November 30, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Immigrants, Migration
A federal judge Wednesday declared the end of the government’s
four-year case against a Denver
Pakistani-American family once targeted by the FBI as terrorists.
Family members whose lives were turned upside down simply wept.
“We’ve lost everything,” longtime Colorado restaurateur Abdul
Qayyum said.
Chief U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock accepted plea deals with
federal prosecutors who dropped and reduced immigration charges
they pursued after their terrorism case fizzled against Qayyum, his
daughter Saima Saima, wife Chris Warren and nephew Irfan Kamran.
Now only Haroon Rashid, Saima’s husband, is jailed. Federal
prosecutors dropped all charges against him too. But Rashid, jailed
for more than two years, faces deportation after a misdemeanor
assault on a gang member who hassled his family.
A federal appeals court on Nov. 20 temporarily blocked Rashid’s
deportation pending an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
FBI agents targeted this family of naturalized U.S. citizens from
the
Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands based on secret evidence after
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Then-U.S. Attorney General
John Ashcroft trumpeted the case as aggressive action against
terrorists.
“When the attorney general of the United States declares your
family terrorists,” the result is damage “far beyond anything
this court can do,” defense attorney Ray Moore told Babcock during
one of two emotional hearings Wednesday.
The family suffered financially as their restaurant in Castle Rock
closed. Children faced teasing; mothers grew depressed.
Babcock acknowledged that the long, hard case was trying on
everyone involved. “Sometimes these things take too long. … This
is one of those cases where it just took time to get it right.”
The immigration charges FBI agents pursued, after allegations of
links to al-Qaeda evaporated in 2004, involved statements family
members made about a relative to get him a visa to enter the U.S.
In multiple plea deals made final Wednesday, Qayyum pleaded guilty
to one charge of making a false statement to a federal agent. He
received a sentence of one year’s probation.
Kamran, a father of four, pleaded guilty to a petty offense after
prosecutors dropped two felony charges. All charges against Warren
and Saima were dropped.
“The most important thing that hurt me emotionally was when they
pointed guns at my kid and he was shivering” during a raid, Kamran
said. “(Yet) I still haven’t changed my mind about this country,”
he said. “I’m still positive. There are still a lot of people with
good values.”
Federal prosecutors defended their actions.
“I don’t know if there was any excess in this case. It was done
just like any other case would be,” Assistant U.S. Attorney David
Gaouette said.
Now defense attorneys say they’re trying to make sure family
members’ names aren’t on federal terrorist watch lists.
November 20, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
Repatriation offered to those in Denver with serious medical needs
Some illegal immigrants are wary of accepting the free trips back, fearing the care would be substandard or unreliable.
Hundreds of Mexican illegal immigrants are in Colorado not just for
work but also for free medical care they say they can’t get back
home. Now, Mexican officials have agreed to bring some home and
help them find doctors there.
But many of these illegal immigrants – including Eloina Meza, a
single mother of a disabled boy featured in the Nov. 13 Denver Post
– see little incentive to return to a country where comparable
opportunities don’t exist.
Juan Marcos Gutierrez, Mexico’s consul general in Denver, confirmed
a new deal negotiated with Dr. Patricia Gabow, chief of the Denver
Health and Hospital Authority.
Under the agreement, Denver health workers who provide kidney
dialysis to illegal immigrants are guiding those who are willing to
Mexico’s consulate in Denver.
The immigrants are told they can receive free travel home and help
finding appropriate health care – though they get no assurance it
will be free.
Mexican officials also will repatriate other illegal immigrants
with serious medical needs besides failing kidneys, Gutierrez said.
He said he didn’t know how many immigrants might qualify.
“I won’t repatriate someone with the flu or a cold,” he said.
“We are talking chronic diseases, difficult medical conditions.”
The goal, Gutierrez said, is to “give an option to our nationals.
But it is not my duty … to relieve (U.S.) hospital budgets.”
He pointed out that illegal immigrants often pay taxes that support
public health care here.
Denver health officials are prohibited by law from checking the
legal status of immigrants they serve. But records show about 1,500
emergency-room patients a year are unable to give a U.S. Social
Security number for billing purposes.
Many still seek treatment here despite a new state law that bars
hospitals from giving publicly funded, nonemergency health care to
illegal immigrants. Those immigrants now are treated as uninsured,
self-pay patients.
Gabow said several patients already have been sent to the
consulate. Six were in the process of heading home to continue
dialysis treatment in Mexico, according to Mexican officials.
Yet many illegal immigrants are reluctant to rely on Mexico’s
government, saying that Mexico’s poverty, inequality and widespread
lack of access to medical care drove many of them north in the
first place.
“(The government’s offer) is nice. I like the idea. But here, I
trust the doctors more. I trust everyone here more,” said a 32-
year-old illegal-immigrant aircraft-maintenance worker who spoke on
condition of anonymity, fearing authorities would use his name to
find him.
The worker’s 7-year-old son was born with major deformities that
blocked his breathing and required more than a dozen surgeries.
“I’d like to live in Mexico. It’s my country,” the man said. But
his son “was born here, and he gets all the medical support.”
