from the Texas legislature and continues surge operations along the border and in high-threat areas. Resources include: DPS troopers, Texas Rangers, Texas Parks and Wildlife Game Wardens, Texas Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Border Patrol and local police and sheriffs’ departments
Source: Office of the GovernorBorder security statistics
since 2005: 65% decrease in index crime in unincorporated areas of the border.
45% decrease in illegal immigrant apprehension.
Since March 2006, 68 1illegal immigrants apprehended from countries with known ties to terrorism.
Source: Office of the Governor
Drugs and money seized
since March 2006:1,515,313 pounds of marijuana
1,478 pounds of methamphetamines
29,320 pounds of cocaine
176 pounds of heroin
$50,678,237 in currency
Source: Governor’s Office of Homeland Security, Texas
August 23, 2008 - 12:00 a.m.
A constant flow of money, guns and illegal immigrants spill across the Texas border.
A clampdown of major state thoroughfares – U.S. highways 77 and 59, for example – increasingly push smugglers to ranch land and county roads.
In response last year, Texas created Operation Border Star – an intense multi-agency effort that attacks crime in targeted regions affected by the dangerous spillovers.
Sheriff’s coalitions work with the U.S. Border Patrol and border-area police departments – and receive state funding to do so.
Victoria County Sheriff T. Michael O’Connor is a key player in this alliance.
He was the driving force in forming the Coastal Corridor security sector, one of five state sectors that receives special attention and Border Star funding.
O’Connor also played a major role in creating a Joint Operations Intelligence Center in Victoria, said Steve McGraw, director of Texas Homeland Security.
Critics say the operation is failing. Instead of curbing illegal flows, critics say joint efforts simply push the crimes into even more dangerous areas – and force immigrants and smugglers to take desperate measures.
They say joining sheriffs with border agents increases the fears of immigrants, who won’t report crime if it’s likely they’ll be deported.
Everyone agrees these crimes, and the state’s vast, porous border, need more federal attention. As McGraw noted, the state’s border is only as safe as its weakest link.
Texas’ border covers about 65 percent of the country’s land union with Mexico. The state is a transshipment center for organized crime. Steep profits attract organized gangs.
“You’re seeing a militarization of the mafia,” McCraw said. “In a post-Sept 11 environment, we’ve got an obligation to secure our borders from all threats.”
Before Operation Border Star, the governor provided resources to local law enforcement through Operation Linebacker – a 2005 initiative that paid the way for increased patrols in high-threat areas.
Still, though, coyotes earned as much as $2,500 for smuggling a Mexican, and up to $55,000 for smuggling an immigrant from overseas, into the U.S.
“Their motive is money,” McCraw said. “We want to make it unprofitable for them to operate. We can say it’s not fair, it’s a federal responsibility. We can throw rocks or in this instance the governor can say, ‘We’re going to do something about it.’ ”
In 2007, and at Gov. Rick Perry’s prompting, the Texas legislature became the first to allocate funding for border security, authorizing $110 million to the fight.
“By joining together with our local, state and federal partners, we will support the men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol, and protect our communities by dominating the border,” Perry said in 2007.
Allison Castle, a spokeswoman for the governor, said no one incident sparked the state funding. Rather, ongoing problems demanded money, she said.
“You can’t have Homeland Security without border security,” Castle said. “We’re not going to wait for the federal government to do what they should have been doing since the beginning.”
Perry appointed O’Connor to the Texas Border Security Council, which oversees border security and allocates funds to Operation Border Star.
Council members refuse to disclose each sector’s funding for fear such numbers would tip crime rings as to which regions to avoid – or which to exploit.
Funding is divvied every six months.
Clara Ramos, founder of Mexican Americans Joined in Community Affairs in Victoria, said state leaders are throwing money in the wrong directions.
“That’s our tax money going toward fighting something that is federal,” Ramos said. “We’ve got a lot of problems within our own city.”
Money isn’t the only painful costs, she said. Often, law enforcement pursuits end with dead illegal immigrants. Since O’Connor took office, she counts five such deaths.
Ira Mehlman, spokesman for Federation for American Immigration Reform, said more focus should be placed on employers.
If illegal immigrants cannot access jobs and services, they won’t risk their lives to come illegally, he said.
Ramos added that if Texas can be on the front line in border security, the state should lead in arranging work visas. In the form of a visa fee, Texas could charge immigrants the money they pay to smugglers.
“They come whichever way they can,” Ramos said. “You can’t control that. Look how long they’ve tried to stop illegal immigration, and it has never succeeded.”
Elizabeth Garcia is a member of the Coalition of Amigos in Solidarity and Action, a group in The Valley that opposes a border wall.
Violence among smugglers is on the rise, and the victims fear turning to U.S. sheriffs, she said. Undocumented workers now know sheriffs have close ties to border agents, a group that can deport immigrants.
And for unified crackdowns on the highways?
“What do you think immigrants will do? Try to go through the less-patrolled, more dangerous areas,” Garcia said.
Most Border Star supporters say efforts are working.
Law enforcement along the traditional trafficking routes report fewer attempts to cross in their areas.
“It’s gone tremendously down ever since Border Star,” Kleberg County Sheriff Ed Mata Sr. said. Instead of traveling on U.S. Highway 77 through urban areas, the traffickers use county roads.
Goliad County Sheriff Robert DeLaGarza agreed. His office records fewer bailouts and pursuits, he said.
Because traffickers see highway patrols, they’re trying northern routes through DeWitt and Karnes counties, he said.
Goliad has the lowest crime rate in the Golden Crescent, according to the Department of Public Safety Uniform Crime Reporting data.
More funding from Operation Border Star increases this success, DeLaGarza added.
It appears these crimes were just pushed elsewhere. DeWitt County Sheriff Jode Zavesky said his deputies see a carload of illegals every other day.
DeWitt County witnessed a spike in activity after sheriffs launched Border Patrol last year.
Still, Zavesky said teaming with Border Star is a must. If not, “smugglers will know they can come through here and have free reign,” he said.
Lavaca County, a new smuggling route north of Victoria, is active, too. Sheriff Micah Harmon said they frequently cross traffickers.
McGraw, the state’s Homeland Security director, said as efforts have increased arrests have dipped.
From 2005 to 2006, this former longtime FBI agent said 66 percent fewer illegal immigrants were arrested in Texas as compared to historical numbers.
Fewer illegals, then, are crossing the Texas border and into traditional areas, he said. Traffickers look for more cost-efficient ways into the country, which is most likely why 200 Border Patrol agents were reassigned to Arizona, he said.
“It’s working,” McCraw said.
O’Connor agreed.
“We’re fooling ourselves if we think we should only concern ourselves on crime in our county. The crime is mobile,” he said. “I do see a reduction in the corridor, but it’s not to the point we know the reason why. Because we’re putting on more pressure? Have we just diminished the flow into Texas?”
While the sheriff learns those answers, he said one thing is certain.
“The only way we’re going to shut it down is to be united in our efforts and aggressive in our nature. If we’re not aggressive – and we think it’s overwhelming now – it’ll definitely be overwhelming in years to come.”
