lframerica.com Blog

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/brothers_85658___article.html/bernardo_indicted.html

A federal grand jury has returned a 19-count indictment against twin brothers Alberto and Bernardo Peña, and three others on charges of obtaining fraudulent work visas for more than 80 Indian nationals.

The Peña brothers, both 38, face charges of obtaining fraudulent H-2B visas, which are used to procure foreign manual labor. The visas are for non-immigrants and allow an employer in the United States to hire foreign workers for temporary non-agricultural work, according to federal court documents.

Also named in the indictment are Mahendrakumar “Mack” Patel, 55, Rakesh Patel, 36, and Marte Othon Villar Sr., 48, according to federal court documents. Are all charged with encouraging and inducing the illegal immigration of the Indian nationals in exchange for thousands of dollars per visa.

“Today’s significant charges represent the excellent task force-like efforts of four federal agencies,” U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle said in a prepared statement issued Friday. “All of the criminal charges are the result of a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional investigation.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of State, Department of Labor, and the Internal Revenue Service all worked together on the case.

Charles Keith Viscardi, 48, the owner and manager of a construction company located in New Iberia, La., is alleged to have enlisted AMEB Business Group Inc., a visa facilitation firm owned and operated by the Peñas and Villar, to hire foreign workers.

Viscardi asked AMEB Business Group Inc. to procure foreign manual labor under the H-2B visa program.

Viscardi, who was charged on March 20 with conspiring to encourage and induce illegal immigration in connection with the Indian scheme, is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Colvin Botley. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

AMEB procured workers from Mexico for Viscardi’s construction company, however, the Peñas and Villar also submitted documentation to the Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services and other governmental agencies seeking workers from India on behalf of Viscardi.

Mack, of Fort Worth, and Rakesh, of Houston, recruited citizens of India who were willing to pay between $20,000 to $80,000 in exchange for visas to enter the U.S., the news release states.

In spring 2006, Alberto and Bernardo traveled to India to assist the Indian nationals with the application process and allegedly visited and communicated with the U.S. Consulate in Mumbai.

The U.S. Consulate in Mumbai received an anonymous fax on Feb. 26, 2006, “which alleged that a recent group of visa applicants had each fraudulently obtained visas by paying an unknown U.S. person fees between $57,000 to $68,000,” court documents show.

The 88 Indian nationals began to arrive in the United States from late February to late March 2006 and entered the country, court documents show.

Each of the Indian nationals that were granted H-2B visas arrived to Houston, where they made payments for their visas in the form of cash, cashiers checks and international money orders.

“None of the Indian nationals were ever employed by Viscardi at the construction company,” the news release states. “Instead, they simply disappeared throughout the U.S. after paying for their fraudulently obtained visas. All of the conspirators, including Villar and Viscardi, shared in the proceeds derived from the scheme.”

All defendants are accused of assisting in the procurement of the H-2B visas for the Indian nationals, although they allegedly knew none had intentions of working for the company that obtained the visas on their behalf.

If convicted, they each face a maximum penalty of up to 15 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Bernardo faces an additional 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine if convicted of money laundering for the purpose of concealment. Mack and Alberto each face an additional 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted of violating the money laundering spending statute.

Mack and Rakesh appeared Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Mary Milloy in Houston. They were released on a $50,000 bond. They are scheduled to appear in federal court on April 15 before U.S. Magistrate Calvin Botley in Houston.

Alberto appeared Friday before Milloy and was released on a $50,000 bond.

Bernardo and Villar remain at large, and warrants for their arrest have been issued.

Anyone with information regarding their whereabouts is asked to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE (866-347-2423).

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/officials_85497___article.html/increasingly_recklessness.html

McALLEN - Human smugglers are employing increasingly risky and dangerous methods to transport illegal immigrants since security tightened along the U.S.-Mexico border, law enforcement officials said.

“They’re getting less area they can successfully enter,” said Oscar Saldaña, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman.

