Thread: An Interpreter Speaking Up for Migrants

The legal fees and court costs for prosecuting the defenseless has got to be astronomical...not to mention the cost of incarceration. Unless the IA's are guilty of crimes they should be deported without delay! They need to be given a warning that if they re-enter illegally a second time, it's an automatic felony and prison time! Most of them are illiterate in their OWN language...and it's a total waste of our time and money to prosecute them. Get rid of all the lawyers!

An Interpreter Speaking Up for Migrants

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: July 11, 2008

WATERLOO, Iowa — In 23 years as a certified Spanish interpreter for federal courts, Erik Camayd-Freixas has spoken up in criminal trials many times, but the words he uttered were rarely his own.


Then he was summoned here by court officials to translate in the hearings for nearly 400 illegal immigrant workers arrested in a raid on May 12 at a meatpacking plant. Since then, Mr. Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, has taken the unusual step of breaking the code of confidentiality among legal interpreters about their work.

In a 14-page essay he circulated among two dozen other interpreters who worked here, Professor Camayd-Freixas wrote that the immigrant defendants whose words he translated, most of them villagers from Guatemala, did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived.

[b]In the essay and an interview, Professor Camayd-Freixas said he was taken aback by the rapid pace of the proceedings and the pressure prosecutors brought to bear on the defendants and their lawyers by pressing criminal charges instead of deporting the workers immediately for immigration violations.

He said defense lawyers had little time or privacy to meet with their court-assigned clients in the first hectic days after the raid. Most of the Guatemalans could not read or write, he said. Most did not understand that they were in criminal court.

“The questions they asked showed they did not understand what was going on,â€

This is where laratsa, lulac and mecha fail their clients miserably. They should be advising these illegal aliens about document fraud and what will happen to them when caught. These organizations don't care because as IA's get jailed/deported, others keep swarming in to take their places.

Some advocates, huh?

This is where laratsa, lulac and mecha fail their clients miserably. They should be advising these illegal aliens about document fraud and what will happen to them when caught.

Exactly.

...a basic tenet of U.S. law, something with this Professor seems to have forgotten is that "ignorance of the law is no defense". The bottom line is that these illegals crossed our borders knowingly, illegally and purchased fraudulent documents knowingly with the express intent of using them to obtain illegal employment.

...a basic tenet of U.S. law, something with this Professor seems to have forgotten is that "ignorance of the law is no defense". The bottom line is that these illegals crossed our borders knowingly, illegally and purchased fraudulent documents knowingly with the express intent of using them to obtain illegal employment.

[quote]“The questions they asked showed they did not understand what was going on,â€

I'm still upset that upper-managerment wasn't nailed at the same time.
Pure Exploitation by AG and there "Outside" organization.

All in all, they can't be stupid enough to not know they are doing SOMEHTING illegal if they bought illegal documents. They might not know what their punishment might be for using these documents, but they knnow it is illegal. GIVE ME A BFREAK.

[quote]He suggested many of the immigrants could not have knowingly committed the crimes in their pleas. “Most of the clients we interviewed did not even know what a Social Security card was or what purpose it served,â€

SS fraud is a felony punishable by a huge fine and a minimum of 2 years in prison, but I'll bet very few IA's have ever been prosecuted and imprisoned for SS fraud. There are millions of stolen and fake SSN's.

As much as I would like to see ALL of them go to prison, we can't afford to keep them and clog up the court rooms and prison system. The cost is astronomical! And we have to contend with LULAC, MALDEF, and all the OBL nazis. We just need to get them OUT of the country ASAP..before the lawyers get to them!

We need room to incarcerate all the anchor babies who will undoubtedly take up half the existing prison space; we need E-Verify and we need to prosecute the employers.