Mexican Navy buying SAFE boats

Puget Sound SAFE Boats International LLC said it's signed a deal with the Mexican Navy-Armada de Mexico for the Port Orchard boat builder's 33-foot-long Defender class boat.

SAFE (Secured Around Flotation Equipped) Boats officials said the Mexican Navy initially ordered six boats that will be used at three different naval installations. The company said that the Mexican Navy "plans to purchase 30-plus Defender class vessels over the next two to three years."

The Defender boat is powered by three 275-horsepower outboard motors and the boat's top speed is more than 60 miles per hour. The boat is used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in border protection, narcotic operations and illegal immigration surveillance.

A SAFE Boats spokesman said the 33-foot-long Defender costs about $400,000 each.

Quiz: Talking Tuff on Illegal Immigration

December 21, 2007 10:06 AM

Former White House advisers -- Matthew Dowd who worked for President Bush, and Lanny Davis who worked for President Clinton -- talked with us about how Rudy Giuliani is handling his health care crisis. Read more about that HERE.

Yesterday here in Iowa a woman whose daughter had been killed by an illegal immigrant driving drunk asked a presidential candidate about the issue.

The candidate's response was quite interesting, complete with a push that rounding up 12-to-14 million illegals and deporting them "sounds good" but would be difficult to implement.

"Here's what I would do," said the candidate, "I think we've got to fix our borders. I've been voting for that and saying that for several years. We have to have a tougher border security program, we have to have more technology and personnel along the boarder. We have to know who is coming into our country and keep track of them and keep out people who shouldn't be coming in."

The candidate continued: "Secondly, people would not come to this county if they didn't think there would be a job waiting for them. So our employers have to have much tougher penalties and sanctions if they employ people who are here illegally. Because the only way we will convince people not to come is if they know it will be very, very hard to get a job and I think we've got to increase the fines and the sanctions so that it really does cost employers a lot if they hire people who don't have the proper documentation.

"Thirdly, you know, there are lots of problems that communities like Tipton have to end up paying for because the federal government has failed --education costs and health care costs and law enforcement costs. So I think the federal government, its their failure, for the costs of illegal immigration.

"Number four, when I'm president I'm going to see what I can do to get all of those countries to our South, all the leaders to create more jobs for their people – people would not leave their families, they would not leave their villages if they thought they had a decent shot at a better life...

"But finally -- and this is the big problem everybody gets all tangled up with -- what do we do with the people who are already here? We have estimates from 12-to-14 million people who are here illegally...

"Now, some people say, 'OK round everybody up and deport them.' That sounds really good. I hear that on TV, I hear it on the radio. But let me ask you how that actually works. You see, I don't want to tell you something that sounds good and then have you wake up later and say, 'Wait a minute --nobody said it was going to cost that much or be that hard.'

"The best estimates I have are that if we even tried to round up 12-to-14 million people it would cost at least 200 billion dollars, it would take tens of thousands of new federal law enforcement officials. It would take a convoy of 200,000 buses stretching 1,700 miles and it would take a lot of invasion of your privacy rights. Because if we were serious about rounding everybody up and they would have to knock on every door of every business and every home throughout Iowa and throughout America. I think Americans would stand for that for about a nanosecond."

Continued the candidate: "I think we have to tell these folks to come out of the shadows and register every single one of them. If they committed a crime in the country they came from or in this country we have to deport them immediately, no questions asked, no legal process – you put them on a plane you send 'em back to where they came from. "

But, the candidate continued, "if they have been here working, if they have not gotten into trouble, then I think we have to be really hard and say, 'Look you came here illegally and here's what you have to do if you expect to stay. ...You have to pay back taxes and I mean all back taxes,...you have to pay a fine, you have to try to learn English, and you have to wait in line, and you may have to wait in line for 10, 12, 15 years. You have to stay out of trouble. You have to be productive. And at the end of that period you could be eligible to be a citizen."

So take a guess? Who was this candidate? Answer will be posted later today.

Family, friends, fight to keep local man in country

Friday, December 21, 2007

By Kathryn Fiegen
Iowa City Press-Citizen

Family, friends and community members are working against the clock to stop a local man from being deported to El Salvador, based on what they said is a 15-year old paperwork error.

Carlos Mendez, 40, of Oxford, is being held in the Linn County Jail, said his wife, Marisol Valladares, 38. He was arrested on Oct. 25 at his job as a custodian at the University of Iowa, she said.

