Authorities arrest Mexican national for allegedly kidnapping 4-year-old girl

Federal authorities said today they have arrested a Mexican national who is accused of kidnapping a 4-year-old girl he had been paid to smuggle into the United States.

Emanuel De La Costa-Valdiva was arrested Thanksgiving Day after he took the girl into the U.S. and then refused to give her to her mother, according to agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Mother and child were reunited the same day, and the child was unhurt.

De La Costa, 32, has been charged with human trafficking, kidnapping and extortion and is currently at the Orange County Jail awaiting his initial appearance in court, according to a statement by ICE officials.

The mother, also a Mexican national, is expected to stay in the United States to serve as a witness for the prosecution.

Plant-munching aliens stopped at U.S.-Mexican border

U.S. customs and border protection officials not once but twice nabbed intruders furtively attempting to enter the country this week from Mexico.

But the intruders weren’t illegal immigrants. They were pests known as pale-striped flea beetles, which chew holes and pits in leaves and represent a threat to California’s agricultural industry. Beetle larvae feeding on plant roots have caused serious crop damage in the Imperial Valley in the past.

According to Billy Whitford, the agency’s director of port operations in Calexico, the pests were discovered Monday during inspections of two separate shipments in the port’s cargo import facility. In the first shipment, the pests were discovered in more than 700 boxes of fresh red oak lettuce, red romaine and arugula. The second shipment  contained more than 800 boxes of mizuna, coriander and tango produce. Both shipments were sent back to Mexico.

“We are not only aggressively combating the flow of illegal narcotics and preventing people from illegally entering our nation,” Whitford said in a statement. “We also dedicate the same amount of effort to preventing pests such as the pale-striped beetle which pose risks to our borders.”


--Teresa Watanabe

Settlement opens door for hundreds of legal immigrants to become U.S. citizens [Updated]

Hundreds of legal immigrants in Southern California who have been waiting years for citizenship will have their cases resolved as a result of a settlement with the federal government, attorneys announced today.

The immigrants were stuck in lengthy delays as they waited for the FBI to complete their security name checks and for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to approve their citizenship applications.

The settlement, approved Friday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, sets a six-month deadline for the government to decide on hundreds of citizenship applications from Los Angeles, Santa Ana and San Bernardino.

The settlement also ends indefinite delays in processing naturalization applications, according to the plaintiffs.

Seafaring smugglers' attempts to land illegal immigrants in U.S. foiled

Mexican immigrant trafficking groups continue trying to smuggle illegal immigrants by boat, with federal authorities disrupting three attempts to land immigrants on San Diego County beaches and harbors since Saturday, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.

The most recent incident occurred early Tuesday morning, when agents spotted a 15-foot boat heading toward Beacon's Beach in Encinitas. Agents arrested 21 illegal immigrants -- 19 men and two women -- on the beach.

On Saturday, agents intercepted an 18-foot Bayliner carrying eight illegal immigrants off Imperial Beach near the border. The next day, 10 Mexican citizens and three Bolivians were arrested at the Oceanside Harbor marina after being dropped off by a 22-foot Cobalt boat.

The latest incidents are part of a surge in maritime smuggling attempts as traffickers avoid increased enforcement on land.

-- Richard Marosi in San Diego

Lawyer accused of selling fake work visas and buying cemetery plots

Immigration and customs officials said today the investigation into a decadelong employment visa fraud scheme has led to a dead end – cemetery plots.

An attorney and two business associates were arrested Thursday for allegedly selling at least 100 fake visas and using the profit to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of vacant burial plots, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Kelly Einstein Darwin Giles, 46, owner of a West Covina law practice, was arrested by customs agents at Los Angeles International Airport as he returned from a trip. His two business associates, Joseph Wai-man Wu, 50, and Wu's wife, May Yin-man Wu, 43, were arrested earlier in the day. Bail for the pair was set at $250,000 each. All three are charged with visa fraud.

Federal authorities say local police agencies will continue to enforce immigration laws

Despite continuing criticism about the program, authorities announced Friday that 67 local and state law enforcement agencies across the country would continue enforcing immigration law under special agreements with the federal government but would be subject to more oversight.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also limited the authority of the most controversial participant, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is under investigation by the Department of Justice for possible civil rights violations. Arpaio can still identify illegal immigrants in the jails but can no longer conduct immigration sweeps in his community under the federal program known as 287 (g).

ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton said Arpaio’s sweeps were “not consistent” with the priorities of the agency.