Operation Border Star evolution:
2005: Governor’s office provides $9.8 million to 16 sheriffs’ departments on the border in Operation Linebacker.
February 2006: Operation Rio Grande teams local, state and federal law enforcement to conduct massive surge of operations along border.
January 2007: Operation Wrangler conducts surges statewide in known drug and crime corridors, using 6,000 local, state and federal personnel, 35 maritime patrollers, 45 helicopters and 33 fixed-wing aircraft.
September 2007: Operation Border Star receives $110 million from the Texas legislature and continues surge operations along the border and in high-threat areas. Resources include: DPS troopers, Texas Rangers, Texas Parks and Wildlife Game Wardens, Texas Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Border Patrol and local police and sheriffs’ departments
Source: Office of the GovernorBorder security statistics
since 2005: 65% decrease in index crime in unincorporated areas of the border.
45% decrease in illegal immigrant apprehension.
Since March 2006, 68 1illegal immigrants apprehended from countries with known ties to terrorism.
Source: Office of the Governor
Drugs and money seized
since March 2006:1,515,313 pounds of marijuana
1,478 pounds of methamphetamines
29,320 pounds of cocaine
176 pounds of heroin
$50,678,237 in currency
Source: Governor’s Office of Homeland Security, Texas
August 17, 2008
Point of Contact: Carlos Quintanilla of Acción America
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, August 17, 2008
Our Q&A with Carlos Quintanilla, president of Acción America. His immigrant-advocacy group plans a protest at Trinity Medical Center in Carrollton over the arrest of MarÃa MartÃnez, suspected to be an illegal immigrant and accused of submitting a false Social Security number with her job application.
Why the protest?
If you look at almost every major hospital in the Dallas metroplex and almost every single employer, they have opted not to take an aggressive position regarding the same situation as MarÃa MartÃnez faced. Trinity ... took it a step further and said: We're going to file criminal charges and call a detective in Carrollton. They arrest this woman for tampering with government documents. ...
Why did they act so aggressive? Was it necessary for them to take the action that they took against this woman? Was she really a threat to public safety, as they have claimed? ... [She] simply presented a document that has been presented for 20 or 30 years without any cause, without any problems. And if we're to look at most companies, you'd find there's a significant number that close their eyes and ignore the question of false documents.
Shouldn't employers abide by the law?
They took it a step further by participating in the entrapment of this woman. They could've just said: Hey, we're not going to hire you. Your documents are no good. And that's it.
Are hospitals in a class by themselves regarding immigrants?
Hospitals are safe zones. She was applying at a Luby's restaurant inside a hospital. ... This is a dysfunctional policy that needs to be uniform, fair and equitable. It can't be disparate. It can't be where one hospital says "yes" and another says "no."
Then where does Acción America stand regarding enforcement of the law?
We have never said, "Give protection to immigrants who have committed criminal offenses." We have never said there should be no protection of the borders. What we have always said is that it [immigration enforcement] should be fair and equal."
Our Q&A with Carlos Quintanilla, president of Acción America. His immigrant-advocacy group plans a protest at Trinity Medical Center in Carrollton over the arrest of MarÃa MartÃnez, suspected to be an illegal immigrant and accused of submitting a false Social Security number with her job application.
Why the protest?
If you look at almost every major hospital in the Dallas metroplex and almost every single employer, they have opted not to take an aggressive position regarding the same situation as MarÃa MartÃnez faced. Trinity ... took it a step further and said: We're going to file criminal charges and call a detective in Carrollton. They arrest this woman for tampering with government documents. ...
Why did they act so aggressive? Was it necessary for them to take the action that they took against this woman? Was she really a threat to public safety, as they have claimed? ... [She] simply presented a document that has been presented for 20 or 30 years without any cause, without any problems. And if we're to look at most companies, you'd find there's a significant number that close their eyes and ignore the question of false documents.
Shouldn't employers abide by the law?
They took it a step further by participating in the entrapment of this woman. They could've just said: Hey, we're not going to hire you. Your documents are no good. And that's it.
Are hospitals in a class by themselves regarding immigrants?
Hospitals are safe zones. She was applying at a Luby's restaurant inside a hospital. ... This is a dysfunctional policy that needs to be uniform, fair and equitable. It can't be disparate. It can't be where one hospital says "yes" and another says "no."
Then where does Acción America stand regarding enforcement of the law?
We have never said, "Give protection to immigrants who have committed criminal offenses." We have never said there should be no protection of the borders. What we have always said is that it [immigration enforcement] should be fair and equal."
August 16, 2008
Recruiters fill the void after immigration raids
08/16/2008
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN / Associated Press
The largest single-site workplace raid in U.S. history may have cost a kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa nearly half its employees, but it's been a boon to labor recruiters around the country.
After federal immigration agents raided Agriprocessors, Inc., and arrested nearly 400 undocumented workers, Gavino Bravo's phone started ringing.
Suddenly a steady — though mostly illegal — stream of workers willing to toil long hours in difficult conditions for low wages had dried up. And the northeast Iowa meatpacking plant needed hundreds of new employees. Fast.
From a cluttered office suite a block off Main Street in this city near the Mexican border, Bravo, his father Jose and their Bravo Labor Agency set out to fill the void. So far, they've recruited about 200 workers for Agriprocessors, sending them north on buses in batches of 10 to 15.
Bravo and other recruiters applaud the recent crackdowns by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at jobsites in Iowa, Texas and elsewhere.
"That's great for us — they're going to have to come to us for workers," said Bravo, who is paid a flat fee — he would say how much — for each worker he recruits.
Under normal circumstances, meat processors and other large employers that rely on immigrant labor have little need for outside recruiters. Agriprocessors had established labor supply lines from Mexico, Guatemala and some Eastern European countries.
"New employees come to Agriprocessors mainly through word-of-mouth," its company Web site says. "As a result, many of Agriprocessors' new employees found their jobs through family members already working for the company."
But with nearly half its workers jailed and awaiting deportation, those lines were suddenly severed.
"They're just trying to reconstruct the migrant labor supply that was blown to pieces by the raid," said Lourdes Gouveia, director of the Office of Latino/Latin American Studies of the Great Plains at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
Gouveia, a sociology professor who has studied food processing plants and their ties to immigration, said that while some of the largest companies, such as Tyson Foods, recruit internally, more and more companies depend on outside agencies to refill the labor pool after a raid.
"It happens more with raids because they're desperate," Gouveia said.
The depth of that desperation was apparent in Amarillo earlier this summer, when a recruiter for the Iowa plant cruised homeless shelters and the bus station in search of potential hires.
Cathy Manes, director of employment services at Faith City Ministries in Amarillo, said the recruiter asked if he could discuss job opportunities at Agriprocessors following the shelter's regular chapel service.
Manes said she had questions about the company and safety and welfare of its workers and decided not to recommend the jobs to her clients.
"I didn't want to uproot someone and them be treated poorly," Manes said.