Valladares said at the time of his arrest, Mendez presented U.S. Customs and Immigration and Enforcement officials with a government work permit that is good through 2008. Mendez has been in the country since 1992, she said.

"They think my husband run away from the INS," said Valladares, who apologized for her English skills. "He's a hard worker and they arrested him for no reason."

Immigration officials said they were acting on a deportation order given by a federal court in the mid-1990s.

Tim Counts, spokesman for the ICE region that includes Iowa, said Mendez's work permit expired when the deportation order was given. He said there are no "paperwork errors" in Mendez's case.

"Work permits are valid only as long as their case is being decided on," he said. "We are obligated to carry out the court's orders."

Counts said that Mendez is considered a fugitive and that there are 500,000 to 600,000 such cases nationwide. He said it is "not all that uncommon" for 15 years to pass before some are deported.

Valladares said claims that her husband is in the country illegally are simply not true.

"I'm not so happy," she said. "They think my husband is a fugitive and a criminal and that isn't true."

Valladares said if her husband is deported, he can't return to the United States for 10 years.

The family, which includes two children, has decided to allocate their entire life savings to fight the case and decided to hire Iowa City attorney Laz cq Pittman to represent them. Pittman did not return phone messages seeking comment.

Counts said his records show Pittman has successfully filed a motion to delay Mendez's deportation. He said she has also appealed to the U.S. Justice Department immigration courts to reopen Mendez's case.

"If the courts decide to reopen his case, then they can decide whether or not to return him to his family," he said.

In the meantime, family and friends are doing what they can to support the family, who is a part of the Clear Creek Amana School District.

Pam Wagner, who is a real estate agent in Coralville, said she has known the family for years "” their children play soccer together. She described the Mendez family as "wonderful, good-hearted people."

"I am against illegal immigration 100 percent," she said. "But for the people who are here legally, we need to treat them with respect, like we would want to be treated.

"It's criminal what they are doing. They, without any notice, have separated him from his family."

Wagner said she is rallying people to write letters in support of the family to send to ICE officials. She said she will do "anything I can do to get their attention."

"If someone took my husband out of my home, I hope someone would do the same thing," Wagner said.

Valladares said she is trying to work two jobs now to pay the bills without her husband's income. And to make matters worse, she said she was in a car accident two weeks ago during some bad weather and now has back and neck pain.

Her family has been helping her with some money to pay bills and food, Valladares said.

"A lot of people help me right now," she said.

The family only gets to see Mendez twice a week for a few hours while he is in jail, she said.

Valladares said her husband worries about his family and that she wishes he could be home with them, especially with Christmas around the corner.

"He's a stronger person," she said.

Fresh Direct immigration audit spurs staff walkout

By Nathan Duke
12/20/2007

Nearly 100 warehouse workers walked off the job at Fresh Direct last week after federal immigration officials initiated an audit of the Long Island City-based grocery distributor, the president of a Teamsters local that has been trying to unionize the workers said.

The workers, most of whom were in their 30s or 40s, left the Fresh Direct warehouse on Borden Avenue in Long Island City in early December after they quit or were suspended because they could not fill out paperwork required for an Immigration and Customs Enforcement audit, Teamsters 805 President Sandy Pope said. The employees, many of whom could not pick up their paychecks after the walkout, could not prove they were authorized to work in the United States, she said.

"This was very sudden," Pope said. "Many of these people were longtime workers there. They had been with Fresh Direct for four or five years."

Fresh Direct, an online grocer that delivers to the five boroughs, could not be reached for comment.

An ICE spokesman said the agency would not comment on any ongoing investigation. But he said the agency had undertaken a national campaign that targeted employers who hired illegal immigrants.

"It's ICE policy neither to confirm or deny any investigation," he said.

The audit comes at a time when Teamsters 805 has been trying to unionize Fresh Direct's 900 warehouse workers. Pope said the employees often work 13 hour shifts in cold conditions for $7.50 to $9.75 per hour, while most unionized warehouse workers earn between $10 to $20 per hour.

Fresh Direct's delivery drivers are already unionized.

Pope said the union and area clergy plan to act as intermediaries for the workers to retrieve their paychecks. Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside) is also in discussion with the warehouse workers about picking up their checks for them, a spokeswoman for the councilman said.

"It's a huge strain to be missing a paycheck when they've just lost their jobs, especially during the holiday season," she said.

