Thread: 8 immigrants arrested at Brewster school, charged with tresp

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By TERRY CORCORAN AND MARCELA ROJAS
tcorcora@thejournalnews.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original publication: January 10, 2006)


BREWSTER â€â€

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Arrests puzzle day laborers
By MARCELA ROJAS, LEAH RAE AND TERRY CORCORAN
lrae@thejournalnews.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: January 11, 2006)



BREWSTER— A day after he was jailed on trespass charges, Belarmino Camel was trying to make sense of how a pickup soccer game on school grounds ended with him and seven friends in handcuffs.

"We didn't have work and wanted to have some fun," said Camel, a 30-year-old day laborer who had posted $1,500 bail following the arrests at Garden Street Elementary School. "But instead of fun, we were saddened. ... We didn't know we weren't supposed to be there."

The eight men, all Hispanic day laborers, were arrested at 11 a.m. Monday after they were seen on the playground by a sheriff's deputy while school was in session. Safety concerns have surrounded the school in recent months after a drunken man was found unconscious there Oct. 31. At a series of community meetings, parents spoke out against illegal immigration and the large number of immigrant day laborers in the village.

The eight were charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass, with bails from $1,000 to $3,000. Six posted bail with the help of friends, they said, and four of them met yesterday with Patricia Perez, Putnam County's community affairs coordinator, to ask what the charges meant. They are due in Village Court on Feb. 6 and are seeking help from the Putnam Legal Aid Society.

"We are offering our apologies," Camel said inside the county office building on Main Street. The men, all from Guatemala, have been in the United States from six months to three years. They said they didn't see the bilingual "No trespassing" signs and didn't realize the brick building next to them was a school. Danielo Hernandez, another of the suspects, said they had decided to play there because the cement court had no snow.

Perez said she called the Sheriff's Office to ask about the trespass charges.

"They assured me that it's going to be enforced across-the- board from now on," she said. "I am quite concerned, however, about the state of our community — the strong feelings against immigrants in general, specifically undocumented workers."

The men admitted in court to being in the country illegally, and federal immigration officials were notified by telephone and in writing, Capt. William McNamara of the Putnam County Sheriff's Office said. But he said police were not targeting illegal immigrants.

"This is not an immigration arrest story. That's not what went on here," McNamara said. "The deputy sheriff arrested eight men for violating a state trespassing charge, then learned they were undocumented and then notified authorities."

Mark Thorn, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency would interview the two men who remained in custody yesterday at the county jail.

"The six individuals who were arrested and released on bail did not have a criminal record and did not pose a threat to the community," Thorn said.

Many speakers at the recent community meetings, including one a week ago at the school, said they resented the presence of undocumented workers and those who do not pay income tax.

"Ninety percent of these people, if given the avenue, would and have expressed a desire for citizenship," said Rosemarie Bahr, director of the Putnam Community Action Program, an anti-poverty agency that helps many immigrants. She wondered whether things would have been different if the eight men had been American.

"Would they be arrested or would they just be asked to leave?" she said. "That would be my question. If they can honestly say that it would be the same, so be it."

Some village merchants questioned the need to have the men arrested.

"I understand the parents' concerns, but I think it's a shame that these kids got arrested for playing soccer," said Steve Priest, owner of Jack & Jill Cafe Billiards, where many Hispanic men congregate. "There are no recreational areas where they can play."

Monday was the first time the eight men had played at that location, and they said they were drawn outside by the nice weather. When the officer approached, Ahitofel Gomez said, they ran to grab their jackets but were not avoiding him. They appeared in court handcuffed and with short-sleeved shirts.

"We never had any intentions of running," said Gomez, 21. "The officer told us to sit down, and we did."

"We respect the police," Camel added.

It was apparent yesterday that little had been done to inform Brewster's immigrant population of the concerns at the school.

"The bottom line is we have to do a better job of communicating," Brewster Mayor John Degnan. "I don't think these guys had any bad intentions."

Degnan and Brewster's Hispanic liaison, Victor Padilla, walked Main Street yesterday afternoon to alert the men about the incident. Almost all said they had no idea of the arrests or the uproar over illegal immigration. They also were informed that they were not allowed on school property.

"We got it across to them what happened and that they shouldn't be there," Padilla said. "All the meetings are not going to solve anything unless you communicate to the Hispanics."