Jacobson Staffing, a temporary worker agency, took over recruitment for the Iowa plant in early June. Ryan Regenold, who oversees the Agriprocessors account for Jacobson, said the Amarillo recruiters were already working for Agriprocessors when Jacobson came on. He said in most cases the Amarillo recruits didn't pan out.
"They were people that came up here looking for a handout," said Ryan Regenold, who oversees the Agriprocessors account. The company offered them bus tickets back to Amarillo and most accepted, he said.
Things went badly for workers another staffing agency sent to Agriprocessors in May.
Ten days after sending about 150 workers to the plant, Labor Ready pulled them out citing concerns over safety conditions, said Stacey Burke, spokeswoman for Labor Ready's parent company, True Blue. She declined to detail the safety issues.
Regenold, however, said Agriprocessors decided to send the Labor Ready workers home after safety incidents.
The spring raid came amid investigations into labor, food safety and environmental violations at the plant. The company has been accused in recent years of mistreating animals and employees.
Labor officials have said they were investigating possible wage violations at the plant and the state has accused Agriprocessors of violating child labor laws.
Since June 2, Jacobson Staffing has supplied about 900 temporary workers to Agriprocessors, with about 480 still on the payroll as of Aug. 1, said Regenold.
Jacobson started with ads in local newspapers, exhausted the labor pool within driving distance and expanded the search, adding another recruiting firm and using four of its own recruiters.
Jacobson runs all of its potential hires through the government's E-Verify system to make sure applicants are in the U.S. legally and are able to work.
The search was easier for Bravo.
His agency ran ads in Spanish-language newspapers and on Mexican radio stations in the Rio Grande Valley and had little trouble finding workers though only about one quarter were skilled in meat processing. Bravo's simple ads only said that the jobs were out of state and the applicants must have permission to work in the U.S. Bravo does not use E-Verify, but requires applicants to show original documents indicating they can work legally in the U.S.
Bravo has been sending laborers to sugar cane fields in Louisiana, dairy farms in Maine and grain silos in South Dakota for years, Bravo said.
The $10 per hour starting wage offered by Agriprocessors is enough to get workers to relocate to Iowa, he said.
"There are not that many opportunities for work here and the opportunities there are, are low paying," Bravo said. A new pile of applications in Bravo's office from friends and relatives of the first batch of workers he sent to Iowa indicate that a new labor pipeline is already forming.
An attempt at comprehensive immigration reform failed late last year amid an immigration crackdown at work sites nationwide. In fiscal year 2007, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made 4,000 administrative arrests of workers who were in the country illegally and 863 criminal arrests for more serious offenses. The arrests were ten times the number made five years earlier.
Through the first eight months of this fiscal year, ICE has matched the criminal arrests from last year and made 2,900 administrative arrests.
Bravo said business has improved along with enforcement.
"I don't think they'll be able to go back to undocumented workers because they're being scrutinized so much," Bravo said.
"I knew sooner or later it was going to catch up with them," he said.
____
Associated Press Writer Anabelle Garay in Dallas contributed to this report.
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN / Associated Press
The largest single-site workplace raid in U.S. history may have cost a kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa nearly half its employees, but it's been a boon to labor recruiters around the country.
After federal immigration agents raided Agriprocessors, Inc., and arrested nearly 400 undocumented workers, Gavino Bravo's phone started ringing.
Suddenly a steady — though mostly illegal — stream of workers willing to toil long hours in difficult conditions for low wages had dried up. And the northeast Iowa meatpacking plant needed hundreds of new employees. Fast.
From a cluttered office suite a block off Main Street in this city near the Mexican border, Bravo, his father Jose and their Bravo Labor Agency set out to fill the void. So far, they've recruited about 200 workers for Agriprocessors, sending them north on buses in batches of 10 to 15.
Bravo and other recruiters applaud the recent crackdowns by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at jobsites in Iowa, Texas and elsewhere.
"That's great for us — they're going to have to come to us for workers," said Bravo, who is paid a flat fee — he would say how much — for each worker he recruits.
Under normal circumstances, meat processors and other large employers that rely on immigrant labor have little need for outside recruiters. Agriprocessors had established labor supply lines from Mexico, Guatemala and some Eastern European countries.
"New employees come to Agriprocessors mainly through word-of-mouth," its company Web site says. "As a result, many of Agriprocessors' new employees found their jobs through family members already working for the company."
But with nearly half its workers jailed and awaiting deportation, those lines were suddenly severed.
"They're just trying to reconstruct the migrant labor supply that was blown to pieces by the raid," said Lourdes Gouveia, director of the Office of Latino/Latin American Studies of the Great Plains at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
Gouveia, a sociology professor who has studied food processing plants and their ties to immigration, said that while some of the largest companies, such as Tyson Foods, recruit internally, more and more companies depend on outside agencies to refill the labor pool after a raid.
"It happens more with raids because they're desperate," Gouveia said.
The depth of that desperation was apparent in Amarillo earlier this summer, when a recruiter for the Iowa plant cruised homeless shelters and the bus station in search of potential hires.
Cathy Manes, director of employment services at Faith City Ministries in Amarillo, said the recruiter asked if he could discuss job opportunities at Agriprocessors following the shelter's regular chapel service.
Manes said she had questions about the company and safety and welfare of its workers and decided not to recommend the jobs to her clients.
"I didn't want to uproot someone and them be treated poorly," Manes said.
Jacobson Staffing, a temporary worker agency, took over recruitment for the Iowa plant in early June. Ryan Regenold, who oversees the Agriprocessors account for Jacobson, said the Amarillo recruiters were already working for Agriprocessors when Jacobson came on. He said in most cases the Amarillo recruits didn't pan out.
"They were people that came up here looking for a handout," said Ryan Regenold, who oversees the Agriprocessors account. The company offered them bus tickets back to Amarillo and most accepted, he said.
Things went badly for workers another staffing agency sent to Agriprocessors in May.
Ten days after sending about 150 workers to the plant, Labor Ready pulled them out citing concerns over safety conditions, said Stacey Burke, spokeswoman for Labor Ready's parent company, True Blue. She declined to detail the safety issues.
Regenold, however, said Agriprocessors decided to send the Labor Ready workers home after safety incidents.
The spring raid came amid investigations into labor, food safety and environmental violations at the plant. The company has been accused in recent years of mistreating animals and employees.
Labor officials have said they were investigating possible wage violations at the plant and the state has accused Agriprocessors of violating child labor laws.
Since June 2, Jacobson Staffing has supplied about 900 temporary workers to Agriprocessors, with about 480 still on the payroll as of Aug. 1, said Regenold.
Jacobson started with ads in local newspapers, exhausted the labor pool within driving distance and expanded the search, adding another recruiting firm and using four of its own recruiters.
Jacobson runs all of its potential hires through the government's E-Verify system to make sure applicants are in the U.S. legally and are able to work.
The search was easier for Bravo.
His agency ran ads in Spanish-language newspapers and on Mexican radio stations in the Rio Grande Valley and had little trouble finding workers though only about one quarter were skilled in meat processing. Bravo's simple ads only said that the jobs were out of state and the applicants must have permission to work in the U.S. Bravo does not use E-Verify, but requires applicants to show original documents indicating they can work legally in the U.S.
