Thread: Hearings are challenge for district court officials

Hearings are challenge for district court officials
By GRANT SCHULTE • gschulte@dmreg.com • May 21, 2008

Read Comments(12)Recommend Print this page E-mail this article
Share this article: Del.icio.us Facebook Digg Reddit Newsvine What’s this?
Waterloo, Ia. - Five Guatemalan illegal immigrants - shackled, solemn and convicted of fraud charges - trudged out of their first court hearing Tuesday morning and into a chilly gray trailer.

Inside sat U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett, two Spanish translators, and half a dozen federal marshals. Lawyers beckoned. The immigrants, in orange jumpsuits, walked to their seats, their shackles clinking, and waited for Bennett to hand down their prison sentences.


A list of people detained in the raid

The routine will continue this week as most of the 306 immigrants arrested in the May 12 raid at Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville strike plea deals.

On Monday, 85 of the people arrested admitted they were in the U.S. illegally.

In addition, 77 pleaded guilty of using a false identification document to obtain work and admitted that they fraudulently used someone else's identification. They were sentenced to five months in jail and three years of probation in their home countries. Eight others were sentenced to probation in their home countries after admitting they used someone else's identification to obtain a job.

Prosecutors on Tuesday were scheduled to reach similar settlements with 55 more detainees. Hearings will continue through Thursday.

The swarm of immigrants in makeshift courtrooms has presented unusual challenges for judges, magistrates and court officials who are processing the largest single-site immigration case load in U.S. history.

"There's nothing comparable to this," said Paul Zoss, a federal magistrate who usually works in Sioux City. The challenge, he said, "is the logistics. Except for the scope of it, this is what we do every day."

A shortage of federally certified Spanish interpreters in Iowa required authorities to bring in others from Chicago, Miami and other locales.

Some judges have delayed criminal sentencing hearings in other cases because most of the available U.S. marshals are in Waterloo. Other judges sat in on the raid's early court proceedings to hear what questions the immigrants were asking.

All of the four judges in the case - two district judges, two magistrates - spend their off-hours in temporary offices at the National Cattle Congress, writing legal opinions in unrelated cases and talking with their law clerks.

Conducting court in an old-school music hall and two trailers "has definitely been a learning experience," Chief U.S. District Judge Linda Reade said.

"It's a good test of the continuity of our operations. We've never had a chance to try this out."

Judges also have made conscious efforts to speak slowly and simply to the immigrants through Spanish translators, their words carefully chosen. They ask detainees at least five questions in each hearing. They juggle 10 cases at a time, mispronounce names and ask the immigrants to answer some legal questions with a show of hands.

They check - and check again - to ensure each immigrant can hear the Spanish translators.

A typical scene from the sentencing hearings played out Tuesday in Judge Bennett's trailer-turned-courtroom.

A prosecutor re-read a plea deal that the five Guatemalans had heard minutes earlier. Two translators whispered Spanish into their microphones. The Guatemalans nodded.

Slowly, gingerly, Bennett asked each man for questions or comments before he approved their five-month prison sentence and removal from the United States.

Mario Tagual-Perez, a native Guatemalan, leaned forward and asked if he could contact his family from prison. Federal officials have said most of the immigrants will spend their sentences in the county jails where they were being held.

"That's an excellent question," Bennett said. "I'm pretty sure that once I sentence you, you go to the custody of the U.S. marshals. But I would be very, very surprised and very upset if you couldn't contact your family in Guatemala. They need to know what's going on."

Bennett, a former civil rights lawyer, referred to each man by his first name as he asked them the last round of questions.

"I hope you're reunited with your family and friends" in Guatemala, he told them after handing down the sentences. "And I hope the U.S. government treated you with dignity and respect."





http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/p ... /805210394

It sounds to me like this is a classy judge. I do not believe in inhumane treatment of illegals, I just want them deported. There is no need to be ugly when doing it.

I believe the judges should be civil and the great, great majority of them are...these people should be grateful that even when they are in a court of law....we can be civil even when enforcing our laws. They wouldn't be treated this kindly in their own lands....and neither would we if we were down there.