Immigrant's arrest strands children on NC highway
The Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. --An advocacy group is questioning whether police acted properly when they left three children in a car with a family acquaintance after arresting their mother along Interstate 85.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Wednesday that an Alamance County deputy sheriff stopped Maria Chavira Ventura about 2 a.m. on June 14. She was traveling from her home in western North Carolina to Maryland to visit the children's father.

She was jailed on charges of driving without a license and displaying a false license plate. Authorities also put her under a federal deportation order.

The North Carolina Justice Center said a man from Ventura's church was riding with the family. Fearing arrest, he fled and left the children in the car. The children - ages 6, 10 and 14 - were left alone in the car for eight hours until their father, who had to travel from Maryland, was able to get there.

Alamance County Sheriff's Office spokesman Randy Jones said the arrest was handled under established procedures.

Jones said children of people arrested often are left with friends or neighbors as long as the parent approves. Otherwise, officers call the Department of Social Services.

"We make arrangements all the time, and we have to do it on a case-by-case basis," Jones said. "We're not going to let something happen to a child."

Jones also said the department hadn't received a complaint about the handling of the case and wasn't aware until recently that the children were left alone. He said it was the man's responsibility if the children were abandoned.

The deputy said the man, who didn't have identification, had a cell phone and said help was coming for the children, Jones said. The officer asked the teenage daughter to ask her mother, who spoke little English, if the children could stay with the man.

"The girl said something to the mother in Spanish," Jones said. "And the officer said the mother looked at him and nodded."

But Justice Center lawyer Dan Rearick said Ventura and her daughter told him on July 9 the officer didn't seek permission to leave the children with the man. The man fled because he was worried that an officer would return and he might be deported.

The children's father, Antonio Perez, said his sobbing children called him after their mother was arrested. Perez doesn't have a driver's license and got a relative to drive him to North Carolina, where he found the children about 10:30 a.m.

"They were left abandoned there in the middle of the street," said Perez, whom the News & Observer identified as an illegal immigrant from Honduras. "It was a horrible experience for them, just horrible."
FAMILY VALUES .....
http://www.thestate.com/statewire/story/468915.html