Bravo has been sending laborers to sugar cane fields in Louisiana, dairy farms in Maine and grain silos in South Dakota for years, Bravo said.
The $10 per hour starting wage offered by Agriprocessors is enough to get workers to relocate to Iowa, he said.
"There are not that many opportunities for work here and the opportunities there are, are low paying," Bravo said. A new pile of applications in Bravo's office from friends and relatives of the first batch of workers he sent to Iowa indicate that a new labor pipeline is already forming.
An attempt at comprehensive immigration reform failed late last year amid an immigration crackdown at work sites nationwide. In fiscal year 2007, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made 4,000 administrative arrests of workers who were in the country illegally and 863 criminal arrests for more serious offenses. The arrests were ten times the number made five years earlier.
Through the first eight months of this fiscal year, ICE has matched the criminal arrests from last year and made 2,900 administrative arrests.
Bravo said business has improved along with enforcement.
"I don't think they'll be able to go back to undocumented workers because they're being scrutinized so much," Bravo said.
"I knew sooner or later it was going to catch up with them," he said.
____
Associated Press Writer Anabelle Garay in Dallas contributed to this report.
August 13, 2008
Fund aids arrested immigrants
Detained in a sweep? He'll help post bond
By Susan Carroll | Houston Chronicle
August 13, 2008
HOUSTON — When Immigration agents raided a Houston rag factory and took 166 suspected illegal immigrants into custody, a multimillionaire Boston philanthropist was ready to chip in bond money to help the workers.
Robert Hildreth, 57, is the public face of the National Immigrant Bond Fund, a fledgling organization that helps people swept up in workplace raids by agents of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement post bonds.
The controversial fund has the backing of major immigrant advocacy groups and religious leaders but has drawn criticism from organizations that oppose illegal Immigration.
Since spring 2007, the fund has paid $180,000 to bond out immigrants snared in ICE raids in California, Massachusetts and Maryland.
Word of the fund is spreading but not fast enough for some caught up in the recent crackdown on businesses that hire illegal immigrants. In the past nine months, ICE has detained some 4,500 undocumented workers and 111 employers, according to agency statistics.
Hildreth said he and bond fund leadership, which includes advocacy organizations such as the National Immigration Forum, decided about four months ago that the fund should broaden its reach. It is now soliciting donations nationally, hoping to raise its profile and political clout to help lobby for Immigration reform.
Hildreth saw television footage in March 2007 of workers picked up in an ICE raid in New Bedford, Mass., boarding a plane bound for Texas, where they were to be held before deportation.
"I was really ticked off," he said. "Within 24 hours, ICE decided to take them to the detention centers in Texas just to facilitate removing them as fast as possible. I thought that was unfair."
In all, Hildreth said he paid $130,000 to help the New Bedford workers, and detainees' families chipped in $100,000, securing the release of 40 people, he said. He said none of them skipped bond.
The son of schoolteachers, Hildreth said part of his motivation to help immigrants came from his father.
"One of his big themes was that the Immigration story in the United States is vital to the health and growth of our country," he said.
Hildreth, who worked for the International Monetary Fund from 1975 to 1980, started Boston-based IBS Inc. in 1989. The firm trades in loans in international markets.
The immigrant bond fund has infuriated some advocates for stricter Immigration reforms, who have called it "traitorous" on Internet message boards.
Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which lobbies for stringent Immigration controls, said many illegal immigrants historically have failed to leave the country as ordered by the government. The number of immigrants labeled as "fugitives" or "absconders" by ICE totaled more than 594,000 in October 2007, the most recent statistics available.
"These contributors better be prepared to lose a lot of money," Mehlman said.
By Susan Carroll | Houston Chronicle
August 13, 2008
HOUSTON — When Immigration agents raided a Houston rag factory and took 166 suspected illegal immigrants into custody, a multimillionaire Boston philanthropist was ready to chip in bond money to help the workers.
Robert Hildreth, 57, is the public face of the National Immigrant Bond Fund, a fledgling organization that helps people swept up in workplace raids by agents of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement post bonds.
The controversial fund has the backing of major immigrant advocacy groups and religious leaders but has drawn criticism from organizations that oppose illegal Immigration.
Since spring 2007, the fund has paid $180,000 to bond out immigrants snared in ICE raids in California, Massachusetts and Maryland.
Word of the fund is spreading but not fast enough for some caught up in the recent crackdown on businesses that hire illegal immigrants. In the past nine months, ICE has detained some 4,500 undocumented workers and 111 employers, according to agency statistics.
Hildreth said he and bond fund leadership, which includes advocacy organizations such as the National Immigration Forum, decided about four months ago that the fund should broaden its reach. It is now soliciting donations nationally, hoping to raise its profile and political clout to help lobby for Immigration reform.
Hildreth saw television footage in March 2007 of workers picked up in an ICE raid in New Bedford, Mass., boarding a plane bound for Texas, where they were to be held before deportation.
"I was really ticked off," he said. "Within 24 hours, ICE decided to take them to the detention centers in Texas just to facilitate removing them as fast as possible. I thought that was unfair."
In all, Hildreth said he paid $130,000 to help the New Bedford workers, and detainees' families chipped in $100,000, securing the release of 40 people, he said. He said none of them skipped bond.
The son of schoolteachers, Hildreth said part of his motivation to help immigrants came from his father.
"One of his big themes was that the Immigration story in the United States is vital to the health and growth of our country," he said.
Hildreth, who worked for the International Monetary Fund from 1975 to 1980, started Boston-based IBS Inc. in 1989. The firm trades in loans in international markets.
The immigrant bond fund has infuriated some advocates for stricter Immigration reforms, who have called it "traitorous" on Internet message boards.
Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which lobbies for stringent Immigration controls, said many illegal immigrants historically have failed to leave the country as ordered by the government. The number of immigrants labeled as "fugitives" or "absconders" by ICE totaled more than 594,000 in October 2007, the most recent statistics available.
"These contributors better be prepared to lose a lot of money," Mehlman said.
Debate continues over Travis Co. jail, ICE
8/13/2008 12:48 PM
By: News 8 Austin Staff
The City of Austin's Commission on Immigrant Affairs will join the debate on whether ICE should remain at the Travis County jail.
The commission is considering a draft resolution on the issue.
The draft proposes ways for misdemeanor offenders to avoid jail time and in turn stay out of ICE's reach.
Jail records show the number of people detained for immigration purposes has increased 400 percent since ICE opened an office in the jail January.
Critics said immigrants have lost trust in local police as a result.
The Immigrant Affairs Commissioner, Ramey Ko said it will require people within the immigrant community to reach out and become involved in order to have a safer community.
"When people within the immigrant community are confident and feel safe in approaching law enforcement to report crimes, be witnesses to crimes, provide information about crimes, then you really have a lot safer community as a result," he said.
He said when there's a concern that interacting with law enforcement is going to lead to some sort of negative immigration consequence, then people can be reluctant to get involved with law enforcement.
The city's Human Rights Commission passed an identical resolution in June.