Parents continued to raise concerns this week about Hispanic men illegally trespassing on school grounds and pointed to the need for a school resource officer.

"I thought the incident was handled properly and great," said Leonor Volpe, 40, of Southeast. "I know there's so much going on and people calling us bigots. Here's proof that there's a constant issue."

Francisco Cruz, a 35-year-old Brewster resident, said he sympathized with the eight men but also saw a need to enforce the rules.

"You feel a little bad, because we're all human beings, and we feel for other people. But also, if it's a private area, you know you have to respect the rules," he said. "We're Hispanic, and sometimes in our countries we're used to having freedom to come and go, and no one says anything. But you know that in this country the laws are different. There's a little discrimination, too, I know."

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Editorial: The Brewster 8
By THE JOURNAL NEWS
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: January 12, 2006)

The Putnam County Sheriff's Office was within its rights when it arrested eight men, a band of brazen soccer players, for trespassing on Garden Street Elementary School property Monday. In broad daylight they apparently defied "no trespassing" signs and commandeered the school playground, where they engaged in wanton kicking, dribbling, passing and running, oblivious to property law, or the controversy swirling around their very presence in Brewster.

The men, all day laborers who candidly admitted being among the 11 million immigrants in this country illegally, were placed in handcuffs and jailed, pending the posting of bail — set at $1,000 to $3,000. At least one all but confessed his guilty athleticism: "We didn't have work and wanted to have some fun," Belarmino Camel, 30, told The Journal News after posting $1,500 bail. "But instead of fun, we were saddened. . . . We didn't know we weren't supposed to be there."

He was talking just about the school property. Brewster has been the backdrop for an increasingly testy and frustrating conflict over undocumented workers in the Lower Hudson Valley. The local conflict, featuring the usual complaints about security fears, diminished quality of life and changing village identity, reached a boiling point in October, when a drunken man was found passed out on the same Garden Street school grounds. In community meetings since, parents have complained about the number of day laborers generally and Hispanic men trespassing on school property.

Following the soccer players' arrests, new Mayor John Degnan told The Journal News, "We're trying to demonstrate to the community that anybody who's going to commit a crime at Garden Street School, we're going to follow up on it. It's part of our zero-tolerance policy." That must explain why police didn't simply tell the players to scram — the way unwanted softballers, touch footballers and Frisbee tossers might ordinarily and reasonably be dispatched, without further incident or need for bail money and defense counsel.

Degnan's own outreach work after the arrests — as well as newspaper interviews with villagers — makes clear that more needs to be done to ensure that communication lines are established between the undocumented community and the wider Brewster constituencies, so that frustrations and expectations are mutually understood. Indeed, when Degnan and Brewster's Hispanic liaison, Victor Padilla, talked Tuesday with immigrant men on Main Street, almost all were unaware of the Monday arrests or the underlying village dispute over illegal immigration.

Said Padilla: "We got it across to them what happened and that they shouldn't be there (at the school). All the (community) meetings are not going to solve anything unless you communicate to the Hispanics." Degnan seemed to acknowledge as much: "The bottom line is we have to do a better job of communicating. I don't think these guys had any bad intentions."

Of course they didn't; it was just pickup soccer. Inasmuch as the undocumented in Lower Hudson aren't going anywhere soon — Washington is not giving them the boot and local employers just can't say no — it behooves Brewster to couple its "zero-tolerance" policy with some honest dialogue and communication.

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Arrests worsen rumors about day laborers in Brewster
By DIANA BELLETTIERI
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: January 13, 2006)

BREWSTER — The latest wave of controversy surrounding immigrant day laborers on school grounds peaked this week with a flurry of rumors that dozens of men were sleeping in the basement of one school and on the roof of another.

But interim Schools Superintendent Joseph Sabatella quickly tried to squelch the stories in a letter sent home Wednesday to district parents. The letter also highlighted precautions the district is taking to ensure student safety, such as adding police patrols.

"Once somebody starts a rumor, it spreads to the community like wildfire," Sabatella said yesterday. "What you can expect from us is a consistent and diligent effort to address safety issues and concerns."

Sabatella disputed the rumor that 30 day laborers had been seeking shelter in the basement of Garden Street Elementary by pointing to the fact that motion detectors would have been triggered and police would have responded. He said claims that day laborers were sleeping on top of C.V. Starr Intermediate School were "totally unfounded," as verified by the school's maintenance and custodial staff.

