Thread: Houston man pleads guilty in human smuggling case

Houston man pleads guilty in human smuggling case

Mar 20, 2007

MOBILE, Ala. A Texas man pleaded guilty to smuggling undocumented workers through Alabama. In a plea deal announced Monday in Mobile federal court, 32-year-old Santiago Ramirez-Godoy of Houston admitted he unlawfully transported illegal aliens.

The charges stem from a traffic stop made by U-S Customs agents on January 23rd on Interstate 10 in Mobile County. Agents said the van contained 16 passengers in addition to Ramirez-Godoy and 47-year-old Luciano Alvarez-Meraz.

All the passengers were turned over sent to immigration officers.

Alvarez-Meraz, also of Houston, pleaded not guilty and awaits trial.

Ramirez-Godoy told agents he knew the passengers were illegal aliens but said he needed the money. U-S District Judge Ginny Grenade set sentencing for June. A defense lawyer said Ramirez-Godoy faces up to 15 months in prison.

http://www.fox10tv.com/global/story.asp?s=6252870

human smuggling gets you 15 months for 15 illegals??
thats one for each month. what the hell is this government thinking?
give the bastard 30 years and start taking back this damn country NOW

Federal court digest: Immigrant smuggler could face deportation
Monday, March 10, 2008
By BRENDAN KIRBY
Staff Reporter
A federal judge in Mobile sentenced a Texas man to two months imprisonment for transporting illegal immigrants, but the more serious consequence for Santiago Ramirez-Godoy could be deportation.

Ramirez-Godoy pleaded guilty in March 2007.

Chief U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade ordered him to wear an electronic monitoring device on home confinement for four months after his prison term.

Ramirez-Godoy is a permanent U.S. resident who came into the country legally. With the conviction, however, an immigration judge has the discretion to deport him to his native Mexico.

Granade gave Ramirez-Godoy a lenient sentence to reward him for his testimony against co-defendant Luciano Alvarez-Meraz and for the information he supplied about his employer, Texas-based Wendy Transportation.

Ramirez-Godoy's lawyer, J. Clark Stankoski, said he does not know why the investigation against Wendy Transportation failed to result in criminal charges.

"That is something that we were very interested in, and something we would like to pursue," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Daryl Atchison.

Ramirez-Godoy, who hangs wallboard for a living, said he wants to be with his American wife and child in Houston. "I've worked very hard to be with my family, and I want to be with my family," he said through an interpreter. "And I'm very remorseful for what I did."

Ramirez-Godoy was in the front passenger seat of the Wendy Transportation van driven by Alvarez-Meraz on Jan. 23, 2007, when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent stopped the vehicle at 5:30 a.m. on Interstate 10 near the Theodore-Dawes Road exit.

Ramirez-Godoy admitted that the workers in the van, who numbered 15 or 16 and were on their way from Texas to the eastern U.S., were in the country illegally.

A jury convicted Alvarez-Meraz in April, but he fled afterward and remains at large.


Port gets $500,000 in lawsuit settlement


The owners and operators of a container ship that caused a fatal crane crash at the Alabama state docks have agreed to pay more than $500,000 to the Alabama State Port Authority.

Judith Adams, a spokeswoman for the port, said the authority will get $549,553. She said the port's insurance company paid more than $3.4 million.

"All of this covered our losses," including replacing a container crane that collapsed and repairing pier damage, Adams said.

The crash in March 2006 killed 46-year-old Shawn David Jacobs, who was working on the dockside crane when a transport ship struck it.

A federal jury in Mobile convicted the ship's captain, Wolfgang Schroder, of abuse and neglect by a ship officer in October 2006. Chief U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade sentenced him to the four months he had spent locked up pending trial.

The Port Authority's civil lawsuit named the ship, the ZIM Mexico III; the two German companies that own and operate the ship, MS Peter Rickmers Schiffsbeteiligungsgesellschaf and Rickmers Reederei GMBH; and the company that chartered the ship, ZIM American Integrated Shipping Services.

"It was a tragic, tragic accident," said attorney Bill Goodloe, who represented the ship owners. "My clients are responsible ship owners and did the right thing."

Two cranes purchased by the Port Authority arrived in November 2006, which doubled the pre-accident capacity at the pier.

The ship owners previously had settled out of court with Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance Co. over damaged cargo and with Joshua Sheffield, an electrician who watched his friend and co-worker die in the wreck.


Brewton drug dealers get prison time


Two Brewton men got prison time last week for federal drug and gun charges.

U.S. District Judge William Steele on Tuesday sentenced Brandon Keith Rose to 10 years in prison on a methamphetamine conspiracy charge and for using a firearm to further a drug trafficking offense.

Steele sentenced Rose's co-conspirator, James Christopher Ard, to six years.

U.S. Attorney Deborah Rhodes praised the 35th Judicial Circuit Task Force, the Brewton Police Department and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration for "disrupting and dismantling this drug conspiracy."

Rose and Ard pleaded guilty in October.


Man pleads guilty in marijuana plot


A Mobile man admitted last week to participating in a large marijuana-smuggling operation.

Savarus Woodall, 29, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possession with intent to distribute marijuana. He had been scheduled to go on trial later this month.

Woodall and co-defendant Brian Perry, who has also pleaded guilty, are set for sentencing in June.

Police in Hogansville, Ga., arrested Woodall and Perry in September 2006 on marijuana charges and seized $14,463.

Mobile County sheriff's deputies searched Perry's apartment on Hillcrest Road in Mobile the following month and found marijuana and digital scales, according to court records. While deputies were searching the apartment, Woodall arrived.

At another apartment linked to Woodall, deputies seized a money-counting machine, 131 grams of cocaine, 27 grams of crack cocaine, 13 grams of marijuana and weight scales.

More than a year later, in December, deputies made an undercover drug buy from Woodall and Perry at Yester Oaks Apartments in Mobile.




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