Mexicans to be deported for bribe offers: 'Real crime was just wanting to stay'


A federal judge in Mobile, Ala., on Friday, Aug. 23, 2013, sentenced six people who admitted to trying to pay about $25,000 each for immigration documents. They are (clockwise from upper left), Martha Gonzalez, Josefina Gonzalez-Hurtado, Maria Castillo-Pineda, Juan Carlos Aguinaga-Reyes, Antonio Gonzalez-Hurtado and Ofelia Martinez-Rodriguez.

By Brendan Kirby | bkirby@al.com Press-Register
on August 24, 2013 at 11:43 AM, updated August 24, 2013 at 11:48 AM

MOBILE, Alabama – One by one Friday, Mexicans who have been living for years illegally in Texas, apologized for offering bribes to an Alabama-based undercover federal agent posing as an immigration supervisor.

U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose accepted the recommendation of prosecutors and sentenced all six defendants to the time they spent in jail since their arrests. The real punishment, though, is that the government will keep the money that the defendants paid – about $25,000 each – and deport them to Mexico.

“What she did is she decided to skip the line,” said DuBose as she imposed sentence on the first defendant, Martha Gonzalez.

In many cases, Mexico is not a country where the defendants have lived for decades.

“This is a lesson, a very severe, strong lesson,” said Assistant Federal Defender Latisha Colvin, who represented Gonzalez, the first defendant to approach the Homeland Security Investigations agent who ran the sting operation.

Gonzalez paid $25,000 for a green card and a work authorization permit and then referred relatives and others to the agent. It was, Colvin said, an “absolutely poor decision.”

Speaking through an interpreter, Gonzalez apologized. She said she came to the United States in 1993 when she was 16 and never left. She said she got a Texas driver’s license, in her real name. She said she also received a taxpayer identification number and has been paying income taxes.

Still, Gonzalez told the judge, getting genuine – if fraudulently obtained – immigration documents would have provided a measure of security.

“I needed to stay here, not only for myself but also for my family,” she said. “This country is like my own country. What hurts the most is that I have to leave the country as a bad person. Because I am not a bad person.”

Fred Helmsing, who represented Martinez’s sister, Josefina Gonzalez-Hurtado, said that sentiment goes for all of the defendants.

“This is emotionally devastating to them,” he said. “The real crime was just wanting to stay in the country.”

The other defendants sentenced to time served who faced deportation include:

  • Juan Carlos Aguinaga-Reyes, who had lived in the United States for 10 years. He told the judge he tried to buy the immigration documents so that he could take his three children back to Mexico to visit his ailing father, who died in May.


  • Maria Castillo-Pineda, who paid $26,000, has two children and has lived in the United States for 18 years.


  • Antonio Gonzalez-Hurtado, who has worked for the past six years for the same company and has two small children.


  • Ofelia Martinez-Rodriguez, who has three children, the youngest of whom is a U.S. citizen.

Four others indicted in the sting have yet to be prosecuted. Even though all of the defendants were living in Texas, prosecutors in Mobile had jurisdiction because the agent was based in the city and the defendants sent their money to a bank account in Mobile.

http://blog.al.com/live/2013/08/mexicans_to_be_deported_for_br.html