In California, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has reached an agreement with the federal government to continue screening for illegal immigrants at the jails but is awaiting approval by county supervisors. Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside county sheriffs’ departments are still negotiating their agreements.

Nearly 300 Los Angeles area gang members and associates arrested in nationwide crackdown

Nearly 300 gang members and associates across the Los Angeles area were arrested as part of a larger nationwide crackdown that targeted gangs involved in cross-border smuggling of people and weapons, drug trafficking, identity theft and other crimes, federal officials said today.

The arrests were among 1,785 made around the country as part of Operation Community Shield, a sixth-month investigation of transnational gangs that ended Sept 30, said Virginia Kice, spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Among those arrested were Elmer Fredy Hernandez-Ayala, 29, an El Salvadoran national and member of the 18th Street gang, for reentry after deportation, and nine members and associates of Barrio Evil 13, a Bell Gardens street gang, for drug trafficking and weapons charges, Kice said.

“The goal of Community Shield isn’t to just take individual gang members off the streets, but to disrupt the cycle of crime and dismantle the entire gang,” Kice said.

18 arrested after two human-smuggling boats are intercepted; others escape

Federal authorities intercepted two smuggling boats off San Diego County in separate incidents Tuesday in which some suspected illegal immigrants appear to have escaped after wading to shore.

Customs and Border Protection agents patrolling the coast about 3:30 a.m. arrested two suspected smugglers on a boat eight miles offshore. The men – both Mexican citizens – had just dropped off six people at a beach in Carlsbad, and two of them were later arrested, authorities said. The other four were not found.

About 11 p.m., a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter and vessel intercepted a small boat in San Diego’s Mission Bay. Fourteen suspected illegal immigrants were taken off the boat and arrested. One immigrant escaped by swimming for the beach.

The two cases are the latest in a rash of maritime smuggling incidents as traffickers avoid beefed-up enforcement on land.

-- Richard Marosi

Proposal to expand L.A. deputies' duties in deportation process draws criticism

Los Angeles County sheriff’s staff would assume a greater role in the processing and deportation of illegal immigrants identified in the jails under a newly proposed agreement with the federal government, placing an “inordinate strain” on department staff, according to a new report.

The department signed an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2005 authorizing its custody assistants to check the immigration status of foreign born inmates.

The new agreement would require those same assistants to complete all of the required paperwork to process illegal immigrants for possible deportation, according to the report prepared by Merrick Bobb, a special counsel to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.

The degree to which the proposed agreement turns the sheriff’s department into the “primary enforcer of federal immigration law is indeed breathtaking,” Bobb wrote in the nearly 50-page report. In addition, the county would not be reimbursed for the additional work, Bobb wrote.        

More than a quarter of inmates transferred from the county lock-up to immigration custody from July 2008 to June 2009 had been charged with minor crimes, such as displaying a false identification or disorderly conduct, the report found. Some inmates had serious criminal records, but Bobb wrote that he didn’t believe that the supervisors intended for minor criminals to be turned over to immigration authorities.

“Some of the supervisors suggested that immigration enforcement in the jails should be limited to the more dangerous criminals committing felonies, in contrast to persons held for traffic violations or other minor misdemeanors,” Bobb said in an interview today.

-- Anna Gorman

Alternative housing to be used to hold some immigrant detainees

Nonviolent immigrant detainees could be housed in converted hotels, residential facilities or placed on electronic ankle bracelets for monitoring as part of a series of reforms planned for the nation’s detention system, Department of Homeland Security officials announced today.

The changes are intended to help overhaul a system that houses an average of 32,000 illegal immigrant detainees every day across the country and has been criticized for its unsafe and inhumane conditions. Those detainees include women and children.

“This is a system that encompasses many different types of detainees, not all of whom need to be held in prison-like circumstances or jail-like circumstances, which not only may be unnecessary but more expensive,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

The department plans to build two new detention centers, including one in California.

But Napolitano said that, while some detainees have violent criminal pasts, others are asylum seekers with no records and should be housed at facilities “commensurate with the risks that they present.”

The reforms began in August, when Assistant Secretary John Morton pledged to make the system more centralized and accountable and more suited to the government’s civil detention needs.

Immigrant-smuggling boat drops 21 at Carlsbad State Beach in darkness, officials say

Twenty-one suspected illegal immigrants were arrested early this morning at Carlsbad State Beach, Calif., after U.S. Border Patrol agents spotted a smuggling boat bringing its passengers ashore, officials said.

