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Human-smuggling defendants released

Michael Kiefer
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 21, 2006 12:00 AM

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Thursday ordered that four remaining defendants in a conspiracy to commit human-smuggling case be released on their own recognizance.

Judge Thomas O'Toole also requested that they not be removed from the country by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office while awaiting an Aug. 18 trial.

One of the defendants was already out on bond. A fifth defendant was released on bond months ago but was picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in June and deported. ICE has since refused to transport people prosecuted under the state's Human Smuggling Statute on the grounds that only certain federal agents have the authority to determine who is in the country illegally.

After 17 defendants were released from Maricopa County jails without being removed from the country as undocumented immigrants, Sheriff Joe Arpaio ordered that subsequent defendants in human-smuggling cases be transported to Yuma by sheriff's deputies and turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol when their court cases are finished.

The Maricopa County Attorney's Office has filed more than 260 cases against suspected smugglers and persons suspected on conspiracy to commit human smuggling.

On Thursday, Arpaio sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to protest ICE's refusal to take custody of any prisoners in those cases.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Court of Appeals declined a request by one of the conspiracy defendants to determine whether County Attorney Andrew Thomas' policy of charging the smuggled immigrants as conspirators is constitutional.

That defendant, Cupertino Salazar, is the one who was deported.

"I don't know where he is right now," said his attorney, Tim Agan. "I believe he's in Mexico."

More charges possible

Unless Agan appeals to the Arizona Supreme Court and it rules in his favor, Thomas can continue filing conspiracy charges.

But whether he can prove them is another question. The first two conspiracy defendants were acquitted by O'Toole on July 11 on the grounds that the prosecutors did not prove there was corpus delicti, that is, a body of evidence sufficient for the trial to go forward.

Salazar and the other four defendants - Doris Noemi Madrid Mejia, Jose Alfredo Rizo, Carlos Vivanco Martinez and Antonio Gonzalez Alvarado - were arrested at the same time as the two acquitted defendants and will be judged on the same evidence.