Pope said some workers have collected their checks and that no arrests had taken place. But she said she questioned the timing of the audit in relation to the union drive.

"It's very suspicious - the timing is very strange," she said. "And ICE's internal policy states that they should not come in to do an audit when there is a labor dispute or an organizing drive. They are not following their own policies."

A spokeswoman for ICE said its policy would not prevent it from auditing a company if the agency thought there were any irregular activity taking place.

"If there is any union organizing were taking place, it's completely coincidental" she said. "Union organizing can take place all year-round. We respect the rights of American workers in the workplace."

Fresh Direct's warehouse workers are scheduled to vote later this week on whether to affiliate with Teamsters 805, Pope said.

Time to back off on the border

Friday, December 21, 2007 9:23 PM CST

When people are already tense, it's reasonable to ask why anyone would increase the risk of that tension exploding in violence. Thus it's reasonable to ask why U.S. border agents are antagonizing the citizens of Mexico.

To discourage illegal immigrants along the Mexican border in southern California, U.S. agents have been taking up positions right on the border, within shouting distance of Tijuana. Youth from ramshackle Mexican neighborhoods have been pitching rocks at U.S. agents or shooting at them with slingshots loaded with ball bearings. The Border Patrol said in a news story that its agents have been attacked 1,000 times in a year, and about one in four attacks happens along the 10-mile stretch of border starting at the Pacific Ocean. A union official said one reason for the frequent attacks is the relatively recent policy of putting agents right on the border.

In retaliation for the attacks, U.S. agents have fired tear gas across the border into Mexico. In some cases Mexican citizens have had to evacuate areas because of the gas, and they complain about ill effects from the irritating chemical. Mexican officials want U.S. agents to stop firing onto Mexican territory. The U.S. government complains that Mexican officials don't respond promptly to calls for help in controlling their citizens.

It is a situation scarily reminiscent of the border areas between Israel and the Palestinian territories where armed people on both sides exchange occasional fire. The hostilities along the Mexican border are not lethal, but that's now. It is entirely possible that the projectiles in use will escalate from rocks and tear gas canisters to bullets if one side or the other feels threatened or desperate.

This tension is not unexpected or unexplainable. Immigration is a topical and passionately felt issue, and with the U.S. economy flagging, and with more domestic pressure to control our southern border, it's to be expected that an economic resentment has been added to whatever anger already festers among the poorer residents of border Mexico.

And all of this, every bit, is entirely predictable, which leads back to the question of why the government is putting agents in a dangerous position. Do we not have cameras with zoom lenses, night vision equipment, and long-endurance drone aircraft with high-powered sensors to spot people crossing the border? Why then are agents standing next to the border when waiting ****her back used to be fine, and when along the Arizona border it appears that the real secret to arresting illegals is simply having more agents available? Is this not another example of the truculent foreign policy which achieved so little elsewhere in the world?

Brinkmanship worked during the Cold War only because strict procedures on both sides prevented small stupidities from expanding into large problems. That's not the case on the Mexican border, and that's why wiser heads should act now to forestall that moment of misjudgment and overreaction which causes an international incident. The simple and reasonable solution is to pull agents back from the edge, to depend on the advanced technology which the government already has, to bring in more agents, and to let the aggression dissipate. Remove the fuel, and let the fire die down on its own.

Long wait in jail to end for trio

Times-Picayune
Friday December 21, 2007, 9:26 PM
By Benjamin Alexander-Bloch
St. Tammany bureau

After sitting in jail since spring as material witnesses to a friend's fatal shooting, three illegal immigrants were told Friday that their testimony wasn't needed and that they soon will be turned over to federal authorities for deportation.

Three others testified about the Slidell-area killing at a court hearing Friday, and the court will decide next week whether to release them to the feds.

The six men, all illegal immigrants from Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador, have been imprisoned for eight months, for the most part without representation, possible bond or knowledge of why they were being held, and with no means of communication.

On Friday, state Judge William J. Burris allowed the witnesses' testimony to be videotaped so that they could return home as soon as possible.

"The law does not include the constitutional right to hold people for a long period of time in jail without trial," Burris said.

"They did not even commit a (state) crime," he later added. "They have been arrested, but they have not been convicted of anything."

The hearing was the first time the six witnesses had stepped in court since their detention on April 29. They were imprisoned for six months without an attorney. They do not speak English, and they recently told their attorney and consulate officials that they had no understanding of why they were being held in St. Tammany Parish jail.