His son now thrives at a Colorado Springs-area school. He and his
father recently visited doctors in Leon, Mexico, to investigate
possibilities for treatment.
The father said the Mexican doctor told them, “I recommend you
finish all the medical stuff in the United States. Your doctors
there know him. He’s got pretty serious problems with his jaw that
will require plastic surgery.”
In another case, a Denver-area family that includes several illegal
immigrants – and a U.S.- born 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy
and heart trouble – initially refused to accept public benefits out
of pride. But then they saw huge bills from Denver Health for brain
scans the boy needed after seizures.
Now they rely on Medicaid to pay these bills, though the father
holds a job that has allowed them to afford a home. There’s no way
the family would return to Mexico, said Gisela, 21, the boy’s
sister.
“He’s not going to get any of the medical services he needs
there,” she said, because he lacks a Mexican birth certificate.
“And even if he was, they would not be as good as they are
here.”
The medical agreement was in the works before Eloina Meza came
forward with her story in The Post, but Mexican officials revealed
their new policy last week after learning of the plight of Meza and
her son Edgar, a U.S. citizen who suffers from Down syndrome and
congenital heart defects.
Illegally in the country for 12 years, Meza recently tried to
surrender to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at
their offices in an effort to have a judge review her case and
allow her to stay legally in Denver. The agents refused.
Charged with hunting for criminal immigrants and terrorists, they
were reluctant to divert energy to process Meza, ICE officials
said, defending a policy against accepting “walk-ins” who seek
permission to stay.
Under U.S. law, immigrants here illegally for more than 10 years
who can prove a pressing humanitarian need can be allowed to stay
in the country legally if a judge reviews their case.
Meza has stayed here to keep Edgar alive. He had a series of
surgeries, and doctors say he needs regular checkups and drugs to
survive and that returning to Mexico could threaten his life.
“We’re very interested in helping this lady,” said Jorge
Gonzalez, chief of protection services at the consulate. “If she
doesn’t have the possibility to stay, I will try to arrange medical
care in Mexico.”
Meza has agreed to meet with Mexican officials. But she wants her
lawyer, Francesca Ramos, to meet with them first. She’s resolved
that, no matter what, the fragile little boy she loves must
survive.
“Why all of a sudden does the Mexican consulate take an interest
in a case like this?” she asked. “Why didn’t they offer help to
Mexicans that are here in this situation before? I do not
understand the motive behind this meeting and do not have much
confidence.”
November 13, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
Case exposes odd twist: Feds usually reject those who surrender
Federal agents who hunt for illegal immigrants have a policy
against arresting those who voluntarily turn themselves in – as
Eloina Meza discovered recently in Denver.
After hiding for 12 years, Meza mustered her courage and approached
immigration agents at their offices – “I saw the security, the
police, the cameras up around the room” – and tried to surrender.
Her son, Edgar, 8, a U.S. citizen who suffers from Down syndrome
and heart trouble, needs her constantly. A single mother, Meza had
grown increasingly worried that, if immigration agents were to
catch her, she and Edgar could be separated.
Instead, she wanted to turn herself in and have a judge review her
case so that she might stay legally in Denver with her son.
But immigration officials on Sept. 14 turned Meza and Edgar away.
“I was saying, ‘I am here illegally.’ They wouldn’t take me in,”
she said. “I thought they’d at least ask some questions.”
Meza, 44, crossed the border from Mexico in 1994. She has worked
several jobs around Denver, from $4.50-an-hour packaging in a
warehouse to a stint with the U.S. Postal Service.
Her situation exposes an odd dimension to the nation’s newly
beefed-up immigration enforcement system: The same agents who labor
to find illegal immigrants on the streets and in jails – they
caught and deported 100,100 noncriminal immigrants such as Meza
last year – generally won’t accept those who surrender asking for
mercy.
“Walk-ins” taken in past
The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement division “must use its limited resources and
prioritize its mission to target aliens that are the greatest
threat to the community – criminal aliens and terrorists,” ICE
spokesman Carl Rusnok said.
Yet ICE agents around the country have some discretion, according
to a 2005 ICE legal memo. Denver agents in the past did accept
“walk-ins” but have discontinued that practice.
A Sept. 14 letter from Meza’s attorney, Francesca Ramos, asks Jeff
Copp, ICE’s Denver district special agent in charge, for “your
assistance in having Ms. Meza placed in removal proceedings without
detention.”
The goal, Ramos wrote, “is to seek cancellation of removal to
ensure that she will not be separated from her very ill son.”
ICE officials gave no response. The Postal Service confirmed her
letter was delivered Sept. 15.
Immigrant-rights advocates call the ICE turn-away policy inhumane.
“You ought to be able to turn yourself in,” said Robert Deasy,
spokesman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association in
Washington, D.C.
Meza probably “is entitled” to stay in the country with her son
under immigration-law provisions that grant legal status to people
in the country illegally for more than 10 years who also can prove
an exceptional humanitarian need, Deasy said, “but the enforcement
priorities of the Department of Homeland Security do not appear to
include enforcement activities that will benefit a deserving
individual.”
