Thread: Coast Guardsman faces charges over (illegal) immigrants

Coast Guardsman faces charges over immigrants
Morris Wade Hughes stands accused of helping Peabody Corp. hire illegal workers.
By Peter Dujardin

NEWPORT NEWS — A Coast Guardsman has been charged with helping a Newport News fishing company hire illegal immigrants — including telling a company vice president how to counsel workers to elude capture.

Morris Wade Hughes, 50, was in the Coast Guard for 28 years. He was indicted in U.S. District Court on Thursday on one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States by impeding the Coast Guard and other agencies, four counts of unauthorized use of a government computer and two counts of giving out confidential information.

Hughes, an instructor of vessel operating skills at the U.S. Coast Guard Training center in Yorktown, is a chief petty officer and boatswain’s mate in the Coast Guard.

Though the indictment doesn’t name the company, U.S. attorney’s office spokeswoman Deanna Warren confirmed it is Peabody Corp., whose officials pleaded guilty in October to knowingly hiring 126 illegal immigrants between 2003 and 2007 on trawlers leaving from Newport News Seafood Industrial Park.

“Hughes told (a company vice president) to instruct her foreign-born workers to leave their identity documents at home during fishing trips and claim to be United States citizens if the boats were boarded,â€

Now this is a guy that Johnny Sutton needs to go after. Ramos and Campean doing the job he should be doing.