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Raids seeking out criminals in hiding
Fugitives from other countries are targeted
Friday, January 13, 2006
BY WAYNE WOOLLEY
Star-Ledger Staff
Like countless illegal immigrants before him, Rene Hugo Mejia Juarez crossed the Mexican border in 2001 and slipped into the United States to begin a new life.

The 25-year-old Salvadoran settled in the quiet Bergen County commuter town of Midland Park, married an American woman and worked as a landscaper. Known as Hugo, his neighbors said he always greeted them with a smile and did his best to communicate, despite his spotty English.

"He was always pleasant, he just offered to rake our leaves," said Barbara Higby, who lives next door to the two-story wood-frame house Juarez rented with several other men.

But federal officials said yesterday that Mejia was a man with two secrets from his past: a murder and membership in Mara Salvatrucha, a notorious Salvadoran street gang known as MS-13.

A team from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's fugitive team and other local law enforcement officials arrested Miejia and three other men in a pre-dawn raid at the house they had been renting. The three other men were not wanted for any crimes, but are suspected of being in the United States illegally, federal officials said.

Mejia tried to escape from a side door, but was arrested by officers stationed outside, said Raymond Simonse, chief of the Newark-based fugitive team.

Simonse said Salvadoran police allege Mejia and another man who remains at large are wanted for fatally shooting a man on July 10, 2001, on the banks of the Guiscoyolapa River in Canton El Sauce, El Salvador. Officials said the name of the dead man was not included in a warrant issued for Mejia's arrest by Interpol, the international law enforcement consortium.

Mejia was the alleged triggerman, Simonse said.

Simonse said Mejia's alleged gang affiliation was not known until after his arrest. He said Mejia had the gang's "MS" tattooed on his back and arm.

Mejia's arrest was part of an immigration enforcement initiative targeting fugitives. The agency said that in the past year in New Jersey, it has arrested more than 890 illegal aliens who are wanted for crimes in their home countries.

"We're concentrating our efforts on criminals first..." Simonse said. "If someone evaded law enforcement in their home country and then is trying to do it here, that only makes them more dangerous."

Mejia had blended into his community and had done little to arouse suspicions about his alleged past, Midland Park police detective. Lt. John Casson said.

Casson said his department and federal officials spent six months investigating to be sure the man known as Hugo was the same man wanted by Interpol.

Last night, a woman who identified herself as Mejia's estranged wife, gave a brief interview in the house where her husband and the other men had been living. Christmas lights still hung from the porch and a holiday sign at the front door read: Winter Wonderland.

The woman, who declined to give her name but said she and Mejia have been separated for several months, does not believe her husband was involved in a murder.

"He's not a violent person," she said.

She said her husband came to the United States in November 2001 for one reason.

"He was trying to make a living," she said. "And he worked hard. Everyone he ever worked for loved him."

She also said authorities are mistaken in the belief that the tattoo on his back indicates membership in MS-13. The tattoo, she said, is his initials, MJ. The tattoo on his arm may have been from a long abandoned gang affiliation in his homeland, she said.

"He had a rough life at home, but that was in his past," she said.

Mejia is being held without bail at the Hudson County jail. He will appear before a federal immigration judge within the next two weeks for a deportation hearing.

"If they send him back to El Salvador, I know he'll be killed," said his wife, who is trying to raise money to hire a lawyer.