Thread: IA-Postville immigration case proceeds

Postville immigration case proceeds
AMY LORENTZEN, Associated Press Writer, Worthington Daily Globe
Published Thursday, September 04, 2008

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - A supervisor arrested after a massive immigration raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville continues to push for a federal judge to remove herself from the case.


Martin De La Rosa-Loera appeared in federal court late last month in Cedar Rapids and pleaded guilty under an agreement with prosecutors to aiding and abetting the harboring of undocumented immigrants.


The 43-year-old was arrested in July following a raid at the kosher meatpacking plant two months earlier in which about 400 people were arrested.


His attorney, Thomas McQueen, said Wednesday that despite the plea agreement, the motion for recusal stands and Chief Judge Linda R. Reade for the Northern District of Iowa should step down before sentencing. He declined any further comment on the case.


Last month, McQueen filed a motion questioning Reade's impartiality.


He argues that Reade worked with the federal government in making arrangements for fast-track judicial proceedings in Waterloo for hundreds of people arrested in the May 12 raid and presided over the cases.


He goes on to note that Reade also defended the government's actions in The New York Times article published May 24 "despite clearly being on notice that related cases were on the horizon."


"Indeed the government has failed to cite one case in which a court publicly commented to the press regarding charges in a criminal case in which disqualification was not found to be warranted," he said in court documents.


His motion seeks to avoid the participation of any judge who was involved in the immigration proceedings related to the Agriprocessors raid.


In their response, prosecutors said Reade's comments to the newspaper about prosecutors who "have tried to be fair in their charging" and immigration lawyers who "do not understand the federal criminal process as it relates to immigration charges," are not grounds for the judge to be recused.


That's because the judge wasn't talking about De La Rosa-Loera's case, and because at the time there was nothing to show that the defendant's prosecution was impending since he was not arrested until six weeks later, prosecutors said.


They added that the court had to help in planning the raid, otherwise it wouldn't have been able to handle the additional workload.


"It is a far cry from planning a process to ensure the constitutional and timely handling of several hundred cases to being involved in the executive function of pursuing prosecution," prosecutors wrote in their response.


Federal officials said De La Rosa-Loera, who supervised four departments at Agriprocessors, assisted others in harboring illegal immigrants "while knowing and recklessly disregarding the fact that" the workers were in the country illegally.


They said that about two weeks before the raid, De La Rosa-Loera told undocumented workers they could no longer work at the Agriprocessors plant because their Social Security numbers were bad and they needed new documents. Later, he allegedly told the employees they could return to work using the same names they'd previously used, officials said.


He was initially charged with encouraging illegal immigrants to reside in the U.S. and aiding and abetting the possession and use of fraudulent identification


A sentencing date hasn't been scheduled, and McQueen didn't know when a ruling would be made on the motion for Reade's recusal. De La Rosa-Loera faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.


Another supervisor at the plant, 35-year-old Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to hire illegal immigrants and one count of aiding and abetting the hiring of illegal immigrants.


Guerrero-Espinoza also struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. A date for sentencing wasn't immediately scheduled.



http://www.dglobe.com/articles/index.cf ... 7837593715

Mr. McQueen seems to be trying to follow in the footsteps of Johnny Sutton in the Ramos/Compean case. It seems that anything that can be thrown against a judge trying to uphold the laws of the land are secondary to those rights granted to the accused lawbreaker.