The arrests Monday of eight Guatemalan men at Garden Street Elementary School did not spark the rumors but certainly did not help to tame them. Police said all eight men, who were charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass while playing soccer, admitted to being in the country illegally. All but one man, 33-year-old Juan Jiminez , have posted bail.

The atmosphere in Brewster is ripe for such rumors to take hold and proliferate. Parents have packed public meetings, pressing school and town officials to address the issue of illegal immigration throughout the village. Anxiety about school safety is voiced simultaneously with concerns about public drunkenness, off-the-books employment, overcrowded rental apartments and perceived property devaluation. An incident involving an unconscious man found drunk on the grounds of Garden Street Elementary School on Halloween was a rallying call for the discussions.

At least one longtime Brewster resident brought the village's concerns to a wider audience last weekend at a national "Stop the Invasion" protest against illegal immigration that included rallies in Danbury and Spring Valley.

Garden Street parents have said they are thus far happy with the district's response to their concerns. A school resource officer — who costs $80,000 a year and is financed equally between the district and Putnam County — has been assigned to Garden Street from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. A member of the school staff has been stationed at the front door from 7 a.m. until the officer arrives. And the Putnam County Sheriff's Department is patrolling the school grounds during the day.

Last month, the district conducted a security audit at each of its schools. The audit, conducted by New York State Insurance Reciprocal, noted that Garden Street's exterior doors were locked, three security cameras are at points of entrance, the motion alarms and exterior lighting were adequate and signs were posted in both English and Spanish. The report suggested that the school transform its traffic patterns, which Sabatella said already had been done.

Loretta Lestrange, a mother of three children in the district, said she had heard the rumors about day laborers sleeping in the schools. Although she doubted such a thing would go unnoticed, she wasn't entirely sure the rumors were false.

"I was 70 percent sure that they weren't true, but these days, when you're still trying to find where the truth lies, there still is that little part of you that's questioning something like this," said Lestrange, a stay-at-home mom.

As for the recent arrests, Lestrange said everyone has to err on the side of caution. The school is "a major hot spot" right now, she said, and everyone has to know to stay away.

Tori Golz agreed. As a mother of three children in the district, she said Mayor John Degnan's zero-tolerance policy must be enforced.

"It doesn't matter what color your skin is or what language you speak — you're not allowed on school property," she said.

Golz added that the Brewster community should increase its effort to educate the immigrant laborers about the issues troubling residents.

"They're here to stay, regardless of their status, so why not prepare them better and educate them a little better?" she asked. "Maybe if they're better informed about what's accepted, then it'll be less trouble for everyone."

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Police say trespassers knew they were wrong
By TERRY CORCORAN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: January 13, 2006)

BREWSTER — Several of the day laborers charged with trespassing at Garden Street Elementary School this week by playing soccer while school was in session insisted they didn't know they were on school grounds and that they cooperated with police.

But the Putnam County Sheriff's Office, in releasing more information yesterday about the arrests, said the eight men were in a fenced-in playground behind the school for at least an hour Monday morning and that four of them tried to run or hide when Deputy Stephen Tricinelli, the school resource officer, approached.

"In this case, the trespass occurred while children were at the school, the violation was of a sustained duration, and the defendants' attempt to evade the deputy all indicated that they knew what they were doing was wrong," said Capt. William McNamara, department spokesman.

In addition, police rejected suggestions that the arrests were based on the men's immigration status. All admitted to being in the country illegally.

"This is a case in which eight people were arrested for their wrongful conduct in trespassing upon school property in violation of state law, a case of people being charged for what they did — not for who they are," McNamara said.

The department spokesman said Sheriff Donald Smith denied the arrests stemmed from a new department policy aimed at immigrants. No such policy exists, he said.

None of the eight, all from Guatemala, could provide proper identification or immigration documents, said police, who notified immigration authorities. A spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said none of the eight had a criminal record, although officials were checking fingerprints to verify their identities.

The men, from 19 to 33 years old, were charged with third-degree criminal trespass, a misdemeanor. They were held on $1,000 to $3,000 bail. Seven have been released, but one, 33-year-old Juan Jiminez, remained in jail yesterday, still unable to post $3,000 bail. The others were released after friends raised the money.