U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo – a leading immigration hard-liner in
Congress, which recently pushed through millions of dollars to
toughen enforcement – also is incensed.
“Is a policeman going to say, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t take you in
right now because I’ve got to direct traffic?”‘ asked Tancredo, a
Littleton Republican.
“(ICE agents) have a responsibility to enforce the law,” he said.
“… And they can’t use the old excuse about resources. They’ve
gotten a lot more. What are they using that for? What do they need
resources for if that person walked in? They don’t have to search
for them.”
Now Meza and Ramos say they’re thinking about voluntarily
approaching ICE agents again.
“I feel more pressure, more fear,” Meza said.
She lives in an area where illegal immigrants struggle to get by
juggling jobs and looking out for one another to avoid police and
possible deportation.
Meza said she’s always turning her head, checking when she leaves
her shared rental house. She drags Edgar out with her late at night
to a grocery store, thinking it’s the only safe time to get food.
For years, she has been working up the nerve to turn herself in,
praying for guidance at a church where parishioners urged her to
visit a lawyer.
Lost her job after 9/11
Edgar was born May 22, 1998, at an Aurora hospital, where doctors
warned that “he is very fragile.” In addition to Down syndrome,
he has a congenital heart problem that required three open-heart
surgeries to put in a prosthetic mitral valve and a pacemaker,
according to medical records.
“He requires close supervision. His pacemaker needs to be checked
monthly, and he needs to be monitored carefully due to the
anticoagulants,” said a letter from Dr. Robert Wolfe at the
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. “Moving away from
this center is potentially life-threatening for Edgar.”
Another factor compelling Meza to beg for legal residency: She
hasn’t been able to work since 2001. After her stint with the
Postal Service, she settled into a job at Pour la France cafe at
Denver International Airport. But after the 9/11 attacks, airport
supervisors checked workers’ Social Security numbers. She was found
out.
Now, she relies on friends to get by. Medicaid pays Edgar’s medical
bills.
“In Mexico, if you go to the hospital and don’t have money, they
won’t help you,” she said.
She has dreamed of returning one day to her home in southern
Mexico. But today, Edgar’s needs come first.
She helps him slide in the park after school and even plays soccer
with him, she said. His smile ignites her whole world.
“He must always be with me,” she said.
October 5, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
An official says the fence planned for the Southwest land border “needs to extend into the water” as smugglers shift directions.
Colorado Springs – As the nation fortifies its Southwest land
border to stop illegal immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere, the
U.S. Coast Guard is bracing for diverted migrants at sea – and
preparing a maritime virtual fence.
The plans call for surveillance drones that can augment radar to
spot smugglers of people or drugs on the oceans, combined with
patrols by helicopters equipped with mounted machine guns.
Tightening U.S. enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border “needs to
extend into the water. That is the goal,” said Adm. Thad Allen,
commandant of the Coast Guard, in an interview here Wednesday at
the annual Homeland Defense Symposium.
“How far east and west we will go remains to be seen,” he said.
Immigrants increasingly try to enter the United States by sea as
well as across the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico land border, according to
government apprehension data. President Bush has said he’ll approve
a massive new fence ordered by Congress along the boundary, in
addition to adding new Border Patrol agents with National Guard
support.
“Given what’s going on along the Southwest border, we are watching
with great interest, and we will be prepared to act,” said Allen,
57, a Tucson native who has led the Coast Guard since May.
Today the Coast Guard and its fleet of 250 cutters and 144
helicopters increasingly patrols hundreds of miles out from U.S.
shores.
California-based crews in recent years have targeted a booming
migrant-smuggling business from Ecuador, apprehending thousands a
year. These operations often are tied into military operations and
the immigration enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland
Security, which in 2003 took over the Coast Guard.
The number of interdictions of U.S.-bound immigrants at sea more
than doubled, increasing from 4,136 in 2001 to 10,279 last year,
Coast Guard data show. A majority are caught in the Caribbean Sea,
including 2,067 Cubans this year, spokesman Steven Blando said.
Early Sunday, a San Diego-based Coast Guard cutter intercepted a 35-foot sailboat a few miles offshore carrying 19 suspected illegal immigrants from Mexico, including a child, said Petty Officer Brian Leshak, spokesman for
the Coast Guard in California. The migrants surrendered and were
handed over to border police.
A new maritime virtual fence in the works would rely on expanded
radar and surveillance from drone aircraft – known as “unmanned
aerial vehicles,” or UAVs – that could spot more immigrants and
drug smugglers at sea, Allen said.
New arrangements with other countries require more maritime vessels
to carry transponder beacons that enable easy tracking. U.S.
officials say this is crucial in helping to weed out which boats
U.S. agents might want to intercept and board.
Coast Guard helicopters now must be armed, as well, and
retrofitting them with machine-gun mounts has begun, Allen said. Since 1979, all Coast Guard crews boarding ships have carried weapons. But helicopters generally haven’t had firepower.
“We use nonlethal force to compel compliance. That’s in keeping
with the Constitution and our laws,” Allen said. “(With)
disabling fire, you are not attempting to harm anybody. You are
attempting to disable engines. Any boat that fails to stop, we can
use warning shots and disabling fire against.”
