Thread: Friends fear Charlotte high school arts student detained by ICE could be deported Re

Originally Posted by lorrie

Why did the grocery store hire an illegal alien in the first place?

What documents did he use to get the job?

If the grocery store knew he was illegally in the country and hired him, then they need to be prosecuted and fined.

Sounds like he was under the DACA program which means he was authorized to work.

Charlotte teen nearing high school graduation to remain jailed in Ga. immigration center

BY MICHAEL GORDON

An immigration judge in Georgia Friday morning denied bond to Guz Zamudio, a Charlotte high school student facing deportation after being charged with embezzling money from the Harris Teeter store where he worked.

The decision by Judge Dan Trimble means the Northwest School of the Arts student will remain in federal custody at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga., for the forseeable future.

Zamudio, 18, faces deportation to his native Mexico in connection with his Feb. 25 arrest in Charlotte on charges that he took more than $2,900 from a Harris Teeter store in Myers Park where he worked.

His attorneys and friends had hoped that Zamudio would be freed to return to Charlotte to deal with deportation and the criminal charges. He is scheduled to graduate from Northwest in three months.

According to witnesses in the courtroom Friday morning, Trimble’s decision followed a five-minute hearing. It was witnessed by four supporters of Zamudio who had driven all night to be in the courtroom. Community activist Braxton Winston and Jennifer Erwin, the mother of a Northwest student, spoke to the judge.

In denying Zamudio’s bond, Trimble acknowledged that the teen had extensive community backing and wished him good luck in his deportation case, Winston said.

Zamudio’s immigration attorney, Carnell Johnson of Charlotte, was not present in the courtroom, but his voice was piped in. He argued that Zamudio was not a flight risk, and said as a young gay man, his client needed the court’s protection by being removed from custody.

Asked about Zamudio’s demeanor in the courtroom, Winston described it as calm and attentive.

“He was strong,” Winston said.

Winston, along with Erwin and Northwest students Devyn Bauer and Anna Butler drive six hours from Charlotte to be on hand, arriving at Stewart just before 5 a.m.

“It's really important for us to be here,” Butler said. “Gus has been alone in this place...He needs to know that there are people here supporting him.”

Added Bauer: “Even if the (embezzlement) charges are true – and I don't think they are – he still deserves to be in the American judicial system. He's not just something the government sends away.”

Following the judge’s decision, the students broke down in tears outside the courtroom, Winston said. A hoped-for meeting with Zamudio was not allowed.

The hearing was Zamudio’s best – and likely his last – chance at freedom in the coming months. He now faces a lengthy wait at the immigration center until his deportation case is scheduled. On Thursday, Rob Heroy, one of the teen’s criminal attorneys in Charlotte,had described the chances of a successful appeal of the denial of bond as “slim and none.”

Before his arrest, Zamudio was under the protection of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a renewable two-year program started by the Obama administration that protected certain immigrants from deportation who had come into the country with their parents. DACA participants are also eligible for work permits.

Under the previous administration, participants lost DACA protections when convicted of a felony. Johnson said the Trump administration. in what it describes an effort to make the country safer from crime-committing immigrants, has begun revoking the status at the time of arrest.

Zamudio’s case has inspired rallies by his classmates, speeches at government meetings, and a letter-writing campaign asking Harris Teeter to drop the charges.

Heroy said he will be meeting with the Mecklenburg District Attorney’s Office first thing Friday to discuss the embezzlement charges. He declined to say whether he will also be contacting Harris Teeter. If the charges were either dropped or in some way resolved, Heroy said, it would improve Zamudio’s immigration standing.

“This is a young kid,” Heroy said. “Merits of the case aside, these are pretty severe consequences for what went on.”

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/new...137649988.html

These DACA "kids" are not innocent, charming, little darlings. Deport them all.

END DACA NOW! NO WORK PERMITS, NO PATH TO CITIZENSHIP.

Nabbed by ICE after Harris Teeter arrest, Charlotte teen Gus Zamudio back in Mexico

BY MICHAEL GORDON
mgordon@charlotteobserver.com

Charlotte high school student Gus Zamudio, whose immigration case became a focal point in the local debate over the crackdown against undocumented immigrants, is back in his native Mexico.

Zamudio, 18, landed Thursday night in Mexico City where extended family was waiting, according to friends and his attorney. His departure – on a one-way ticket out of Atlanta – comes about a month before he would have graduated from Northwest School of the Arts.