Three of the men said after their release that they didn't see bilingual no-trespassing signs outside the school and didn't even know it was a school. Ahitofel Gomez, 21, said that when the officer approached, several of them ran to get their jackets, but they were not trying to leave.

Police, however, said that three of the men tried to evade Tricinelli while a fourth went behind a trash bin. The men arrived at the school between 9 and 10 a.m. Monday, entering the fenced-in area behind the school to play soccer, police said.

Tricinelli arrived about 11 a.m. and made the arrests, which came just days after more than 120 residents and parents met at the school to speak out against illegal immigration and day laborers in the village.

Tricinelli was assigned as the school resource officer, the first appointed to a Putnam elementary school, after a drunken man was found unconscious on school grounds in late October.

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Brewster day laborer remains jailed, despite donations for bail
By MARCELA ROJAS
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: January 18, 2006)

Kat Nordgren spent the long weekend baking cookies, muffins and brownies in an effort to help free a jailed man.

The 16-year-old and four of her friends held bake sales in Katonah and Mount Kisco on Sunday and Monday to raise the $3,000 needed to bail out Juan Jiminez, 33, the last of the eight Brewster day laborers in custody after being arrested more than a week ago at Garden Street Elementary School on a trespass charge.

The Hispanic men were playing soccer on the playground when school was in session, and several tried to run away when the school resource officer approached, police said.

Nordgren, the daughter of former Lewisboro Supervisor Jim Nordgren, said she did not know Jiminez but wanted to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day in a meaningful way.

"I was really upset by it. It seemed incredibly unfair. I thought it was racial profiling," said Nordgren, 16. "I thought MLK would have stood up for them."

Though Nordgren was successful in raising the $3,000, her humanitarian efforts did not pan out.

When Nordgren's father posted the bail at the Putnam County jail yesterday morning, he was told that Jiminez, an illegal immigrant, could not be released because he was being detained by the New York Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"We just want him out," Jim Nordgren said yesterday. "I would like to know why he's being held and the other seven are not."

Peter Convery, an undersheriff with the Putnam County Sheriff's Office, said Jiminez was still in the Putnam jail, but ICE had a "detainer warrant" against him, and he would be picked up by the agency, possibly this week.

ICE spokesman Mark Thorn confirmed that Jiminez, who was interviewed by immigration officials, would be transferred into that agency's custody to face deportation proceedings, but he would not indicate when.

Follow-up investigations on the other seven men — who were released shortly following their Jan. 9 arrests — will be conducted, Thorn said.

Friends and family helped to post their bails of $1,000 and $1,500.

"The seven who were released were released before detainers were put in place," Thorn said. "The other seven would still be there and going through the same process if they hadn't been released."

Thorn explained that Jiminez will have an opportunity to present his case before a judge with the Executive Office of Immigration Review, an independent agency under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Thorn emphasized that being in this country illegally is, on its own, a removable offense.

Putnam County Legal Aid, which is representing at least two of the men, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The men are due in Village Court on Feb. 6.

The controversial arrests came after a series of recent meetings at which Garden Street Elementary School parents put pressure on local officials to address illegal immigration, particularly in Brewster, where day laborers often congregate on Main Street to wait for work.

An Oct. 31 incident, in which an inebriated man was found passed out on school grounds, prompted three gatherings at the town, village and school district levels.

Jim Nordgren, who left the $3,000 at the jail, said he would leave the bail there for the time being, though Convery said he was free to pick up the money.

In addition to the bake sale, members of the South Salem Presbyterian Church contributed toward the bail.

One man, Nordgren said, donated $200 for a muffin.

"I think we are doing the right thing," he said. "I think by shining some light on what's going on, we could help their cause. Hopefully good things will come out of this."

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Brewster day laborer handed over to feds
By MARCELA ROJAS AND TERRY CORCORAN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: January 21, 2006)

CARMEL — The mention of his five children and the better life he was trying to give them brought Juan Jiminez to tears yesterday as he sat in the Putnam County jail.

Jiminez, 33, clutched a cross he wore around his neck and spoke of his concerns of being deported and how he meant no harm when he and seven other illegal immigrants, unable to find work Jan. 9, went to Garden Street Elementary School in Brewster to play soccer. As he choked up with emotion, there was a knock on the door — a correction officer informing Jiminez's visitors that federal immigration officials were there to take him into custody.