“That’s why were seeing more of these desperate acts. And unfortunately, we anticipate there’s going to be more of these types of events.”

On Thursday a Ford F-150 carrying more than 20 illegal immigrants collided with another vehicle on Expressway 83 in Peñitas, leaving three dead and another 14 injured.

They were the latest victims of what appears to be a growing and often fatal trend in the Rio Grande Valley of human smugglers, or coyotes, filling cars and trucks with loads of immigrants far beyond the vehicles’ capacity and then driving at high speeds, often to elude law enforcement.

Law enforcement’s presence here has increased significantly over the past six years, since President Bush ordered federal law enforcement agencies to tighten control of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The number of Border Patrol agents in the Valley has risen from about 1,200 in 2002 to more than 2,200 this year, Saldaña said. And local law enforcement agencies - from small-town police departments to the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office - have been awarded a series of state and federal grants to dedicate officers to border security details.

“You’re talking about human smuggling and drugs,” Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. “There’s no doubt in the last five years the attitude of the human smuggler has taken a 180. They have transformed themselves into a commodity broker that has no limitations to getting their cargo to where they want to go.”

Less publicized than their counterparts in the drug trafficking industry, human smuggling organizations tend to be highly structured, with resources and operatives spread across the globe, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Janice Ayala, who directs investigations between Laredo and Brownsville.

Fees range anywhere from $300 to $50,000 per person, depending on where the immigrant is coming from and wants to go, as well as the difficulty of the route, she said. A person traveling from China might have one smuggler take them to Central America, another take them to Mexico, another to take them across the border and another to move them through the United States.

“These are organizations moving people from one country to another to another, so they need a very sophisticated network in order to do that,” Ayala said.

“Most of these alien smuggling organizations are paying passage to a large (drug) cartel, because they have the routes to the U.S.”

Officials uniformly expressed dismay at what Treviño described as the “abrasive and violent” attitude of the coyotes.

“Back in the day, a coyote would take money for helping people across, but they were maybe more of a compañero, more of a surrogate,” Treviño said.

The Mexican government, at both the state and federal level, is in the midst of a public relations campaign to warn Mexican nationals of the growing danger of crossing the border illegally.

Billboards in the United States and Mexico caution against traveling with coyotes, and government-written newspaper columns tell horror stories of immigrants drowning in the Rio Grande or being left to die in the desert heat.

“We share the tragic stories of migrants, so people can talk to relatives and discourage them,” said Miriam Medel, vice consul of the Mexican Consulate in McAllen.

“(The coyotes) are our worst enemy, and we’re always trying to tell people not to trust them.”

In Washington, D.C., where Congress is expected to address immigration reform again next year, the recent worsening of the human smuggling problem has not as yet gained traction as a political issue, said Douglas Rivlin, a spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant advocacy group.
In fact, despite heightened interest early in this presidential campaign, illegal immigration has fallen off as a talking point for the candidates over the last two months, he said.
“I think (some people are aware) in terms of just some of the press coverage we’ve seen about immigrants being held captive by smugglers, but not in terms of people being aware that we’re in a new era of smuggling,” Rivlin said.
‘Our worst enemy’
‘Abrasive and violent’

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/border_85587___article.html/agent_doty.html

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/81230.php

http://www.hanfordsentinel.com/articles/2008/03/25/news/doc47e941f10c589451114692.txt

By Sentinel Staff

Also arrested was Armando Ceja Magalloon, a previously deported felon, now being held at the Fresno County Jail on a federal immigration hold.

Investigators discovered several pieces of equipment commonly used during cockfights in the back yard, where the illegal sport was being held.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5653393.html

PENITAS — A pickup truck crammed with suspected illegal immigrants collided with a sport utility vehicle near the Mexican border Thursday, killing three people and injuring 14 others.

Police said there were at least 20 people in the truck when it crashed before dawn on U.S. Highway 83, the main east-west artery along the border in the Rio Grande Valley.