Immigrant-rights advocates bristled at the prospect of increased
enforcement at sea on top of the land-based efforts.
“That kind of enforcement is not a solution. A solution is a
sensible immigration system that deals with people already here and
gives a mechanism to bring people here legally in the future,”
said Joan Friedland, policy attorney at the National Immigration
Law Center in Washington. “For people who may be fleeing for their
lives or for a better life to be greeted with a machine gun strikes
me as horrific.”
October 2, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
Rise in deportations floods detention centers, courts
The attorney for a Salvadoran jailed in Colorado says custody should be based on “heinous crimes,” not “misfortunes.”
As a terrified 13-year-old, huddling against his mother, Jose
Mendez escaped El Salvador after his father was murdered. She’d
received death threats and a warning: Bad men would kidnap her sons
and cut off their fingers.
When they landed in the United States, immigration officials
allowed them in. Within months, Mendez was speaking English in
school.
He excelled in high school while also holding down a full- time
job. After graduating, he worked his way up to running Qdoba
restaurants around Denver. He enrolled in college, trying to be the
first in his family to earn a degree.
But today the same U.S. system that for a decade nurtured Mendez,
now 23, labors to deport him back to an El Salvador he barely
knows.
He has been held without bail for 3 1/2 months in an overflowing
immigration jail – one person among thousands nationwide awaiting
deportation.
The U.S. government is deporting record numbers of immigrants as
Congress and the public demand enforcement. It’s straining the
immigration system to the breaking point, sweeping up immigrants
such as Mendez, who has no criminal record, along with convicts and
raising questions about fairness.
The surging deportations overload the detention centers where
immigrants are held. Immigration courts also are swamped.
Next month, a federal judge must step in and handle the Mendez
case. This happens more and more as immigration-court decisions
increasingly are appealed.
The immigration bureaucracy that ordered Mendez arrested, based on
documents from 2001 when he was a teenager, had also issued him
work permits and welcomed his mother and brothers under a program
to help people from war-, flood- and earthquake-ravaged El
Salvador.
Tracing this one immigrant’s path – from a scared boy fleeing his
country to a scared man forced to sleep on the floor of a jammed
jail – reveals much about how a strained system can turn lives
upside down.
“There really are some very deep injustices taking place,” said
Doris Meissner, former chief of the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service and now a senior analyst at the Migration
Policy Institute, a bipartisan think tank in Washington. “The
scales are out of balance right now.”
The government response: “We are restoring integrity through
aggressive enforcement,” Homeland Security spokesman Marc Raimondi
said. “There’s certainly a lot of work to be done on the
immigration front.”
Jails, courts overwhelmed
A Denver Post review of federal immigration records found:
U.S. deportations of immigrants have increased by 78 percent from
99,213 in fiscal year 1999 to 177,436 so far this year. A growing
share of those deported committed no crimes while in the United
States – 53 percent this year, up from 37 percent in 2001 – even
though Bush administration officials repeatedly have said their
priority is deporting criminals.
The nation’s 24,331-bed system for detaining immigrants now is so
crowded that officials requested an extra $541 million to expand
detention and removal operations, on top of the $3.8 billion a year
taxpayers devote to immigration enforcement.
New detainees at Colorado’s 356-bed regional detention center in
Aurora, run by contractors, often must sleep on the floor.
Immigration officials said they’ve housed 413 immigrants – 16
percent over capacity – using mattresses on the floor and other
“portable beds.” Federal agents who arrested 120 suspected
illegal workers in a raid at Buckley Air Force Base on Sept. 20 had
to bus most of them immediately to Texas.
Immigration courts face such a surge that judges recently testified
in Congress that fairness is threatened. The government’s 212
immigration judges completed 352,287 cases in fiscal year 2005 – an
average of 1,662 cases per judge, 35 percent more than in 2001 with
only four more judges.
The immigration-court workload in Colorado has doubled. Three
judges and their staff handle more than 2,600 cases a year.
Attorneys face four-month waits to have cases heard.
Repeated requests by administrators for more judges and staff
failed to draw help from Justice Department officials in Washington
who run the immigration- court system – which, unlike most courts,
is part of the executive branch of government.
The court crunch means more detainees wait longer in jail, at
taxpayer expense.
Attorneys increasingly challenge immigration-court rulings,
appealing 11,741 decisions to outside federal courts in 2005, more
than six times as many appeals as in 2001, according to federal
court records. When independent federal judges in recent years
reviewed immigration cases, they reversed from 4 percent to 14
percent of immigration- court decisions each year.
“Everyone who looks at the system, whether it’s the immigration
courts or the processing of green cards or asylum petitions, agrees
it is overwhelmed,” said Steve Camarota at the Center for
Immigration Studies, a leading advocate for tougher immigration
enforcement. “… If we want to detain more people and increase the
number of people we deport, we don’t have the resources to do
that.”
Legal entry for Mendez
Today’s strained immigration system seems a far cry from the one
that once welcomed the world’s needy and harnessed their energy.