The 21, all Mexican nationals, consisted of 15 men, five women, and a 16-year-old boy, officials said. Only three were wearing safety vests.

The boat, with two people aboard, was spotted leaving the beach and was not located, officials said.

The incident, which occurred about 2:30 a.m., is the latest in which smugglers appear to be dropping their passengers further north than in previous years, attempting to evade authorities.

-- Tony Perry in San Diego

Alleged hit man for Mexican cartel among nine arrested in Bell Gardens gang sweep

Nine members and associates of a Bell Gardens street gang, including a suspected hit man for a Mexican drug cartel, have been arrested on drug trafficking and weapons charges, federal officials said today.

The suspects -- six U.S. citizens and three illegal Mexican immigrants -- were arrested Thursday as agents served search warrants in Bell Gardens and Los Angeles, officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. 

Several assault weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle, a Tec-9 submachine gun, a MAC-11 submachine gun and a sawed-off shotgun along with thousands of rounds of ammunition were also recovered.

"This is a relatively small and newer gang that has been operating with impunity for the last several years," said Kevin Kozak, deputy special agent in charge of ICE's local office of investigations. "They have access to significant weapons ... and claims they can have access to military grade weapons through a 'friend' in the military."

U.S.-Mexico border crossing in San Ysidro reopened after shootout

All lanes at the nation's busiest border crossing reopened this morning after at least two U.S. agents attempted to stop smugglers from speeding through the San Ysidro Port of Entry on Tuesday by firing their weapons at three vans loaded with suspected illegal immigrants.

Three people in the vans suffered injuries and a man in a nearby car also was injured in the unusually brazen smuggling attempt Tuesday, U.S. authorities said. A total of 76 people inside the vans were arrested.

The San Diego Police Department declared the port a crime scene and shuttered the 24-lane border crossing to vehicular traffic. Northbound traffic at the checkpoint, where about 40,000 cars cross daily from Mexico, was backed up into Tijuana for miles as police investigated.

San Ysidro border entry point closed after gunfight

U.S. authorities have closed the San Ysidro Port of Entry on the border with Mexico after a gunfight there early Tuesday.

San Ysidro is the nation's busiest border crossing. Roughly 40,000 vehicles cross there daily from Mexico.

Three vans loaded with suspected illegal immigrants tried to speed through the crossing Tuesday afternoon, drawing gunfire from at least two U.S. agents, authorities said.

Three people in the vans and a traveler in a nearby car were injured in the failed attempt to cross into San Diego from Tijuana. About 70 people inside the vehicles were taken into custody, according to authorities.

Smugglers on occasion attempt to run the port of entry but rarely in such an apparently coordinated fashion. Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection fired their weapons at the vehicles, authorities said.

-- Richard Marosi

Students to rally for Dream Act

Students in Los Angeles and around the nation will hold rallies, news conferences and letter-writing campaigns Wednesday to raise awareness about the Dream Act, legislation that would give undocumented students a path to citizenship.

Some of the local events include a rally at Pomona College, a petition drive at Bell Gardens High School, a forum at UCLA and a press conference at Los Angeles City Hall.

The Dream Act would offer a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who have served in the military or completed two years of higher education and who have lived in the United States for at least five years, entered the country before age 16, graduated from high school, compiled no criminal record and demonstrated "good moral character."

Groups that favor stricter controls on immigration oppose the act and helped lobby for its defeat in the Senate in 2007.

-- Anna Gorman

New citizenship website launched

The federal government launched a revamped bilingual website today for citizenship applicants and others navigating the immigration system.

The website, in both English and Spanish, is part of a broader effort by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to make the citizenship process more transparent and user-friendly.

The redesigned site includes a place where applicants can sign up for text message and e-mail updates on the status of their applications. There is also feature called "Where to Start"  that guides applicants through the process.
 
 “Transparency and openness are critical to effective immigration and citizenship policies,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement. “USCIS’ new website provides the public with the latest tools — from text messages to emails — to improve responsiveness and access to immigration services.”
 
The site is available at www.uscis.gov and www.uscis.gov/espanol.

--Anna Gorman

Iraqi refugees find U.S. life not what they expected

On a pleasant afternoon in Amman, the genteel Jordanian capital, a petite Iraqi woman with carefully coiffed hair, heavy makeup and lots of gold jewelry sat in a classroom full of refugees heading to America, her face frozen in wide-eyed horror.

Her husband had disappeared in the war. Her request to settle in Jordan had been denied. Now an advisor from the International Organization for Migration was telling her no U.S. firm would recognize her law degree or her nearly two decades of experience.