Many of the witnesses thought they were being held as suspects in the shooting, said officials who have since talked with them.

All they want to do is go home, to be deported, said Warren Montgomery, the attorney assigned to them last month.

Trio add little to case

Three witnesses -- Jose Roberto Romero Echegoyen, 38, of El Salvador, and Santos Medardo Valle Meza, 37, and Luis Fernando Martinez Avila, 24, both of Honduras -- testified on Friday about the April 29 shooting in the run-down trailer they shared near Slidell.

But on Friday, three other witnesses were not called to testify at all, and Burris subsequently released those three from the material-witness hold he signed on May 31.

First Assistant District Attorney Houston "Hammy" Gascon also had signed the motion for their arrest, legally attesting to the material-witness hold's veracity.

The motion for arrest of material witnesses states that the witnesses "were actually eyewitnesses to the homicide or have information critical to the presentation of this case."

Juan Carlos Reyes Gonza***, 38, and Pedro Antonio Lopez, 32, both of Mexico, were not even in the trailer when their friend -- Jose Luis Martinez-Carpio, 36, of El Salvador -- was killed.

Reyes Gonza*** was out wiring money to his family in Mexico, said Assistant District Attorney Bruce Dearing.

Lopez didn't live in the trailer at all, but he was friends with some of the men and happens to own a white truck. Some people said they saw a white truck around the scene of the killing, Dearing explained.

Marco Tulla Varela Maradiaga, 38, of Honduras, was in the trailer, but he was in his bedroom. He heard the shots but didn't see the killing, which occurred in the trailer's living room, according to Dearing and court testimony.

"The three I have not called do not add any significance to either side of this case," Dearing said.

Timing of release

The men likely will remain in St. Tammany jail until at least Wednesday.

The Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has 48 hours to pick them up, not including weekends or holidays. The federal authorities then would deport them to their home countries.

If immigration officials don't pick them up within 48 hours, the men would be free to leave the parish jail on their own accord.

Taxpayers are spending $35.58 a day to house each of the six witnesses, according to the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office.

On Thursday, Montgomery filed a motion to quash the material-witness holds. The motion requested the release of all six witnesses from state custody, but in court on Friday, Montgomery asked that the judge postpone his ruling on the release of the three witnesses who testified.

He said instead he was going to look into the possibility of acquiring a special visa that would allow them to remain in Louisiana until the actual jury trial.

"The idea would be to have them available to testify but also give them some liberty," he said.

Burris scheduled a hearing for Thursday, at which time he said he would decide whether to release the remaining witnesses.

Killer goes unidentified

The three men who did testify on Friday could not identify the killers.

Valle Meza was in the same bedroom as Varela Maradiaga. He too didn't see a thing. Romero Echegoyen and Martinez Avila both were held up by two gunmen, but neither of those gunmen was the one who fired the four shots that killed their friend, according to their testimony.

They each said the two men who held them up were young and possibly carried 9¤mm automatic pistols.

While they were being robbed by the two men, they heard four shots. By the time they ran out to the trailer's living room, the man who had fired the fatal shots already was gone.

A week after the shooting, four teenagers were arrested in the killing: the alleged triggerman, Glenn Carter, 17, of New Orleans; another alleged gunman, Jace Washington, 19, of Slidell; and alleged accomplices Edric Cooper, 19, of Slidell, and Grant Gethers, 18, of New Orleans.

Gethers left jail on a $100,000 bond after two months behind bars.

The three material witnesses testified that they have never been asked to identify the killers in any sort of lineup.

Defense opposes release

The four defense attorneys, each representing one of the suspects, objected to the material witnesses' release.

"My point is that I don't know what is coming and I am not going to release the state from its obligation to produce these witnesses," said Martin Regan, Carter's attorney.

Despite objecting to Montgomery's motion for their release and the judge's decision to allow video testimony, the defense attorneys also acknowledged that keeping the witnesses behind bars was unjust.

"This judge is clearly making the right move," Gethers' attorney, Alan Black, said outside the courtroom. "To continue to hold these material witnesses would be a greater injustice than the problems that may now arise because of the trial."

When asked why it has taken so long for the witnesses to be released, Dearing said it was because no motions had been filed by witnesses. "The process has to be initiated by the witnesses involved," he said.

He said he did not know why it took six months for the witnesses to receive an attorney.

"The structural problem in this case is the language issue," Montgomery said.