The Mendez story began that way.
In April 1996, Mendez was 12, at school in San Miguel, El Salvador,
when the principal called his name, he said in an interview. Armed
assailants had sneaked into his family’s garage and murdered his
father, Nelson Mendez, who ran a packaging business.
Then his mother, Marta Mendez, began receiving death threats over
the telephone and from unfamiliar visitors. One warned that
kidnappers would snatch her boys, cut off their fingers and mail
them to her one by one to extort money.
The next day the family fled, lying flat on the floor of an uncle’s
pickup as he drove to El Salvador’s main airport.
Landing in Los Angeles around midnight, Mendez and his brothers
hung close by their mother. He remembers thinking: “Oh, God. We
are leaving everything behind. We are losing our house, our family.
Everything.” She told them: “Our life is more important.”
They entered legally – immigration officials had issued them
tourist visas – and stayed with an uncle before moving into a
converted garage. A stay-at- home mother before, Marta found work
cleaning and caring for a wealthy family’s kids.
But she failed to apply for asylum within a year as required, court
records show.
When she did apply in 1998 for herself and her sons, the
application sat for three years and was denied in 2001. She then
applied for her family to stay in the country under a program
President Bush announced in March 2001 for people from El Salvador.
Some 225,000 Salvadorans live legally in the United States under
this program.
Each year, Mendez and his brothers submitted photos and
fingerprints to re-register under the program, records show.
“In my mind, I was legally here,” Mendez said.
He moved to Colorado in 2001, working for Pizza Hut and Qdoba, the
booming chain of Mexican fast-food restaurants, where he soon was
promoted with the promise of running his own store. He enrolled at
DeVry University.
Then, in June, immigration agents arrested him as he was opening
the Qdoba at West 50th Avenue and Kipling Street. They clamped
metal handcuffs on his wrists and led him away.
“They said: ‘You have a final order of deportation.’ … I just
could not believe it,” Mendez recalled.
“Misplaced priorities”
At the immigration detention center, wardens gave Mendez two
blankets and told him to sleep on the floor. After three nights, he
was given a mattress on the floor for two more nights before a bunk
opened. Gang members bullied him, he said, and he’s been sick with
a fever.
Court records show immigration agents arrested Mendez under an
order filed in 2001 when he was a teenager. Officials apparently
failed to process his initial 2001 application under the El
Salvador program until 2004, after he had re-registered three times
along with his mother and brothers, who were approved, records
show.
Officials apparently then deemed Mendez ineligible because he
failed to submit fingerprints when re-registering in 2004, although
he had submitted fingerprints before.
Mendez’s brother hired Colorado immigration lawyer Kim Salinas. She
pushed the case before U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn, who is
scheduled to decide Nov. 7 whether to order immigration authorities
to release Mendez and review his case.
Jailing Mendez suggests “misplaced priorities,” Salinas said.
“There are people in the country who have committed heinous crimes
and could be in immigration custody. And there are people like this
kid, who had a series of misfortunes and who has no culpability in
any of this.”
Immigration officials “are doing their job,” Mendez said, but
deporting him “is unfair.”
Mendez said he dreads El Salvador: “No home, no family, no job.”
Gang members prey systematically on deportees from the United
States.
“I don’t want to live in a country where I don’t trust people.
They took my father away and didn’t do anything about it, even to
investigate it,” Mendez said.
“Please let me stay here.”
September 28, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration
U.S. attorney, son of Egyptian immigrant, says his post reinforces
America’s freedoms
Bush appointee says he’ll fight illegal immigration, drug
trafficking and those who prey on children.
At dinner atop a Denver office tower recently, a visiting Jordanian
military chief who’d just been introduced to the new U.S. attorney,
Troy Eid, an Arab-American, approached Eid incredulously.
“How can that be?” Eid recalled the Jordanian asking. A man of
Arab descent couldn’t possibly be picked to represent U.S.
government interests, the Jordanian said. “It must be a token
post. … Are you wealthy?”
Appointed by President Bush, Eid responded with pride, he said:
“I’m not wealthy. I went to Wheat Ridge High School. That’s the
great thing about this country.
“If my background can show a few people what’s possible in this
country, that’s great,” Eid said.
Drug trafficking a focus
Today, Eid marks the formal start of his service after an ambitious
first six weeks on the job as the government’s top law enforcement
officer for Colorado. The only son of an Egyptian immigrant, Eid,
42, appears to be the the only Arab-American among the 94 U.S.
attorneys at a time when much of the world has questioned American
principles of equality.
And with enforcement of immigration law his top priority, Eid said
he’ll draw on this background and a longstanding “interest in the
underdog” to ensure fairness.
“Being fair is very important, telling people what your policy is
going to be,” he said. “You get into problems when you’re
selective.”
The criminals he vows to prosecute most aggressively – deportees
who illegally re-enter the United States – often prey on immigrant
communities, he said.
And criminals from abroad often drive illegal drug trafficking, his
second major priority. Colorado has emerged as one of the busiest
drug distribution centers in the country, with transnational gangs
taking root.
Taken together, immigration and drug-related crime now dominate
federal criminal prosecution in Colorado.