"I came with the intention of providing a future for my kids," Jiminez said. "If I go back to Guatemala, what can I do for them?"

Jiminez is being transferred to a facility in Pennsylvania, said Mark Thorn, spokesman for the New York Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A specific location won't be disclosed until he arrives, Thorn said. Jiminez will have access to a phone to call his family when he reaches his destination, Thorn said.

Jiminez said his wife had no idea that he has been in jail for 12 days, ever since he and the others were arrested by a school resource officer and charged with misdemeanor trespass.

Although it was a Monday morning and school was in session, the men said they weren't aware it was a school and did not see the "no trespassing" signs in English and Spanish.

The Sheriff's Office said three of the men tried to run and one hid behind a trash bin.

There has been intense debate lately in Brewster over illegal immigration; the Sheriff's Office said the men's immigration status did not emerge until later.

The seven other day laborers were able to post bail, which ranged from $1,000 to $1,500. But Jiminez, in the country for just three months, could not make his $3,000 bail and remained in jail long enough for federal immigration officials to put a hold on him.

In an interview yesterday, Jiminez, a short man with thick, black hair and a thin mustache, said he can't help his family if he is deported. When the conversation turned to his wife and children, ages 2 to 12, Jiminez began to cry, wiping the tears with his sleeve.

"Any parent should understand that all I'm trying to do is make a better life for my family," he said in Spanish. "If I get deported, I lose everything."

Jiminez will have an opportunity to appear before an immigration judge, although a court date has not been set. The agency is to conduct follow-up investigations on the seven other men, but Thorn could not say when that might happen.

"Being in this country illegally is a removable offense," he said.

Jiminez spent 45 days last year traveling from his home in Guatemala to Brewster. The trip included walking through the Mexican desert, often without food or water, on two hours of sleep a night.

He borrowed $2,000 to make the trip from his home to the U.S. border, he said, putting up the small adobe house he built in his native San Marcos as collateral.

Once he crossed into Arizona, it cost $3,000 more to get to Brewster. A friend here lent him the money, Jiminez said. He said he doesn't know how he'll pay it back.

Jiminez also said he fears that if he is deported, he will lose his home, and his wife and children will be put on the street.

"I miss my children, but I came here so they could at least go to school," he said.

Once in Brewster, Jiminez said, he did landscaping work — when he could find it — earning $80 to $85 a day. He said he was unable to find employment after mid-November but hoped that work would be plentiful in the spring.

In Guatemala, he said, he earned $4 a day, planting and picking corn.

Jiminez said he and the others had no ill intentions by playing soccer that morning.

"I sincerely didn't know you weren't allowed to be there," he said. "I came here to help my family, not to get into trouble."

He also denied that he and the others tried to flee the officer.

"We were eight and he was one," he said. "If we tried to run away, how did he catch us?"

Jiminez said he is grateful for the outpouring of support he has received, particularly from a group of Lewisboro teens, led by 16-year-old Kat Nordgren, who held bake sales last weekend to raise his $3,000 bail.

Nordgren's father went to bail out Jiminez, but was told that immigration authorities had issued a detainer warrant on him.

"I'm a stranger to her and yet she was trying to help me. I'm so humbled," said Jiminez, a Catholic who attended St. Lawrence O'Toole Church in Brewster. "May God bless her."

Jiminez's local attorney, Francis O'Reilly, said he pursued his client's case this week and was in contact with Assistant District Attorney Thomas Jacobellis about reducing his bail.

The deportation proceeding means the trespass charge probably will be dropped, O'Reilly said.

"It hurts me to see them treated like this," O'Reilly said. "They are just guys trying to make a living. They are not evil."

The arrests came less than a week after more than 120 parents attended a meeting at the school, where they voiced concerns about safety and illegal immigrants on school grounds, and pressed local officials to be proactive.

Wider complaints also were expressed about the men, sometimes more than 100, congregating on Brewster's Main Street. A deputy had been assigned to the Garden Street school after a drunken man was found passed out behind the building on Halloween.

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Brewster struggles with diversity
By MARCELA ROJAS AND LEAH RAE
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: January 15, 2006)

BREWSTER — At El Universal Deli and Minimarket, a group of day laborers sat at tables facing Main Street with coffee and empanadas, talking about the latest clash of cultures to unsettle the village.