He was taken into immigration custody shortly after his Feb. 25 arrest on charges of embezzling almost $3,000 from the Harris Teeter store in Myers Park where he worked. That felony charge later was pleaded down by Zamudio’s criminal attorneys. But while the plea deal allowed Zamudio to avoid formal deportation, it could not keep him in the country long enough to graduate with his classmates. He has been held in Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga., 140 miles south of Atlanta, for more than two months.

HE WAS REALLY DESPERATE TO GET OUT OF ... WHAT’S A POLITE WAY OF SAYING ‘HELL HOLE’?”
Marty Rosenbluth, the attorney for Charlotte teen Gus Zamudio

Zamudio came to the country from Mexico with his family when he was 4 or 5. Because he was granted a “voluntary departure” in lieu of deportation, and because he left the country before he turned 18 and a half, Zamudio can immediately apply for a visa that would allow him to legally re-enter the country.

Given the current climate, there are no guarantees the request would be approved, said Marty Rosenbluth, the teenager’s volunteer immigration attorney.

His detention led to rallies by friends and supporters who reimbursed Harris Teeter and raised money and awareness in hopes of keeping Zamudio in the country.

Supporters of the country’s tougher immigration policy say Zamudio lost his right to be in the country when he committed a crime.

Under the Obama administration, Zamudio likely would have avoided immigration detention or the forced departure until he was convicted of a crime, and his plea bargain might have kept him in the country altogether, experts say. But since taking office, the Trump administration has cast a wider net – seizing undocumented immigrants accused of breaking the law.

In some cases, their crimes have been being in the country illegally.

Shortly after Zamudio’s arrest, a spokesman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, said the agency was “focused on identifying, arresting and removing public safety threats, such as criminal aliens and gang members, as well as individuals who have violated our nation’s immigration laws.”

When he last visited with his client last week, Rosenbluth said Zamudio “was really desperate to get out of ... what’s a polite way of saying ‘hell hole’?”

He called Zamudio’s case “egregious.”

“Here’s this kid, you know, a kid in high school. He made a mistake, certainly. But that didn’t make him a threat to public safety or a terrorist,” Rosenbluth said. “What’s really egregious is that there’s nothing we can do under the law. He had no options.

“Was I able to keep Gus here so he would have graduated from high school and lived happily ever after? No. But we got the little justice we could eke out for him given the laws that we have.”

On the ICE website, Zamudio’s status already had been changed Friday morning.

“Not in custody,” it reads.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/new...148789704.html

He was soooo grateful for his chance he embezzles 3K from Harris Teeter.

This caught my attention: Zamudio came to the country from Mexico with his family when he was 4 or 5. So the REST of the family gets to stay? That's just BS!

They should arrest the whole gang, the whole criminal law-breaking family. They should add "child endangerment" charges to all parents who brought children into the US without a visa.

5. Because he was granted a “voluntary departure” in lieu of deportation, and because he left the country before he turned 18 and a half, Zamudio can immediately apply for a visa that would allow him to legally re-enter the country.

What a load of horse manure!

He's still got a grand larceny record. He's not coming back on a visa.

I just hope the cops keep an eye out for him! I have no doubt he will be back if the rest of his family was allowed to stay

by JOHN BINDER
7 May 2017
Atlanta, GA
503 comments

Immigration officials granted an illegal immigrant “voluntary departure” instead of deportation after he allegedly embezzled money through the job he was working in the U.S.

Gus Zamudio, an 18-year-old from Mexico, returned to Mexico City nearly a month before he was expected to graduate from art school, according to the Charlotte Observer.

Zamudio allegedly embezzled approximately $3,000 from ‘Harris Teeter,’ the store he was working in back in February, according to police. Zamudio’s attorney pleaded down the felony charges, but the illegal immigrant remained in law enforcement custody.

Under former President Barack Obama’s administration, Zamudio would likely have been protected from remaining in federal custody, despite the criminal accusations. He could have received protection under the ‘Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals’ (DACA) program, in which illegal immigrants are called ‘DREAMers.’

Though DACA is still up and running under President Donald Trump, illegal immigrants who are accused or convicted of crimes, but are enrolled in the program, are eligible for deportation.

Zamudio’s immigration lawyer, played off the teen’s felony charges as a “mistake,” telling the Charlotte Observer “He made a mistake, certainly. But that didn’t make him a threat to public safety or a terrorist.”

Zamudio will now be able to apply for a visa to enter the U.S. legally, though he is not guaranteed that his visa application will be approved.

http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/...ement-charges/