Thread: Immigration arrests roil Graham, N.C.

Immigration arrests roil Graham, N.C.
The pending deportation of an exemplary young woman raised in the town has outraged many residents and prompted questions about the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.


By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 24, 2008

GRAHAM, N.C. -- Marxavi Angel Martinez was a child of small-town North Carolina. She grew up here, in the rolling Piedmont region, and was a high school honor student and cheerleader before settling into a job at the Graham Public Library. At 23, she lived in a tidy white trailer at the Cedar Creek Mobile Home Park with her husband and 16-month-old son.

Her carefully tended life came crashing down in July when she was accused of using a phony Social Security number and lying on her job application.

Martinez's parents had brought her to the United States from Mexico on valid visas when she was 3 years old. But they never left the country, in violation of the law. That made Martinez an illegal immigrant, and so she was placed in federal detention, facing deportation.

Her arrest outraged many Graham residents and drew harsh criticism from immigration reform advocates.It also put a spotlight on the sheriff's office, which denied that it was waging a campaign to round up illegal workers.

At a contentious meeting of the Alamance County Board of Commissioners this month, Chairman Larry W. Sharpe asked Sheriff Terry Johnson whether he was "profiling" Latino residents.

Recent arrests of immigrants, Sharpe said, had "gotten out of control."

The sheriff responded: "If you want to come here illegally and live in this country, do not violate any laws."

An increased push in recent months to enforce the nation's immigration laws has snared those, like Martinez, who were raised in the United States -- as well as day laborers, repeat immigration offenders and other criminals.

Local law enforcement agencies also have been working with federal immigration agents under a program, known as 287(g), meant to focus on serious crimes, such as drug trafficking, gang activity and terrorism. The deputy who arrested Martinez at the library was assigned to such a task force.

A week after Martinez was jailed, the same deputy arrested her husband on the same charges at his job at a local Biscuitville restaurant. According to friends, Martinez's parents then turned themselves in to federal authorities. All are being processed for deportation.

Martinez's arrest followed a June 14 incident in which an Alamance County deputy arrested an undocumented Latino driver on Interstate 85. Local media reports said the deputy had left the woman's children -- ages 14, 10 and 6 -- out on the highway at night to fend for themselves for eight hours.

Randy Jones, the sheriff's spokesman, said the deputy had obtained permission from the woman to leave her children in the care of a male passenger.

According to Jones, Martinez was arrested after an informant told the sheriff that a library employee was using a stolen Social Security number.

The tip came as state authorities were investigating the Alamance County Health Department, whose employees allegedly had been writing work illness excuses using illegal immigrants' false names. Officials have said they found no evidence of wrongdoing. But Martinez's arrest prompted suspicion among immigration reform advocates that authorities had tracked her through confidential medical records, which the sheriff's office has denied.

Jones said that Martinez had "self-identified" her illegal status by using a dead person's Social Security number. After pleading guilty to misuse of a Social Security number, a felony, Martinez was released Aug. 13 on $25,000 bond and placed under house arrest pending deportation hearings.

After Martinez's arrest, the county began checking all of its new employees against a Department of Homeland Security database to verify Social Security numbers. The Sheriff's Department does not target illegal workers or ask criminal suspects about their immigration status, Jones said, "but we have the legal responsibility to act on allegations of a felony crime."

The problem, said Martinez's lawyer, David B. Smith, it that immigration authorities fail to distinguish between undocumented workers who commit serious crimes and those who live productive, law-abiding lives.

Martinez declined to comment on the case.

But Marilyn Tyler, a retired librarian, called the situation in town "pathetic."

"The sheriff's office is using all this energy and time on one woman to tear her life apart, but why?" she said. "This is a situation where you have to use judgment."

Crystal Williams of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. said federal authorities fail to exercise the prosecutorial discretion commonly used by local law enforcement. The approach taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she said, is one of "no discretion whatsoever. . . . If they find anyone in violation, they arrest them."

A 2000 memo from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the predecessor to ICE, does instruct agents to consider such mitigating factors as long-term U.S. residency, lack of a criminal record and "expressions of opinion" by community members.

ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said that while the agency does exercise discretion, it has instituted some policies that supersede parts of the 2000 memo. Those policy documents are not publicly available.

Whatever the policy, said Rachel Crabtree, a friend of Martinez, "no one in her family is working, and they don't know how much longer they'll be able to live on what they've got."

"Everything has been taken from her -- her driver's license, her library card," Crabtree said, adding that for the first few days after Martinez's arrest, "I really felt like she died."

Friends said they are helping the family raise money and plan to support them at deportation hearings.

"It's different if it's criminal, but [Martinez] was just a young girl working part time at the library," said a friend, Viviana Maltby.

Tyler, the retired librarian, said that with Martinez's arrest, the county's public library system has been deprived of one of its few bilingual workers.

"This is such a loss," Tyler said. "It's not just her family and friends that are harmed. It's all of us."

david.zucchino@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 7147.story

Intelligence or lack or it does not effect the outcome of law breaking. If your here illegally and your a genious you should be deported immediately and you can use that intelligence to make your official homeland a better place to live!

A Liberal Newspapers Lament on Illegal Alien ID Theft
By zeezil

The Charlotte Observer, a liberal pro-illegal immigrant newspaper owned by the McClatchy Company published an editorial on August 4 titled “The anti-immigrant furor has gone too farâ€

The problem, said Martinez's lawyer, David B. Smith, it that immigration authorities fail to distinguish between undocumented workers who commit serious crimes and those who live productive, law-abiding lives.