"In Brewster, when one of us causes a problem, we all pay," said Roberto Carlos, who has lived in the village for six years. "We're not accustomed to mixing with Americans. They base their opinions too much on appearances."

Across Main Street, and across the village's cultural divide, customers sat along the counter and in booths at Bob's Diner. Brewster's day-laborer population often is a topic of discussion there.

"I don't like it visually, only because my memory goes back to when they weren't here," Donald Bruen, 72, said over coffee. "It's not a Norman Rockwell town. And it was."

As every morning, Hispanic men were standing in groups and leaning on windowsills along the length of Main Street, while longtime residents of the area gravitated toward the diner. Two distinct worlds have shared space in this half-square-mile village for more than a decade, but the distance between English and Spanish speakers only seems to have widened in recent months.

Local resentment over undocumented immigrants and day laborers made headlines years ago, and frustrations were rekindled Oct. 31, when an inebriated man was found passed out on the grounds of an elementary school. Community meetings about school security evolved into a larger discussion of overcrowded homes, off-the-books employment, public drunkenness and urination, which residents said were being caused by illegal immigration.

Though local leaders have facilitated the meetings, promising parents that they would work together to solve these problems, it became clear last week that little had been done to communicate with the immigrant population.

"They're meeting, but the two communities aren't coming together," said Graciela Heymann, executive director of the Westchester Hispanic Coalition.

After the recent trespassing incident at Garden Street Elementary School, where eight Gua-temalan men were arrested and jailed for misdemeanor criminal trespass, Mayor John Degnan and Victor Padilla, Brewster's volunteer Hispanic liaison, walked Main Street telling the men they weren't allowed on school property.

"They know now that they are not welcome at the school, but there still needs to be more communication," Padilla said.

Putnam County hired Community Affairs Coordinator Patricia Perez in 1999 to reach out to the growing Spanish-speaking population. Perez hopes that with more education, tolerance is possible.

"I'm an optimist. Once people get to know each other better, there can be more acceptance," she said.

Universally, people want more interaction on the immigration issues, but often that requires strong Hispanic representation.

There are several Spanish-speaking congregations in the village, and Degnan recently brought the churches to participate in Team Brewster, a partnership that is working to establish a day-laborer hiring shelter off Marvin Avenue.

"Those of us on Team Brewster are genuinely hoping to see more of the churches get involved," said First Baptist Church Pastor Gregory Bastian.

Danbury, by contrast, has various civic organizations working with the mayor, most prominently the Ecuadorian Civic Association. The city has no Hispanic liaison, said spokesman Michael McLachlan.

In the same way that Brewster is now grappling with its immigration issues, Mount Kisco faced similar problems in the 1980s. Its outreach efforts included offering English language programs at the village library, and later establishing Neighbor's Link, a center for day laborers and Hispanic immigrants that offers a hiring site, computer and English classes and other social services.

"The only way it's going to get better is if people do meet," said Diane Farina, a Mahopac resident, who was having breakfast at Bob's Diner. "Find out both sides of the story, and find out if there is a compromise."

Her husband spoke of the most recent trespassing arrests. The men claimed they didn't know they were not allowed on school grounds, despite a bilingual warning sign.

"You can't be that naive," Mickey Farina said. "You just don't play at a school playground when school's in."

Jorge Galindo, owner of La Guadalupana, offered a different perspective.

"A lot of villages in Guatemala don't have schools or the people don't have an opportunity to go to school," said Galindo, who hails from Puebla, Mexico. "A lot of these guys don't know how to read."

In the wake of the arrests, fear and resentment are surfacing on both sides.

"You can't go to the store because you're afraid that with all this, something will happen. At some point, they'll grab us and send us away," said Aurora Cacique, 36, who is from Mexico and has a 4-year-old son here.

Cacique was a transit police officer in Mexico, making $260 every two weeks. Here she is a housecleaner, she said.

"Over there where I live, there are two or three Americans who I say hello to, and they don't answer me," she said. "We can't tell them to treat us like we are in our country. But they also shouldn't treat us like delinquents or coming in like terrorists."

Putnam County Executive Robert Bondi took exception to some of the recent public comments about sending immigrants back to their countries.