“There were bodies all over the place,” said Penitas interim Police Chief David Harris.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Nina Pruneda said three illegal immigrants were in custody. Pruneda said 14 others were being treated for a variety of head and back injuries in five hospitals; one was believed to be paralyzed.

The majority of those found are thought to be Mexican. Pruneda said all were men except for one woman and a 15-year-old boy, who had extensive internal injuries.

Investigators were trying to determine if the driver was among those injured or if he escaped, Pruneda said.

Information was not immediately available on the condition of the other driver. Department of Public Safety troopers were investigating the cause of the accident.

Some of the survivors told police they had been hurried into the back of the truck and had not gone far before the accident. “I think they had paid a fee” to be smuggled across the border, Harris said.

Blood stained the grass at the scene, which happened to be in front of L&I Funeral Home. The gold pickup came to rest against a telephone pole, just feet from the funeral home’s display headstones.

The area is a major immigrant-smuggling corridor. Lately there had been an influx of immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, but most of those involved in Thursday’s crash are believed to be Mexican, La Joya police spokesman Joe Cantu said.

The smugglers have little regard for the safety of their passengers. Accidents where immigrants are tossed from the open beds of pickups are not unusual, Cantu said.

Looking at the smashed pickup with an extended bed, Cantu estimated there could have been as many as 30 in it. “They get in — it’s like sardines,” he said.

The smugglers often escape when the groups are nabbed, Cantu said, adding, “These guys run like gazelles.”

http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/002731.html

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/25/scotus.texas/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Supreme Court has concluded Texas can execute a Mexican man sentenced to death for murder, ending an unusual capital appeal that pitted President Bush against his home state in a dispute over federal authority, local sovereignty and foreign treaties.

The 6-3 vote Tuesday means the pending execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin can proceed. He faces lethal injection for two brutal slayings.

At issue was whether the state had to give in to a demand by the president that the prisoner be allowed new hearings and sentencing.

Bush made that demand reluctantly after an international court concluded Medellin was improperly denied access to his consulate before his original prosecution, a violation of a treaty signed by the United States decades ago.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion saying the international court “is not domestic law,” thereby restricting the president’s power over states. “The executive’s narrow and strictly limited authority to settle international claims disputes pursuant to an executive agreement cannot stretch so far as to support the current presidential memorandum” that would force Texas to conduct a new state trial, he wrote.

Medellin was 18 when he participated in the June 1993 gang rape and murder of two Harris County, Texas, girls: Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16. He was convicted of the crimes and sentenced to death.

Medellin’s lawyers argued he was not informed upon his arrest of his right to contact Mexican consular officials. Those officials were never able to meet with him until after his conviction.

About 43 other Mexican nationals awaiting execution in various states — including 13 in Texas — also will be affected by the high court ruling. Only Oklahoma has commuted a capital inmate’s sentence to life in prison in response to the international judgment.

The Mexican government filed an appeal against the United States with the International Court of Justice in January 2003, alleging violations of international law. Medellin filed his own federal and state appeals based on similar complaints as well as a claim of ineffective counsel. Medellin has the support of the European Union and several international human rights groups.

The ICJ ruled in 2004 the United States had violated the rights of the Mexican prisoners, in part because officials and prosecutors failed to notify their home countries, which could have provided legal and other assistance. The ICJ judges ordered the United States to provide “review and reconsideration” of the sentences and convictions of the Mexican prisoners.

The court is based in The Hague, Netherlands, and resolves disputes between nations over treaty obligations. The United States is one of the signatories to the 1963 Vienna Convention, laying out rights of people detained in other nations. The case turned on what role each branch of government plays to give force to international treaty obligations.

Roberts concluded international court judgments cannot be forced upon individual states. The president cannot “establish binding rules of decision that pre-empt contrary state law,” he said, and the treaty does not specifically require states to remedy any treaty violations.