David B. Smith (who calls himself a lawyer) fails to distinguish between an illegal and legal workers. Illegal aliens are in the country ILLEGALLY because they BROKE THE LAW to get in. That DOES NOT make them "law-abiding" workers.

Z,

Did you get that printed anywhere?

Originally Posted by realbsball

Z,

Did you get that printed anywhere?

http://migranttrail.wordpress.com/2008/ ... -id-theft/

Sob! Martin Arvizu has responded to Zeezil:

24
AugIMMIGRATION CENTRAL: BLAME MEXICANS!
By steagles80 1 Comment
Categories: Chase Field, Operation ********* and University of Phoenix Stadium
Tags: Chase Field, Marxavi Angel Martinez, Operation *******, University of Phoenix Stadium

By Martin Arvizu

I am assuming anyone who reada our blog knew I would have to write a rebuttal to our guest contributor, Zeezil. So here goes.

He cannot decide to attack either the Charlotte Observer or Marxavi Angel Martinez, the librarian who was arrested in North Carolina for using false documents among other charges related to her immigration status, and nothing more.

I wrote about Martinez awhile back, if our readers remember. She was brought to the United States by her parents when she was three-years-old. The family did not originally come here illegally. They simply overstayed their visas, and ultimately decided to raise their daughter in a country where she would have more opportunities and a better life. If Zeezil is a student of history, he should know that a parent coming here without documentation to give their kids a better life is an American tradition that goes back a few hundred years. Unless Zeezil is a Native American, there is a good chance his family came here illegally too. I know, I know. He will say they came here and waited in line like they were supposed to, like Mexicans should now. I hate to break to everyone who uses that argument, but Native Americans were fighting off American Expansionism into the late nineteenth century. It was their country then, as it is now. I do not think Zeezil feels their opinions mattered much. Military might makes right, huh?

Illegal Immigration is what this country is based on. It just happened that the United States was a little more accepting of it back then. During the late 1800’s the United States was flourishing and needed the Chinese to do the grinding, back-breaking, low-wage work that is essential to rapid growth. This cycle has been going on since then, occupied by different ethnic groups throughout our history. But no group has been more affected by it than Mexicans, and they are tired of it.
Mexicans are tired of being in this co-dependent relationship with the United States and simply want some real commitment. They are loved when the economy is great, and house prices are going up every other month. Americans love them when they get that steak burrito at 3 a.m., after living it up at the club for a few hours. Everything is fine, and life is good. The relationship could not be better.

Then problems arise. Home prices fall, that steak burrito just went through your stomach like an enema. You have probably got salmonella poising from something the Mexicans in the restaurant were putting in that burrito. Now everything is the Mexicans’ fault, and they need to go back to where they came from, right? It does not matter that they built Chase Field, University of Phoenix Stadium and not to mention that house or apartment you are probably sitting in right now. What matters is that someone needs to be blamed, and God forbid we blame ourselves. This is America anyhow, and nothing we do is ever our fault. That house you bought for $300, 000 and now no one will give you more than $165,000 for it, a Mexican caused that. You know why? Because they worked too damn hard and built too many, that is why. It could never have been due to simple greed, and ignorance of the pitfalls of capitalism and its subsequent markets. Mexicans are making our lives miserable and we want to see other ethnicities. Like the Somalis that are taking over the jobs that Mexicans left vacant at the Agriprocessors plant in Iowa. Maybe anti-illegal immigrant activists will be happy with them. They will know their place, not play their music too loud and their food will not make them sick. So maybe Mexicans should be rounded up like cattle and taken back to Mexico like they did in the 1950’s when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s Operation ******** was in full force. Somalis, Koreans or some other third-world group will then slowly take over Mexicans’ place as the construction workers, field hands and late-night restaurateurs. Maybe then the anti-illegal-immigrant crowd will be happy. Until of course other like-minded Americans begin to have these problems again. But its OK, it will all be the Somalis’ fault.

http://migranttrail.wordpress.com/

Originally Posted by butterbean

The problem, said Martinez's lawyer, David B. Smith, it that immigration authorities fail to distinguish between undocumented workers who commit serious crimes and those who live productive, law-abiding lives.

David B. Smith (who calls himself a lawyer) fails to distinguish between an illegal and legal workers. Illegal aliens are in the country ILLEGALLY because they BROKE THE LAW to get in. That DOES NOT make them "law-abiding" workers.

Thought this case involved ID Theft? Wouldnt a naturalized citizen be subject to deportation for this type of crime?

Originally Posted by Mayday

Sob! Martin Arvizu has responded to Zeezil:

24
AugIMMIGRATION CENTRAL: BLAME MEXICANS!
By steagles80 1 Comment

Illegal Immigration is what this country is based on.

Typical comment probably made by an illegal alien.

DUMBEST QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"Everything has been taken from her -- her driver's license, her library card," Crabtree said, adding that for the first few days after Martinez's arrest, "I really felt like she died."

OMG!! They even got her library card!!!!!!!!! What an injustice! How is she going to survive now???? Call the President! Call the National Guard!

Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, Senora Crabtree, but didn't Martinez steal the SS# OF A DEAD MAN?????? He's getting the last laugh now, isn't he?