The Commission on Immigrant Affairs will discuss it at their meeting Wednesday night at 6:30 p.m. at Austin City Hall.
By: News 8 Austin Staff
The City of Austin's Commission on Immigrant Affairs will join the debate on whether ICE should remain at the Travis County jail.
The commission is considering a draft resolution on the issue.
The draft proposes ways for misdemeanor offenders to avoid jail time and in turn stay out of ICE's reach.
Jail records show the number of people detained for immigration purposes has increased 400 percent since ICE opened an office in the jail January.
Critics said immigrants have lost trust in local police as a result.
The Immigrant Affairs Commissioner, Ramey Ko said it will require people within the immigrant community to reach out and become involved in order to have a safer community.
"When people within the immigrant community are confident and feel safe in approaching law enforcement to report crimes, be witnesses to crimes, provide information about crimes, then you really have a lot safer community as a result," he said.
He said when there's a concern that interacting with law enforcement is going to lead to some sort of negative immigration consequence, then people can be reluctant to get involved with law enforcement.
The city's Human Rights Commission passed an identical resolution in June.
The Commission on Immigrant Affairs will discuss it at their meeting Wednesday night at 6:30 p.m. at Austin City Hall.
Lawsuit claims police failed to prevent suicide
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 | 2:34 PM
HOUSTON -- Between the time Arturo Chavez was arrested for driving without a license and the day he was found hanging in his cell at the Galveston County Jail, the 17-year-old undocumented immigrant had grown increasingly despondent about the prospect of being deported to Guatemala.
But, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court, Chavez's family alleges that jail officials took no measures to protect the troubled teenager or to prevent the suicide. Instead, they say, Chavez was placed in solitary confinement, with infrequent checks by jail officials.
The lawsuit also claims League City police officers used excessive force after arresting the 5-foot-3, 125-pound Chavez on Aug. 1. According to police, Chavez tried to escape by running from the police station and into the parking lot.
The lawsuit claims at least four officers surrounded Chavez, who clung to a chain-link fence, struck him repeatedly with a baton and tased him in the back. No officer reported any injuries and Chavez was not charged with assault, said Randall Kallinen, the attorney representing Chavez's family.
Calls to League City Police Department and the Galveston County Sheriff's Department, which oversees the jail, were not immediately returned. Galveston County Sheriff Gean Leonard is also named in the suit.
After Chavez was arrested, he was taken to a nearby hospital then transferred to the Galveston County Jail, where officials were warned of Chavez's declining mental state, the lawsuit says. As an undocumented immigrant, Chavez faced deportation back to his native Guatemala.
On Aug. 4, Chavez was found hanging from a jail-issued blanket tied to an overhead shower nozzle, Kallinen said.
"The Galveston County Jail lacked the proper procedure that a very suicidal person needed, especially a minor who is more susceptible to suicide," said Kallinen.
Chavez, who came from Guatemala about four years ago, was a student at Clear Creek High School in League City and worked at Dos Mas Mexican Restaurant. He lived with an older brother and uncle, and every week sent $150 to his parents in Guatemala, Kallinen said.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Chavez's family in the U.S. District Court in Galveston, seeks more than $75,000 in damages, changes to jail practices and policies to prevent suicides, and policies regulating the use of Tasers and batons by League City police.
HOUSTON -- Between the time Arturo Chavez was arrested for driving without a license and the day he was found hanging in his cell at the Galveston County Jail, the 17-year-old undocumented immigrant had grown increasingly despondent about the prospect of being deported to Guatemala.
But, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court, Chavez's family alleges that jail officials took no measures to protect the troubled teenager or to prevent the suicide. Instead, they say, Chavez was placed in solitary confinement, with infrequent checks by jail officials.
The lawsuit also claims League City police officers used excessive force after arresting the 5-foot-3, 125-pound Chavez on Aug. 1. According to police, Chavez tried to escape by running from the police station and into the parking lot.
The lawsuit claims at least four officers surrounded Chavez, who clung to a chain-link fence, struck him repeatedly with a baton and tased him in the back. No officer reported any injuries and Chavez was not charged with assault, said Randall Kallinen, the attorney representing Chavez's family.
Calls to League City Police Department and the Galveston County Sheriff's Department, which oversees the jail, were not immediately returned. Galveston County Sheriff Gean Leonard is also named in the suit.
After Chavez was arrested, he was taken to a nearby hospital then transferred to the Galveston County Jail, where officials were warned of Chavez's declining mental state, the lawsuit says. As an undocumented immigrant, Chavez faced deportation back to his native Guatemala.
On Aug. 4, Chavez was found hanging from a jail-issued blanket tied to an overhead shower nozzle, Kallinen said.
"The Galveston County Jail lacked the proper procedure that a very suicidal person needed, especially a minor who is more susceptible to suicide," said Kallinen.
Chavez, who came from Guatemala about four years ago, was a student at Clear Creek High School in League City and worked at Dos Mas Mexican Restaurant. He lived with an older brother and uncle, and every week sent $150 to his parents in Guatemala, Kallinen said.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Chavez's family in the U.S. District Court in Galveston, seeks more than $75,000 in damages, changes to jail practices and policies to prevent suicides, and policies regulating the use of Tasers and batons by League City police.
August 12, 2008
Families making ICE raid checklists
Crackdown here prompts illegal workers to be prepared — just in case
By JAMES PINKERTON Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 12, 2008, 11:16PM
It's not unusual for families to formulate emergency plans for fires, hurricanes or other disasters.
But there are some Houston families developing a new wrinkle to contingency planning — they're preparing for the aftermath of an immigration raid.
In the wake of recent work site enforcement raids by federal agents in Houston, illegal immigrants are meeting with immigration lawyers, drawing up custody documents so relatives can care for their children and stashing money to bail themselves or relatives out of detention.
Local activists are urging them to prepare in case they are detained by la migra, the Spanish term for immigration agents. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that there are 400,000 illegal immigrants in the Houston area.
''Part of the community education work is to make sure we have a checklist a family has ready, including a power of attorney for children, who's going to pick up the children from school, which family member will have all the paperwork," said Maria Jimenez, a coordinator at the Central American Resource Center in Houston.
Juan Diaz, a 33-year-old day laborer from El Salvador, said he's ready if he gets detained. He and other family members have consulted an immigration lawyer — who advised him not to sign or say anything — and saved cash to post an immigration bond.
''We have made plans if I'm picked up," said Diaz, who has been working in Houston since arriving in the U.S. three years ago. ''My family is going to call and try to get me out of detention. I have saved up to $6,000 for bond, but I don't know if that will be enough."
Robert Rutt, special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement criminal investigation office in Houston, said planning for an immigration arrest is ''the responsible thing to do."
''Anybody in the United States illegally is subject to arrest at any time or any place, and making preparations for the inevitable is always wise," Rutt said. ''We in the Gulf Coast region prepare for hurricanes and adverse weather by making supplies available and getting important documents together, and being arrested for being in the U.S. illegally requires the same type of preparations."