Slow to learn of situation

Montgomery said he finally was assigned to the case in November after the St. Tammany public defender's office had received many letters in Spanish from the witnesses asking for help.

The public defender's office could not read the letters and asked Montgomery to help translate.

The witnesses' respective consulates were not aware of their citizens' detention until The Times-Picayune reported their plight on Dec. 2.

"They don't know anything about their own situation," said Belinda Flores, a staff member with the Mexican Consulate in New Orleans, after visiting the witnesses this week.

One role of consulates is to make sure the interest of their nationals are defended in court. Consular officials also will visit detained nationals, check on their welfare, contact their relatives and, if necessary, arrange for financial assistance.

"They are treating them the same as they are treating the murderers," said Ena Liliana Castro, the consular general of Honduras based in New Orleans, after first hearing about the men's detention.

SunDevilUSA posted:Is it any wonder that fifty percent of Hispanic children fail to graduate from high school?

Furthermore, if Mexicans love Mexico soooo much, why WON'T they stay there?

This explains why it takes 15 generations for Mexicans to assimilate.

Did SunDevilUSA ever wonder how it effects Hispanic school kids that they have very limited opportunities to go on to college?

Man who tried five times to get driver's license with false ID receives probation

By AISLING SWIFT (Contact)
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

And maybe again and again.

That's what 22-year-old Froilan Servin Lopez of Fort Myers did at the county Driver License Office in Naples, when he arrived with bogus identification to take a written license test on July 26, Aug. 7, 8, 9 and 10.

"He just kept going back with the same information and they kept telling him no," Assistant Public Defender Dave Whiting said outside court after his client pleaded no contest Tuesday to five counts of using false information and a false name to obtain a driver's license.

An arrest report says examiner Gladys Olsen knew from Servin's dialect that he wasn't Puerto Rican, as his birth certificate said, and alerted Evelyn Gomez, a supervisor, on Aug. 10. Gomez called the Collier County Sheriff's Office and deputies stationed at the driver's license office, on Airport-Pulling Road South, held Servin and a friend in separate rooms for questioning.

Cpl. Charles Creamer arrived and Gomez told him Servin came to take a road test to obtain his license and provided documents under the name Josue A. Borbon Perez. She was suspicious of his birth certificate because he didn't speak with a Puerto Rican dialect.

Servin told Creamer he was Josue A. Borbon Perez and was born Dec. 17, 1984. He said he'd been here about a year and got his birth certificate two months ago. Asked about his father's name, he initially didn't know, then said Carlos Manuel Borbon and his mother was Migdalia Perez.

The birth certificate, however, showed it was issued Dec. 22, 2006, which contradicted Servin's claim that he'd had it only two months. So Creamer questioned Servin's friend, Enrique Servin Rubio, who said he knew him as Servin Grillo and they both worked at Timo Brothers in Treviso Bay. Creamer called a supervisor there, who provided Servin's real name and birth date, July 3, 1985.

Creamer then checked Servin's record and learned he has no license, but had six criminal charges of operating a motor vehicle without a license in 2006, two separate DUI charges, and leaving the scene of a crash; he'd also completed a court-ordered DUI program. When Creamer confronted him, Servin dropped his head and admitted his identity.

When Creamer checked scanned photos and documents, they revealed Servin attempted to obtain a license four other times. Servin told him that he'd gotten the fake birth certificate and Social Security card from a man named Jose, who was in his 20s and approached him at a soccer game in Bonita Springs with an offer. He met Jose a month later and got the documents.

Creamer checked and found Servin arrived here from Mexico as a temporary worker in May 2004 and refused to return in November 2005, when that ran out.

In court Tuesday, Circuit Judge Frank Baker told the rail-thin Servin, that he was recommending he be deported due to his six prior misdemeanors and that he'd refused to leave when he was supposed to. "You've been in trouble before," Hardt said. "That's not going to help you with immigration."

Baker told him he faced up to five years on each of the third-degree felonies, 25 years if they were added up, and said his public defender had worked out a good plea agreement with Assistant State Attorney Denise Yerger.

He then sentenced Servin to two years' probation and 50 hours of community service. Baker warned him that if he were to be deported, he'd be serving probation in Mexico and sending Collier County court fees "” which got a laugh from attorneys sitting in court.

And, Baker warned, if he returned to this country illegally, he'd face a prison term. Baker added: "Keep all your promises during probation. Keep only one name. That's the one you were born with."