Other priorities for Eid: sexual exploitation of children using the
Internet and terrorism cases – the overall top priority of the
Justice Department under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
“We get terrorism cases. We take them very seriously. They
typically come to us through the JTTF (the FBI-run Joint Terrorism
Task Force). … We have some investigations that have resulted in
charges and convictions.”
A symbolic investiture ceremony scheduled for this afternoon marks
the formal beginning for Eid, who on Aug. 11 replaced acting U.S.
Attorney William Leone. He had served since December 2004, when
John Suthers resigned to become Colorado attorney general after Ken
Salazar left that position for the U.S. Senate.
Eid previously worked as legal counsel to Gov. Bill Owens and as a
lawyer specializing in environmental and Indian affairs cases. He
grew up in Wheat Ridge and graduated from Stanford University and
the University of Chicago law school. His wife, Allison Eid,
because a Colorado Supreme Court justice in February. They have two
children.
Always an American
Eid’s father, the late Edward Eid, fled from Egypt in 1957 after
military dictator Gamal Nasser took power. He started fresh in
America, working at a steel factory and as an accountant at a
candle factory. He dealt with discrimination along the way.
“My dad was typical of immigrants off the boat. … He would have
been offended if anyone focused on his roots. He came from a time
when you put your head down and assimilated as quickly as
possible,” Eid said in an interview Wednesday.
“I thought of myself as an American whose father was from
Egypt.”
Diversifying the government’s legal workforce – only 18 of 94 U.S.
attorneys are women – also has loomed as a goal.
“I venture Eid is among the first Arab-Americans to hold such as
office,” said Nidal Ibrahim, executive director of the
Arab-American Institute.
“During an especially critical and sensitive time in our country’s
history, having an Arab-American serving as U.S. attorney for Colorado represents an important milestone.”
September 21, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
Matter of national security, officials say
Agents, who loaded the 120 rounded up at Buckley Air Force Base onto buses bound for the border, vow to hold contractors accountable.
Buckley Air Force Base – Black-clad federal immigration agents
surrounded a military housing construction site at sunrise
Wednesday and arrested 120 suspected illegal workers from Mexico
and Central America within a mile of top-secret global surveillance
and missile early-warning facilities.
This was a matter of national security, federal agents said,
because only a fence separated the unauthorized immigrants from a
crucial military listening post.
The immigration raid ranked among the biggest in state history.
Federal agents loaded most of the workers onto buses bound for the
U.S.-Mexico border for deportation, and they vowed to hold military
contractors who employed the workers accountable.
Previous immigration enforcement in this area ended after
deportations, but “we are taking a different approach now,” said
Jeff Copp, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent
in charge of Denver district operations. “Instead of going in and
rounding up the workers and sending them home, we are actually
putting together an investigation to look at the culpability of the
company itself,” he said.
Military bases, oil refineries, chemical plants and other
“critical infrastructure” are top priorities because they are
“susceptible to terrorist action,” ICE regional spokesman Carl
Rusnok said.
Air Force officials on the Buckley base – in east Aurora beneath
giant white radar “golf balls” – blamed their contractor, Texas-
based Hunt Building Co., a leading provider of military housing
including facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“It’s their responsibility to ensure their company abides by the
law,” said Staff Sgt. Aaron Cram, the base spokesman.
Bruce Jackson, Hunt’s superintendent on this $78 million, 353-unit
housing project, said he had no idea workers were illegal.
“Certainly not,” he said.
His office manager, Steph- anie Shuhayda, said Hunt had 24
subcontractors “from all over the United States.” The project,
which began in January 2005, was scheduled for completion
“sometime next year,” she said.
The raid sent hundreds of relatives of arrested workers scrambling
as impending deportations turned their lives upside down.
“I don’t know where they have him, don’t know what’s going to
happen,” said Maria Saucedo, 42, a mother of three from Mexico,
crying, speaking in Spanish from her minivan as she searched for
him at the work site.
Her husband lacked proper immigration papers because U.S.
citizenship officials “told him he had to go to Mexico for me to
petition for him,” Saucedo said, adding that the family moved to
Denver from Mexico because their ailing daughter needed first-rate
medical treatment to walk.
They count on his earnings for food and to make their mortgage
payment, Saucedo said.
“Why don’t immigration agents go to the streets and take
criminals? Why take the people who are working?” she said. “Why
didn’t they check for papers before they began this project?”
Spanish-speaking workers and subcontractors leaving the
construction site shook their heads at the disruption.
“This don’t make no sense. Now, you can see, there’s no work being
done,” said masonry subcontractor Abel Madera.
He had five workers who began work this week building walls, he
said. When he saw the federal agents move in, he quickly gave them
the day off, he said. “I called them, told them not to come
now.”
U.S. military officials “know a lot of illegal people don’t have
IDs,” Madera said, so they set up the construction project to give
workers access from Airport Road without having to pass through
military checkpoints.
September 19, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
Three people sentenced by a federal judge Monday for transporting
and harboring illegal immigrants were licensed farm-
labor contractors – an industry with little state or federal
oversight.