The chief justice was supported in his position by Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said the presidential memorandum in this case was “self-executing,” and warned, “the nation may well break its word even though the president seeks to live up to that word and Congress has done nothing to suggest the contrary.”

He was supported by Justice David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who normally opposes the use of the death penalty, agreed with his conservative colleagues in this case. But he suggested the legal responsibility now falls on the state to give Medellin a fresh hearing, calling it a “modest cost of compliance.”

“Texas’ duty in this respect is all the greater since it was Texas that — by failing to provide consular notice in accordance with the Geneva Convention — ensnared the United States in the current controversy. Having put the nation in breach of one treaty, it is now up to Texas to prevent breach of another.”

Lawyers for the administration and Medellin argued Bush properly exercised his unilateral executive authority, which a majority of justices had questioned in oral arguments last September.

The Mexican government filed an appeal with the ICJ against the United States in January 2003, alleging violations of international law.

Medellin filed his own federal and state appeals based on similar complaints, as well as a claim of ineffective counsel. Medellin has the support of the European Union and several international human rights groups.

Bush said he disagreed with the international court’s conclusions but agreed to comply with them.

In a February 28, 2005, executive order, he said, “The United States will discharge its international obligations … by having state courts give effect to the decision.”

But a Texas appeals court later rejected that executive authority. In a sharply worded opinion, Judge Sharon Keller concluded the president’s “unprecedented, unnecessary, and intrusive exercise of power over the Texas court system cannot be supported by the foreign policy authority conferred on him by the United States Constitution.”

The Constitution does not directly give the president the power to enforce the treaties agreed to by the United States.

However, Article VI says that “all treaties made … under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby.”

Lawyers for the administration and Medellin argued Bush properly exercised his unilateral executive authority, which several justices had questioned in oral arguments last September.

Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz told the high court the president’s action was “a very curious assertion of presidential authority,” saying it “singles out the states, commandeers those judges.”

The Bush White House typically backs states in their power to carry out executions, but Justice Department officials said that in these instances, the president’s power to conduct foreign policy outweighed states’ interests.

The Supreme Court originally heard the Medellin case in 2005 but did not rule on the merits, waiting instead for lower courts to resolve the federalism angle.

SOURCE (www.cbs46.com)

Lawrenceville,Ga — A van driver could face federal charges after Gwinnett County police discovered 19 illegal immigrants in the vehicle Monday.

Gwinnett’s Police Interdiction Unit found the immigrants during a routine traffic stop on Interstate 85 north at Buford Drive.

Police pulled the van over because the window tinting was darker than is legally allowed, investigators said.

The driver, Lazaro Ayala, 23, is also in the U.S. illegally, according to police.  Ayala was driving the others from Texas to New York.

The passengers’ ages ranged from 6 to 47. Three of the passengers were children 13 and younger.

Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement took the immigrants into custody.

Date: 2007-12-09

Location: Norristown, PA

Victim: Roger Guzman

Age: 28

Sex: Male

Crime Description: Alfonso Vasquez (25) & Jose Angel Ramirez, illegal aliens, were involved in the stabbing death of Roger Guzman outside a nightclub.  The fight began because a friend of Guzman, named Martin Perez, informed Guzman that he had been insulted and called names by a group of Hispanic males at a local restaurant  Guzman, Perez and Herrero (another friend) then walked to the restaurant and confronted the men. An argument broke out, and when it was thought to be ended Guzman was reentering the local nightclub when two Hispanic men holding large knives over took him.

A video camera captured the attack and noted Vasquez was the one who initiated the stabbing, before fleeing the scene. To date it is believed he and Ramirez are still at large.
Perpetrator I: Alfonso Vasquez

Age: 25

Nationality: Mexico

Perpetrator II:  Jose Angel Ramirez

Age: Unknown

Nationality: Mexico

Prior Convictions or Known Crimes: Unrelated Assault Charges