"They're there, obviously, because Putnam people want to hire them," he said. "They work in restaurants, they work doing groundskeeping, they work in the homes of people in Putnam County, and it's somewhat disingenuous to talk at a public meeting about deporting the very people who work for you."

For now, as a small step, Padilla suggested giving the day laborers brooms to clean up the streets when they are not working. The idea would give them a sense of community belonging and show the public that they are giving back, Padilla said.

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Brewster day-laborer to stay in Pennsylvania jail
By MARCELA ROJAS
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: March 10, 2006)

A Brewster day laborer arrested for trespass at a school while playing soccer will have to remain in a Pennsylvania jail while the courts decide whether to deport him to Guatemala.

An immigration judge denied a bail request yesterday for Juan Jimenez, one of eight men arrested for playing soccer while classes were in session at Garden Street Elementary on Jan. 9. Their arrests became a flashpoint in an ongoing debate in the community over illegal immigration and the presence of numerous day laborers along Brewster's Main Street.

Judge Walter Durling with the Executive Office of Immigration Review gave little, if any, sign yesterday of future relief for the 33-year-old Jimenez, who has been detained at Pike County Detention Facility for more than a month.

"He's kicking a soccer ball as an illegal alien," Durling said. "You gave it your best shot, but I'm not going to release this person."

His lawyers say Jimenez's time in the jail, which is about a five-hour drive from Brewster, has been difficult and lonely, with few people near him who speak Spanish.

"As poor as he was in Guatemala, he said that he'd never been down to one pair of underwear, like he is at Pike," said Kevin Canberg, one of two third-year Pace Law School students representing Jimenez under the supervision of their professor, Vanessa Merton.

Canberg and fellow student Christopher Crane argued via a teleconference yesterday morning with Durling and a Department of Homeland Security attorney that Jimenez posed no flight risk. They said his release would give them an opportunity to investigate and better communicate with their client. Jimenez's deportation hearing was continued to April 6.

To bolster their case, Crane and Canberg had submitted several letters of support from residents and officials, including Patricia Perez, Putnam County's coordinator of community affairs.

"Mr. Jimenez is a productive member of the community," the attorneys quoted Perez as writing. "(Jimenez) will appear at future hearings, and does not pose a likely danger to persons or property."

Crane indicated to the judge that if Jimenez was released on bail, he would stay with his brother-in-law, Sergio Cardona, in Brewster, and that he would reconnect with members of St. Lawrence O'Toole Roman Catholic Church, where he is a parishioner.

The seven other men involved in the pickup soccer game that morning also indicated they were not in the country legally, but they were released from the Putnam County jail after posting bail. At $3,000, Jimenez's bail was set the highest. He was unable to raise the money and was taken into custody by immigration officials Jan. 20.

Durling asked yesterday about the legal status of Jimenez's brother-in-law and what proof of identification the student attorneys had to verify their client was in fact Juan Jimenez. They did not have answers.

The hearing also took a turn when a homeland security attorney, John Staples, said Jimenez had indicated at the Pike jail that his real name was Conrado Salvador Feliciano. Jimenez's counsel had no knowledge of his statement and asked for evidence supporting the claim.

Jimenez, whose last name was originally spelled "Jiminez" by the Putnam County Sheriff's Office, was present at the hearing via videophone and aided by an interpreter. He did not speak during the proceedings.

Canberg, Crane and Merton had visited Jimenez at the detention facility in Lords Valley on Feb. 14. They said he was scared and worried about his wife and five children back home who rely on him for financial assistance.

The student attorneys had also called Jimenez's wife, who, they said, was extremely concerned for her husband's welfare. San Marcos, where they live, was among the areas in Guatemala devastated by Hurricane Stan in early October.

"She can't envision any of this," Merton said.

In the meantime, the group plans to visit Jimenez before the next hearing and continue building its case. He has no prior criminal record in this country or in Guatemala, Merton said.

The other seven men are due back in Brewster Village Court on Monday. Jimenez's local criminal charges still stand.

Our government is going to continue to allow this, and there will finally be war in the streets!

Yes, I also feel the "Norman Rockwell" picture is gone! What would he paint now? Taco stands? The Mexican flag? MS-13?

I am so tired of community leaders telling their citizens they are the ones that have to bend over backwards for illegals!

I guess the bet would be, what town will be the first to break out in civil unrest?