State officials say they license about 15 labor contractors a year
to supply foreign workers to farms around Colorado.
Over the past 18 months, the Colorado Department of Labor and
Employment has received at least 10 complaints about labor brokers,
although it could not be determined whether current license holders
were targets of those complaints.
One complaint reviewed by The Denver Post through a records request
alleged an unlicensed contractor in southeastern Colorado brought
illegal workers to a farm and assaulted one of the workers.
U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham on Monday sentenced Moises
and Maria Rodriguez of Hudson, about 30 miles northeast of Denver,
to 11 months in prison for harboring and transporting illegal
immigrants. They were credited with the 11 months they have already
served in jail and, because they aren’t U.S. citizens, face
deportation to Mexico.
Their son, Javier, was sentenced to three years’ probation, with
home detention for the first six months.
The parents were licensed as farm-labor contractors through the end
of last year, records show. Federal agents in 2004 raided the
Hudson compound where they housed illegal workers smuggled from
Mexico.
Prosecutors said Moises Rodriguez directed workers who contacted
him from Mexico, telling them where to meet smugglers, who guided
them across the U.S.-Mexico border. Rodriguez then picked up the
workers on the U.S. side of the border and with his son drove them
to Colorado. They worked the migrants 12 hours a day with no days
off and deducted “smuggling fees” from their pay.
Mistreatment of workers often stays hidden. Social workers who hear
of abuse and who file complaints say they are reluctant to speak
out for fear employers could retaliate against workers.
Some worker-advocacy groups are limited in handling cases involving
illegal immigrants because they receive government funding.
None of the complaints received over the past 18 months has been
investigated, state and federal labor officials acknowledged.
The problem: Colorado labor officials “don’t have the manpower”
to investigate labor suppliers, said Don Peitersen, director of the
division of employment and training in the state labor department.
So, state officials say, they forward all complaints to the U.S.
Department of Labor.
Yet record checks revealed that only one of the complaints had been
forwarded – the complaint received in July about the unlicensed
activity in southeastern Colorado.
Colorado’s farm-labor contractor-licensing system was designed to
help farm employers make sure workers they hire are legal and have
appropriate housing and transport.
Labor suppliers are required to have a federal and a state license
in Colorado. These authorize them to recruit foreign workers, house
them and drive them to and from worksites. Some licensees are only
allowed to do some of this.
Complaints that state labor officials receive often involve alleged
failure to pay workers money they’ve earned, unlicensed driving or
housing of workers, and substandard living conditions, said Larry
Gallegos, monitor advocate in the state labor department.
Two other recent complaints he received involved unlicensed
contractors who apparently brought illegal workers from Mexico to
two farms in southern Colorado. Gallegos said he plans to forward
these to federal authorities soon using a federal complaint form.
He recently met with federal labor officials asking how they prefer
to receive complaints forwarded from the state.
At the U.S. Department of Labor’s district headquarters, Alex
Salaiz, district director of the wage and hour division, fielded
the one complaint state officials sent his way.
“The conditions you describe will be looked into as soon as
possible,” he wrote back. “You should be aware that the
investigation may not be complete for some time.”
Child-labor matters and illegal firings take top federal priority,
Salaiz said. Complaints involving farmworkers will be considered,
he said, noting he has 21 investigators for a three-state area.
“We can’t react unless there’s a complaint,” he said. “… My
system is not broken. I can’t say about the state.”
September 1, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
The Hudson couple have pleaded guilty to holding illegal laborers in a camp and skimming their pay.
Hudson – Leaning on her fence, retiree Ann Hoyt looked across at
the dilapidated white barracks and winced. She had no clue they had
held illegal Mexican workers who toiled on farms to pay smuggling
debts.
“Remember Auschwitz and the people in Germany saying, ‘We didn’t
know it was there’? Well, I didn’t know this was there, and it was
in my backyard,” said Hoyt, a retired microbiologist who raises
llamas half a mile away.
Today in federal court, Hudson residents Moises Rodriguez and his
wife, Maria, are scheduled to be sentenced for transporting and
harboring illegal immigrants in this case of migrants who were
smuggled into the country and then worked to the bone.
Foremen bused them from the barracks to farms where they picked
crops for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Supervisors deducted
“smuggling fees” totaling $1,100 to $1,300 from the workers’
pay.
In October, when federal agents raided the fenced barracks compound
at Hudson, 30 miles northeast of Denver, they found automatic
weapons and cocaine in a trailer where a supervisor stayed, court
records show.
This is one of several recent cases around the country involving
smuggled foreign workers who labored under financial duress, owing
money to those who sneaked them into the United States.
Moises and Maria Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty in May, face up to
40 years in prison for their role in transporting and harboring
scores of illegal workers from Mexico, then deducting fees from
their pay. Prosecutors say they supplied workers to agricultural
employers around northern Colorado, including the state’s largest
organic vegetable farm.
Their son, Javier Rodriguez, who lived in a trailer by the
barracks, has agreed in a plea deal to share what he knows about
smuggling, employment of illegal workers, drug trafficking, violent
crime and gun dealing in return for leniency in sentencing.