Thousands arrested
Driving the preparations is a high-profile federal immigration enforcement crackdown that has painted a bull's-eye on the back of many illegal immigrants. Through the end of July, a nine-month campaign detained about 4,500 undocumented workers, 111 employers and more than 26,000 illegal immigrants who defied judges' orders to leave the country.
The planning is not just taking place in Houston.
In August 2007, ICE agents detained 180 workers at a chicken-processing plant near Hamilton, Ohio.
Community activists there are helping undocumented workers obtain U.S. passports for their children, as well as establishing dual citizenship so their children can attend schools if they return to Latin America.
There are many, however, who want to encourage illegal immigrants to leave the country rather than help them.
''Well I'm not surprised it's happening," Louise Whiteford, president of Texans for Immigration Reform in Houston, said about the raid plans. ''I've gotten to the point of wondering if anyone worries about maintaining ourselves as a sovereign country."
Families devastated
In Houston, the June 25 work site raid on Action Rags USA galvanized community groups who were ill-prepared to help the 166 detained workers.
Since the raid, a number of nonprofit organizations, attorneys, elected officials and business groups have formed the Houston Raid Rapid Response Team.
''There's a need because the raid at Action Rags demonstrated the devastating effect on the families and communities," said Jimenez, the longtime Houston activist.
''We learned that families are disorganized by a raid, and face not only legal but serious economic, social and psychological problems."
Lawrence Rushton, an immigration lawyer, is helping the team assemble a list of local attorneys willing to help workers picked up in future raids.
''Unfortunately in Houston, we didn't have any kind of response plan set up," Rushton said. ''That's what we're doing now, trying to set up a database or pool of attorneys to represent people caught up in these raids, either pro bono or for minimal cost."
Rushton said most of his clients contact him after a family member has been detained, but more are asking for advice in advance.
For student, 'It's scary'
The prospect of his family being deported is terrifying to Pedro Arevalo, an 18-year-old college student born here shortly after his family moved from Mexico. His mother and father, two sisters and a brother are all undocumented and live in Houston.
Arevalo cannot file an application for permanent residency for his parents and siblings until he turns 21. So for now, the family is trying to save money in case of an arrest.
''It's scary," he said. ''I mean, they're hunting these people down like they are animals and they aren't — they're here to work. They're just trying to become normal, working, functional members of society."
By JAMES PINKERTON Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 12, 2008, 11:16PM
It's not unusual for families to formulate emergency plans for fires, hurricanes or other disasters.
But there are some Houston families developing a new wrinkle to contingency planning — they're preparing for the aftermath of an immigration raid.
In the wake of recent work site enforcement raids by federal agents in Houston, illegal immigrants are meeting with immigration lawyers, drawing up custody documents so relatives can care for their children and stashing money to bail themselves or relatives out of detention.
Local activists are urging them to prepare in case they are detained by la migra, the Spanish term for immigration agents. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that there are 400,000 illegal immigrants in the Houston area.
''Part of the community education work is to make sure we have a checklist a family has ready, including a power of attorney for children, who's going to pick up the children from school, which family member will have all the paperwork," said Maria Jimenez, a coordinator at the Central American Resource Center in Houston.
Juan Diaz, a 33-year-old day laborer from El Salvador, said he's ready if he gets detained. He and other family members have consulted an immigration lawyer — who advised him not to sign or say anything — and saved cash to post an immigration bond.
''We have made plans if I'm picked up," said Diaz, who has been working in Houston since arriving in the U.S. three years ago. ''My family is going to call and try to get me out of detention. I have saved up to $6,000 for bond, but I don't know if that will be enough."
Robert Rutt, special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement criminal investigation office in Houston, said planning for an immigration arrest is ''the responsible thing to do."
''Anybody in the United States illegally is subject to arrest at any time or any place, and making preparations for the inevitable is always wise," Rutt said. ''We in the Gulf Coast region prepare for hurricanes and adverse weather by making supplies available and getting important documents together, and being arrested for being in the U.S. illegally requires the same type of preparations."
Thousands arrested
Driving the preparations is a high-profile federal immigration enforcement crackdown that has painted a bull's-eye on the back of many illegal immigrants. Through the end of July, a nine-month campaign detained about 4,500 undocumented workers, 111 employers and more than 26,000 illegal immigrants who defied judges' orders to leave the country.
The planning is not just taking place in Houston.
In August 2007, ICE agents detained 180 workers at a chicken-processing plant near Hamilton, Ohio.
Community activists there are helping undocumented workers obtain U.S. passports for their children, as well as establishing dual citizenship so their children can attend schools if they return to Latin America.
There are many, however, who want to encourage illegal immigrants to leave the country rather than help them.
''Well I'm not surprised it's happening," Louise Whiteford, president of Texans for Immigration Reform in Houston, said about the raid plans. ''I've gotten to the point of wondering if anyone worries about maintaining ourselves as a sovereign country."
Families devastated
In Houston, the June 25 work site raid on Action Rags USA galvanized community groups who were ill-prepared to help the 166 detained workers.
Since the raid, a number of nonprofit organizations, attorneys, elected officials and business groups have formed the Houston Raid Rapid Response Team.
''There's a need because the raid at Action Rags demonstrated the devastating effect on the families and communities," said Jimenez, the longtime Houston activist.
''We learned that families are disorganized by a raid, and face not only legal but serious economic, social and psychological problems."
Lawrence Rushton, an immigration lawyer, is helping the team assemble a list of local attorneys willing to help workers picked up in future raids.
''Unfortunately in Houston, we didn't have any kind of response plan set up," Rushton said. ''That's what we're doing now, trying to set up a database or pool of attorneys to represent people caught up in these raids, either pro bono or for minimal cost."
Rushton said most of his clients contact him after a family member has been detained, but more are asking for advice in advance.
For student, 'It's scary'
The prospect of his family being deported is terrifying to Pedro Arevalo, an 18-year-old college student born here shortly after his family moved from Mexico. His mother and father, two sisters and a brother are all undocumented and live in Houston.
Arevalo cannot file an application for permanent residency for his parents and siblings until he turns 21. So for now, the family is trying to save money in case of an arrest.
''It's scary," he said. ''I mean, they're hunting these people down like they are animals and they aren't — they're here to work. They're just trying to become normal, working, functional members of society."
August 8, 2008
Feds indict local man on immigration charge
By ASHLEY TOMPKINS - Tribune City Editor
Thursday, August 7, 2008 11:11 AM CDT
Federal grand jurors on Wednesday returned an indictment against a Mount Pleasant man on charges of being in the United States illegally after having been removed in November of 1999.
Lucio Ramirez, 34, is currently in the custody of the U.S Marshals.
A complaint filed with the United States District Court in Texarkana shows Ramirez was found in Titus County after having been removed from the United States nearly nine years ago.
Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators received information that Ramirez, who also goes by the alias Juan M. Ortiz, was residing in Mount Pleasant illegally. After conducting a follow-up investigation, which included record checks on vehicle registration and a Texas Drivers License, agents found a prior immigration removal.
