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Border Patrol agent indicted for harboring woman

Associated Press
Jun. 22, 2005 02:28 PM

TUCSON - A Border Patrol agent has been indicted and arrested on charges that he harbored an illegal alien - the woman he lived with for about four years - and filed false reports stating that she was a legal citizen.

Pablo S. Berry, 23, of Douglas, was named in a six-count indictment by a federal grand jury in Tucson and was arrested Tuesday without incident in Naco, a day before an initial appearance in front of a U.S. magistrate here.

Berry is charged with one count of harboring an illegal alien and aiding and abetting; three counts of making false statements and two counts of making a false document. He had been assigned at Naco since becoming a Border Patrol agent in July 2003, a spokesman said.

The indictment alleges that Berry harbored Claudia Veronica Vasquez Banda from 2001 until February of this year.

It accuses him of having made false statements on a national security questionnaire job application with the patrol in June 2002, when he omitted information about the woman, and of failing to give information about relatives and associates and their citizenship.

Berry also is charged with making a "false, fictitious and fraudulent statement and representation" in October 2002 in a letter he wrote to an Immigration and Naturalization Service official saying that Claudia Vasquez was a United States citizen.

Conviction could bring up to five years in prison for each count, a $250,000 fine or both.

Vasquez Banda has not been charged but is being held as a material witness.

Berry has been placed indefinitely on unpaid suspension, according to a Border Patrol spokesman.