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4 arrested at TIMCO plead guilty

4-13-05

By Taft Wireback, Staff Writer
News & Record

GREENSBORO -- Four of the 12 aircraft workers charged with federal crimes stemming from their arrests at TIMCO last month have pleaded guilty in exchange for the possibility of more lenient sentencing.

The illegal immigrants from Chile, Panama, Peru and the Philippines entered pleas last week after being in this country for up to 11 years.

One of the men, Jorge Arturo Chacon, 53, of Panama, had a license from the Federal Aviation Administration to work on an airplane's airframe and structural elements but not its engines.

The four are among 24 alleged illegal immigrants detained in a March 8 sting at the aircraft-maintenance company on the perimeter of Piedmont Triad International Airport.

In another related case, criminal charges were dropped against a Peruvian aircraft worker, Julio Ruidiaz-Arispe, 49, after the government failed to prove he had been told of a March 2004 deportation order against him.

Although cleared of that, Ruidiaz-Arispe still can't stay in this country, said his lawyer, Michael Eugene Archenbronn of Winston-Salem.

"He is being deported if he already hasn't been," said Archenbronn, adding that federal authorities sent Ruidiaz-Arispe to a holding center in Louisiana to await deportation.

Eventually, the government intends to send all those taken into custody at TIMCO back to their countries of origin, either immediately or after serving prison time, said Sue Brown of the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Atlanta.

"We are deporting them every single week by the planeloads and by the bus loads," Brown said of the nation's huge number of illegal immigrants, estimated at more than 10 million.

The idea of illegal immigrants working in the aviation industry flies in the face of what many think to be their niche in the American job market, critics say.

"When you have these illegal immigrants, everyone just thinks they're going to work at McDonald's," said John Goglia, former member of the National Transportation Safety Board that investigates aviation mishaps and crashes.

The four guilty pleas and one dismissal are the first outcomes of the sting at TIMCO, which initially took into custody 27 aviation-industry employees.

Authorities allege that 24 turned out to be illegal immigrants, 12 of whom were charged with additional wrongdoing such as lying about their immigration status on a federal form or using falsified documents.

The remaining three of the initial 27 detainees were permanent legal residents who jeopardized their right to remain in this country by allegedly committing crimes. One of them is a Laotian man who was involved in a 1997 murder. The other two permanent residents are Sudanese who face deportation for allegedly lying to federal agents.

Among the 24 alleged illegal immigrants, the 12 who were not charged with federal crimes either have been deported already or await deportation hearings.

The four who pleaded guilty are scheduled for sentencing June 22. The other seven are scheduled for trial in May.

The men who pleaded guilty last week include Chacon; Martin Cuevas-Freitas of Peru, 38; Jaime Adolfo Millan-Erices of Chile, 25; and Marcos Duran Lucero of the Philippines, 33.

Chacon and Lucero pleaded guilty to falsely claiming they were legal residents on the federal I-9 work form. Chacon, who entered this country in 1994, has lived in Greensboro since 1996 and received a specialized repair license from the FAA four years ago.

Millan-Erices entered a guilty plea to having a falsified passport, and Cuevas-Freitas pled to having a counterfeit green card.

Chacon and Lucero face prison sentences of up to five years, Millan-Erices and Cuevas-Freitas up to 10 years.

All could be fined up to $250,000. They also could get probation.

If they are put on probation, the federal government would deport them immediately, Brown said.

If they serve time in prison, the government will deport them when their sentences end, she said.

Archenbronn said his client, Ruidiaz-Arispe, was accused of lying about his immigration status on the I-9 work form. "But there was no indication that he was ever informed of the order" to deport him last year, the lawyer said.