On July 15, agents encountered Ramirez in the 1000 block of Gibson Street in Mount Pleasant. During a field interview, Ramirez identified himself as Lucio Ramirez and admitted to ICE special agents that he did not possess valid immigration documents, according to an affidavit filed in the federal district court.
Ramirez was taken into custody and voluntarily spoke with ICE agents without legal counsel present, according to court documents. During that interview, Ramirez admitted to ICE agents that he had previously been removed from the United States, specifically in November of 1999 in Dallas.
He said he illegally re-entered the United States that same month, according to the affidavit signed by a senior ICE special agent.
ICE agents confirmed that Ramirez had an alien registration file assigned to him after being previously removed from the United States. According to that file, cited in the affidavit, on or about Nov. 1, 1999, Ramirez was encountered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Dallas at the DFW Airport, where he applied for admission into the United States after an inbound flight from Acapulco, Mexico and presented a California birth certificate to inspectors. He confirmed that he was not a U.S. citizen during a further examination and was removed from the United States.
According to court documents, information contained in Ramirez's alien registration file appears to match the signature of Ramirez taken during his encounter on July 15.
Ramirez was remanded to the custody of the United States Marshal during an initial appearance on July 16.
An arraignment hearing is set for Aug. 14 in Texarkana.
If convicted, he could receive imprisonment of not less than two years and a fine of not more than $250,000. The Bureau of ICE is investigating this case. Assistant United States Attorney Alan Jackson is prosecuting the case.
Thursday, August 7, 2008 11:11 AM CDT
Federal grand jurors on Wednesday returned an indictment against a Mount Pleasant man on charges of being in the United States illegally after having been removed in November of 1999.
Lucio Ramirez, 34, is currently in the custody of the U.S Marshals.
A complaint filed with the United States District Court in Texarkana shows Ramirez was found in Titus County after having been removed from the United States nearly nine years ago.
Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators received information that Ramirez, who also goes by the alias Juan M. Ortiz, was residing in Mount Pleasant illegally. After conducting a follow-up investigation, which included record checks on vehicle registration and a Texas Drivers License, agents found a prior immigration removal.
On July 15, agents encountered Ramirez in the 1000 block of Gibson Street in Mount Pleasant. During a field interview, Ramirez identified himself as Lucio Ramirez and admitted to ICE special agents that he did not possess valid immigration documents, according to an affidavit filed in the federal district court.
Ramirez was taken into custody and voluntarily spoke with ICE agents without legal counsel present, according to court documents. During that interview, Ramirez admitted to ICE agents that he had previously been removed from the United States, specifically in November of 1999 in Dallas.
He said he illegally re-entered the United States that same month, according to the affidavit signed by a senior ICE special agent.
ICE agents confirmed that Ramirez had an alien registration file assigned to him after being previously removed from the United States. According to that file, cited in the affidavit, on or about Nov. 1, 1999, Ramirez was encountered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Dallas at the DFW Airport, where he applied for admission into the United States after an inbound flight from Acapulco, Mexico and presented a California birth certificate to inspectors. He confirmed that he was not a U.S. citizen during a further examination and was removed from the United States.
According to court documents, information contained in Ramirez's alien registration file appears to match the signature of Ramirez taken during his encounter on July 15.
Ramirez was remanded to the custody of the United States Marshal during an initial appearance on July 16.
An arraignment hearing is set for Aug. 14 in Texarkana.
If convicted, he could receive imprisonment of not less than two years and a fine of not more than $250,000. The Bureau of ICE is investigating this case. Assistant United States Attorney Alan Jackson is prosecuting the case.
Immigration Enforcement Breaks Families
Posted: Aug 7, 2008 06:00 PM CDT
The recent enforcement of strict immigration laws is dividing Panhandle families and some claim taxpayers are paying the price.
Local immigration specialists say dividing families with U.S. born children can lead to divorce, single parent households, or the need for foster families.
That in turn can affect a child's ability to function in school and to become a contributing member of society.
Today I visited with one Amarillo grandmother whose grandkids have been without their mother for six months, because she is not allowed to come back to the U.S.
With their mother barred from the U.S. Linda Ferrell says her two granddaughters have changed.
"She's four, she was very outgoing, she's totally quit talking, she doesn't smile, she doesn't want to eat," says Ferrell,"I've seen a huge change even in the little one who is 16 months. She's very clingy, doesn't understand what's going on. It's very heart-breaking."
And her absence is also hard on her husband.
Ferrell says, "We had no idea that she'd be going through this process that has be on for so long. He has a big financial burden trying to support him and the girls and trying to support her over there."
An immigration lawyer says he has made an appeal to the U.S. government over the current immigration laws that separate parents from their children but after two years he says he is still waiting to hear from them.
The recent enforcement of strict immigration laws is dividing Panhandle families and some claim taxpayers are paying the price.
Local immigration specialists say dividing families with U.S. born children can lead to divorce, single parent households, or the need for foster families.
That in turn can affect a child's ability to function in school and to become a contributing member of society.
Today I visited with one Amarillo grandmother whose grandkids have been without their mother for six months, because she is not allowed to come back to the U.S.
With their mother barred from the U.S. Linda Ferrell says her two granddaughters have changed.
"She's four, she was very outgoing, she's totally quit talking, she doesn't smile, she doesn't want to eat," says Ferrell,"I've seen a huge change even in the little one who is 16 months. She's very clingy, doesn't understand what's going on. It's very heart-breaking."
And her absence is also hard on her husband.
Ferrell says, "We had no idea that she'd be going through this process that has be on for so long. He has a big financial burden trying to support him and the girls and trying to support her over there."
An immigration lawyer says he has made an appeal to the U.S. government over the current immigration laws that separate parents from their children but after two years he says he is still waiting to hear from them.
August 6, 2008
Border agents unevenly spread on boundary
SAN ANTONIO -- Despite efforts to add Border Patrol agents to areas where immigrant traffic is high and drug violence is flaring, officers assigned to the 2,000-mile boundary with Mexico are bunched up near the California coast. And some critics see politics at play.
An Associated Press analysis of Border Patrol staffing shows that the San Diego sector, with the shortest section of border and fences covering half the boundary, has four times the number of agents per mile that West Texas does and three times as many as most of Arizona.
That is the case even though the Tucson sector in Arizona has been the busiest spot for illegal crossings for years and El Paso sits next to a Mexican city that has seen a surge in drug-cartel violence so severe that Mexicans are pleading for asylum in the U.S.
"I think it makes us less safe," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said of the way agents are posted along the border.
Border Patrol officials defend the staffing levels, saying San Diego's transportation routes and year-round balmy weather make it an attractive spot for smugglers.
Others suggest, however, that members of Congress who most embrace the agency's push are rewarded with more agents _ a notion a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman rejected Wednesday.
Borderwide, staffing has increased dramatically in the past five years as political pressure to prevent illegal immigration has mounted. On the southern border, there are roughly 15,000 agents, up from 9,500 in 2004.
And while the most dramatic growth has occurred near the Arizona-California line and around El Paso, San Diego's short section of border has, by far, the most agents per mile at 37. That compares with 11 for most of Arizona and nine for the Rio Grande Valley and West Texas, based on head counts given to the AP in July.