Farm owners who used the illegal workers were not charged.
Attorney Jeff Edelman, representing Javier Rodriguez, said
employers are key players who ought to be targeted.
For the workers, “it’s sort of an indentured servitude you can
never get out from under,” Edelman said. “You ought to get the
big shots. It’s against the law to hire illegal aliens
knowingly.”
At Grant Family Farms, a large organic grower where Moises
Rodriguez sent workers, owner Andy Grant said he has championed
worker rights and pays at least $7.25 an hour.
“The whole thing about the smuggling, I have no knowledge of it,
and as far as the housing, I don’t know where people live. We offer
jobs,” Grant said.
Grant questioned federal priorities in targeting farms rather than
other sectors of the economy that rely heavily on illegal workers.
“What’s going to happen is, agriculture is going to be driven out
of the United States to Mexico,” he said.
Among other U.S. cases involving indebted foreign workers:
FBI and immigration agents just arrested 31 Koreans accused of
running a trafficking ring that placed smuggled women at spas and
brothels across the northeastern states.
Federal prosecutors in Seattle charged nine Koreans for their
alleged role in an operation that smuggled women from Asia, often
across the U.S.-Canada border, and put them to work as prostitutes
in spas nationwide.
A Colorado court on Thursday sentenced Saudi Arabian immigrant
Homaidan Al-Turki to 28 years to life in prison on charges of false
imprisonment and unlawful sexual contact involving an illegal
worker from Indonesia kept as a virtual slave. Federal charges are
pending.
And federal immigration agents in Colorado are investigating
several other cases involving smuggled foreign workers, said Jeff
Copp, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement’s Denver district.
As in most of these cases, the Mexican men and women smuggled to
Hudson apparently came willingly, agreeing to work and live at the
barracks until free from their debts to smugglers.
First, the workers in Mexico telephoned Moises Rodriguez, court
records show. He directed them to hotels at Palomas and Agua Prieta
on the Mexico side of the border, where they met “coyote” guides
who led them on multi-day treks across dry open land near Douglas,
Ariz.
Then, after receiving cellphone calls from the guides on the U.S.
side of the border, Rodriguez picked up the workers and drove them
via Phoenix to Hudson, the records show.
Some Hudson townspeople never knew. But a few sensed an ugly
situation.
Construction worker Loren Winstead recalled delivering surplus food
from a supermarket to the barracks. “They would surround my truck
and help unload it,” he said. “I didn’t think they were abused.
But people took advantage of them.”
Others cringed at hearing regular automatic weapons fire from
inside the compound, Hudson Mayor Neal Pontius said. Town leaders
repeatedly complained to Weld County authorities, he said. “People
didn’t like going to our town park in the evenings because you
didn’t know if a stray bullet would come your way.”
Deporting the smuggled workers, as federal authorities have done,
and jailing members of the Rodriguez family won’t make much
difference in the overall immigration conundrum, Pontius said.
“There will be another person who takes their place in a
heartbeat. It’s a never-ending cycle.”
August 6, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration
The only son of an Egyptian immigrant, Troy Eid is looking ahead to
his job as the government’s top prosecutor in Colorado.
Confirmed by the Senate late Thursday as U.S. attorney for
Colorado, Eid said that among his priorities for his 70-lawyer
Denver office will be enforcement of immigration law.
“I respect what immigrants bring to the country so much,” Eid
said in an interview Friday. “We just have to enforce the law.
It’s a really tough issue.”
Eid, 42, is a former legal counsel to Gov. Bill Owens and a lawyer
specializing in cases involving environmental issues and Indian
affairs. He awaits his formal commissioning by President Bush.
Recent debate over immigration has been “very positive” – leading
to a new awareness among employers, local authorities and state
officials, Eid said. “People are realizing we all have a role to
play in it. It’s not just one or two government agencies.”
Eid brings an intimate knowledge of immigration issues. His father,
the late Edward Eid, moved to the United States from Cairo with
$100 in 1957 after military dictator Gamal Nasser took power.
Edward Eid worked at a steel factory and as an accountant in a
candle factory – and later served as a leader of the Colorado State
Soccer Association.
Troy Eid grew up in Wheat Ridge. He attended Stanford University,
graduating in 1986, and earned his law degree from the University
of Chicago in 1991.
His wife, Allison Eid, became a Colorado Supreme Court justice in
February. They have two children.
Eid will replace acting U.S. attorney William Leone, who has served
since December 2004, when John Suthers resigned to become Colorado
attorney general after Ken Salazar left that position for the U.S.
Senate.
Eid expressed thanks to Sens. Salazar and Wayne Allard for their
support.
His other priorities:
“Preventing children from being exploited over the Internet.”
Building up his staff by luring more top prosecutors. “We have a
natural recruiting advantage in Colorado,” he said.
Establishing better relations between the federal government and
Indian tribal authorities. Admitted to the Navajo Nation bar, Eid
said he visited tribal territory 41 times over the past two years.
“It starts with respect,” he said.
Working more closely with local police. “I’m going to spend a lot
of time listening to local law enforcement.”
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A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
