Thread: Guatemalan Passports Seized At Fed Ex

I-Team: Guatemalan Passports Seized At Fed Ex
Reporting Jim DeFede
RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. (CBS4 I-TEAM) ― Click to enlarge1 of 1

Last week, Gaspar Gonzalez received a phone call from a Fed Ex office in Palm Beach County, letting him know there was a package waiting for him to pick up. For Gonzalez, a Guatemalan national, the phone call was good news. He had been waiting several weeks for the Guatemalan consulate to issue him his new passport.

Gonzalez asked a friend to drive him to the Fed Ex station on Blue Herron Boulevard in Riviera Beach, and when he arrived he was told to wait a few minutes while they retrieved his package.

Twenty minutes later, federal immigration agents walked in and arrested him for being in the country illegally. The friend who drove him to Fed Ex was also arrested for being in the United States without a visa, as was a third person, who, like Gonzalez, was also contacted to go to the Fed Ex office to pick up an envelope. A fourth individual fled when federal agents arrived.

"These people were contacted to go pick up their packages at Fed Ex," said John De Leon, an attorney representing the Guatemalan government in the United States. "That's the only reason they went to Fed Ex. The fact that the immigration authorities were available to detain these people clearly shows there was some coordination between Fed Ex and immigration authorities."

Felipe Alejos, the Consul General for Guatemala in Miami, said he found the U.S. government's actions "immoral." He said the Guatemalan government routinely prints their passports at a facility in Louisiana and then ships them to its citizens around the world. In late December, approximately 40 passports were sent from Louisiana to Guatemalans living in Palm Beach County.

De Leon said Fed Ex officials in Riviera Beach became suspicious of the packages and opened several of them. Fed Ex then contacted Immigration and Custom Enforcement which launched its own investigation.

"The names on the packages were clearly Hispanic, they were all Guatemalans, so if there was profiling going on here, I think most people would find that very troubling," De Leon said.

De Leon said ICE's actions may have violated various treaties and established laws which allow foreign governments the right to communicate with its citizens.

"Each foreign government has an obligation to provide their citizens with a passport and no foreign government should interfere with that process and that's what the US government did and that's what Fed Ex did," de Leon said. "These documents are perfectly legal and should not have been seized by any law enforcement agency."

Allison Sobczak, a spokeswoman for Fed Ex, said the only reason Fed Ex opened several of the packages was because the addresses on them were inaccurate and they could not be delivered. In one case, she said, the address listed came back to a laundromat.

She denied that the company treated these packages differently because the names on them were Hispanic or that there was any type of profiling taking place by Fed Ex managers.

The company claims it tried to reach the firm in Louisiana which printed the passports without success. "There were dozens of packages, all from the same shipper, who wasn't returning our phone calls," she said. She said she did not know how many times Fed Ex called the shipper.

Sobczak said rather than simply returning the packages to the shipper, a Fed Ex official in Palm Beach made the decision to open a few of them to see if there was anything inside which would help the company deliver them. She described the decision to open the packages as a "routine procedure."

"We do have the right to inspect and open any package," Sobczak said. After they realized the packages contained passports, she added, "we did contact U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement just to inquire about the situation."

Nicole Navas, a spokeswoman for ICE, said agents responded to the Fed Ex office on January 6 and began their own investigation by opening additional packages.

"Our agents were investigating whether these documents were legitimate," she said. "There are national security ramifications if these were fraudulent documents."

Asked to explain under what authority federal agents opened the Fed Ex envelopes, Navas said: "We have the authority to investigate any threats to our national security."

De Leon said the government's actions were appalling.

"The government should not be taking people's property without a warrant," he said. "It's part of a culture which is a complete disrespect for both international law and our constitution."

Navas said Gonzalez and the other Guatemalans detained by ICE at the Fed Ex office just happened to be there when ICE agents arrived to investigate the packages.

"We were en route to the facility and we were called and told there were individuals there to pick up some of these packages," Navas said. "We weren't working with Fed Ex to arrest anybody."

De Leon noted that the fact that Gonzalez and others had shown up to the Fed Ex office to pick up their packages, contradicts the company's contention that these packages were undeliverable and that the people could not be found.

And more importantly, De Leon said, if either Fed Ex or ICE had questions about the passports – which were clearly marked as coming from the government of Guatemala – then they should have contacted the local consulate or the embassy in Washington.

"They should have contacted the consulate and said, `Is this a valid passport,'" De Leon said. "Had they done that they would have complied with the law and none of this would have happened."

Late Wednesday, immigration officials returned the passports they seized to the Guatemalan consulate. De Leon said the Guatemalan government is deciding what action to take next.

In the meantime, Gaspar Gonzalez remained in an immigration detention facility in Broward County awaiting deportation to Guatemala.

"They should have contacted the consulate and said, `Is this a valid passport,'" De Leon said. "Had they done that they would have complied with the law and none of this would have happened."

Hmmm...if your citizens had complied with the law and not been here illegally none of this would have happened either.

"Each foreign government has an obligation to provide their citizens with a passport and no foreign government should interfere with that process and that's what the US government did and that's what Fed Ex did," de Leon said. "These documents are perfectly legal and should not have been seized by any law enforcement agency."

I agree, so take YOUR citizens, who are here illegally, back with open arms. Make sure they don't sneak in again!

Morons!