The 60-mile San Diego sector is at the southern end of a county with roughly 3 million people. It has two major northbound highways and easy access to food, water and communication _ all of which make it inviting to smugglers and illegal immigrants.
But the sector is already heavily reinforced: Two-thirds of the border is blocked by fences or vehicle barriers. The most populous part of the boundary has nearly 10 miles of double-layer fences with stadium lights.
The border in Arizona and Texas is more wide open and more rural in many places, which can make it harder to guard. It also includes major interstates and sizable population centers where recent arrivals can easily blend in. The Rio Grande forms the border in Texas, but in many places it is possible to swim, wade or float across it.
Arizona has long been the busiest and deadliest section of the border, recording hundreds of deaths in recent years among immigrants who fell victim to the rocky terrain and the fierce desert heat and cold.
Nearly half the apprehensions of illegal immigrants along the Mexican border are made in the Tucson sector, but those numbers are a poor indicator of effectiveness because research indicates that people trying to sneak across get caught less than half the time, said Wayne Cornelius, a professor at the University of California at San Diego.
Border communities in Texas have seen a frightening rise in drug violence spilling across the border, with assassinations and kidnappings in the United States.
Laura Keehner, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security, which oversees the Border Patrol, said agents and other assets are allocated based on the needs of the individual sectors.
"The idea that we politicize where we put our Border Patrol and assets is flat wrong," she said. "The Border Patrol tells us what combination works best where. They're in the field every day."
Mark Endicott, a spokesman for Border Patrol in San Diego, said the sprawling city's close proximity to the border, favorable climate and many transportation options make the area unique. He declined to discuss whether San Diego's needs outweigh those of other sectors but said, "As far as the activity going on here in San Diego, the agents are needed."
Observers say, however, politics plays a role in how agents are allocated.
"In many cases, they're very political," said T.J. Bonner, president of the agents union. "Congress giveth and taketh away, so you can't just thumb your nose at Congress and say, `We're going to make these decisions based only on our enforcement needs.'"
San Diego is represented by Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican who has been among the most outspoken proponents of increased border security and fences. But a spokesman said the congressman has not pushed for more agents for San Diego.
"It's nothing we've done personally in this office," said Hunter spokesman Joe Kasper.
Texas leaders, under pressure from border communities with close ties to Mexico, have pushed Customs and Border Protection to collaborate more with communities affected by the fence planned along the border and to make sure systems for those entering legally run smoothly _ the kind of cajoling that has sometimes put them at odds with the agency.
Cornyn said he has asked the agency how it assigns agents.
"They say they have a formula, but I'm not convinced or persuaded that this is altogether a rational distribution of resources. There's a certain amount of whoever screams and yells gets taken care of first," the senator said.
Cornelius, the university researcher, said politics probably do play a part in staffing. The entire GOP congressional delegation from San Diego "would have screamed bloody murder if the Border Patrol had reduced San Diego sector staffing levels appreciably," he said.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
An Associated Press analysis of Border Patrol staffing shows that the San Diego sector, with the shortest section of border and fences covering half the boundary, has four times the number of agents per mile that West Texas does and three times as many as most of Arizona.
That is the case even though the Tucson sector in Arizona has been the busiest spot for illegal crossings for years and El Paso sits next to a Mexican city that has seen a surge in drug-cartel violence so severe that Mexicans are pleading for asylum in the U.S.
"I think it makes us less safe," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said of the way agents are posted along the border.
Border Patrol officials defend the staffing levels, saying San Diego's transportation routes and year-round balmy weather make it an attractive spot for smugglers.
Others suggest, however, that members of Congress who most embrace the agency's push are rewarded with more agents _ a notion a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman rejected Wednesday.
Borderwide, staffing has increased dramatically in the past five years as political pressure to prevent illegal immigration has mounted. On the southern border, there are roughly 15,000 agents, up from 9,500 in 2004.
And while the most dramatic growth has occurred near the Arizona-California line and around El Paso, San Diego's short section of border has, by far, the most agents per mile at 37. That compares with 11 for most of Arizona and nine for the Rio Grande Valley and West Texas, based on head counts given to the AP in July.
The 60-mile San Diego sector is at the southern end of a county with roughly 3 million people. It has two major northbound highways and easy access to food, water and communication _ all of which make it inviting to smugglers and illegal immigrants.
But the sector is already heavily reinforced: Two-thirds of the border is blocked by fences or vehicle barriers. The most populous part of the boundary has nearly 10 miles of double-layer fences with stadium lights.
The border in Arizona and Texas is more wide open and more rural in many places, which can make it harder to guard. It also includes major interstates and sizable population centers where recent arrivals can easily blend in. The Rio Grande forms the border in Texas, but in many places it is possible to swim, wade or float across it.
Arizona has long been the busiest and deadliest section of the border, recording hundreds of deaths in recent years among immigrants who fell victim to the rocky terrain and the fierce desert heat and cold.
Nearly half the apprehensions of illegal immigrants along the Mexican border are made in the Tucson sector, but those numbers are a poor indicator of effectiveness because research indicates that people trying to sneak across get caught less than half the time, said Wayne Cornelius, a professor at the University of California at San Diego.
Border communities in Texas have seen a frightening rise in drug violence spilling across the border, with assassinations and kidnappings in the United States.
Laura Keehner, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security, which oversees the Border Patrol, said agents and other assets are allocated based on the needs of the individual sectors.
"The idea that we politicize where we put our Border Patrol and assets is flat wrong," she said. "The Border Patrol tells us what combination works best where. They're in the field every day."
Mark Endicott, a spokesman for Border Patrol in San Diego, said the sprawling city's close proximity to the border, favorable climate and many transportation options make the area unique. He declined to discuss whether San Diego's needs outweigh those of other sectors but said, "As far as the activity going on here in San Diego, the agents are needed."
Observers say, however, politics plays a role in how agents are allocated.
"In many cases, they're very political," said T.J. Bonner, president of the agents union. "Congress giveth and taketh away, so you can't just thumb your nose at Congress and say, `We're going to make these decisions based only on our enforcement needs.'"
San Diego is represented by Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican who has been among the most outspoken proponents of increased border security and fences. But a spokesman said the congressman has not pushed for more agents for San Diego.
"It's nothing we've done personally in this office," said Hunter spokesman Joe Kasper.
Texas leaders, under pressure from border communities with close ties to Mexico, have pushed Customs and Border Protection to collaborate more with communities affected by the fence planned along the border and to make sure systems for those entering legally run smoothly _ the kind of cajoling that has sometimes put them at odds with the agency.
Cornyn said he has asked the agency how it assigns agents.
"They say they have a formula, but I'm not convinced or persuaded that this is altogether a rational distribution of resources. There's a certain amount of whoever screams and yells gets taken care of first," the senator said.
Cornelius, the university researcher, said politics probably do play a part in staffing. The entire GOP congressional delegation from San Diego "would have screamed bloody murder if the Border Patrol had reduced San Diego sector staffing levels appreciably," he said.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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