In a month, the 51-year-old woman was due to leave for Portland, Ore. In the hushed room, she protested helplessly, "I am a lawyer. What else can I do?"

Illegal immigrants apprehended at Carlsbad beach

Twenty-three illegal immigrants were caught by U.S. Border Patrol agents on a Carlsbad beach this morning after wading ashore from a suspected smuggling boat, according to authorities.

The Mexican immigrants, five of them females, were spotted by a patrol boat about 4 a.m. off of Ponto Beach in Carlsbad. The boat got away, heading south, after dropping off the immigrants, authorities said.

Maritime smuggling incidents off the San Diego County coast have increased sharply as trafficking groups take to the high seas to avoid bolstered enforcement on land.

Authorities have apprehended 153 illegal immigrants so far in this fiscal year. Two years ago, 44 immigrants were apprehended in maritime smuggling incidents, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Richard Marosi, reporting from San Diego

Immigration official says agents will no longer have quotas

The head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced today that he has ended quotas on a controversial program designed to go after illegal immigrants who have ignored deportation orders and that he planned to make more changes to the program soon.

John Morton, who took over as head of the federal agency in May, said during a meeting with reporters in Los Angeles that the program needs to do what it was created to do -- target absconders who have already had their day in court.

“The fugitive operations program needs to focus first and foremost on people who have knowingly flouted an immigration removal order and within that category obviously we will focus first on criminals,” he said.

Beginning in 2003, the agency dispatched teams around the country to arrest and deport immigrants with criminal records and outstanding deportation orders. During widely publicized sweeps, armed agents showed up at homes and apartment buildings and arrested tens of thousands of immigrants.

Immigrant rights groups criticized the early morning raids, saying they divided families and resulted in the arrests of many who had no criminal records or deportation orders.

Four Honduran consular officials removed, including L.A. representative

The Honduran consul general in Los Angeles has been fired because she declined to express support for ousted President Manuel Zelaya, Honduran embassy officials said today.

Vivian Panting was one of four officials who were removed from their positions because they did not respond to a letter from the Zelaya government asking them to write a statement with their political position, the embassy officials said. The other consular officials were in San Francisco, Washington and New York.

Zelaya was deposed in a coup by Roberto Micheletti at the end of June. President Obama has said that Zelaya needs to be reinstated and democracy restored.

Panting, who had been the consul general in Los Angeles for more than a decade, said today that she did not provide a statement to the Zelaya government because she did not want to take sides.

“I cannot polarize my community,” she said in an interview. “I represent the interests of half a million people here.”

Panting said that the vice consul was appointed to take her position.

-- Anna Gorman 

Napolitano says U.S., Mexico see border violence as shared problem

One day after President Obama concluded a summit in Mexico, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said today that creating a secure southwestern border required addressing several issues at the same time: illegal immigration, drug trafficking and violence in Mexico.

“For the past eight years or so, the federal government’s approach to the southwest border was to … treat it as something to be dealt with separate from our nation’s broader challenges,” she said. “These things are inextricably linked.”

Napolitano said the U.S. government is cooperating with the Mexican government more than ever before to battle violence in both countries.

“For really the first time," she said, "our two countries are treating this issue of the drug cartels and border-related violence as a shared problem,” citing the drugs flowing north and guns and cash flowing south.

Napolitano spoke during a conference on border security in El Paso, Texas, just across the border from Ciudad Juarez, which has taken center stage in the deadly drug wars.

Obama administration announces changes in immigration detention system

The Obama administration announced plans today to change how immigration violators are detained in the U.S. by shifting from a system that relies on a network of jails and private prisons to one that is designed specifically for civil detention. 

As part of the plan, which will take years to implement, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will review its roughly 350 existing operating contracts and will increase oversight throughout the system.

“We need a system that is open, transparent and accountable,” said John Morton, assistant secretary of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The number of detainees is expected to stay about the same – at 32,000 -- but many could be housed in new facilities specifically designed for immigration detention.

“This isn’t about whether or not we are going to detain people,” Morton said. “We are going to continue to detain people on a large scale. This is about how we detain those people.”

Advocates, who have long criticized the immigration detention system, said today they were encouraged but that they would be watching the changes closely.

“Only time will tell if the reforms announced today amount to lasting change or simply creative repackaging of prior policies,” said Karen Tumlin of the National Immigration Law Center.

Tumlin said the plan lacks one essential element: teeth. She said the real solution is making the detention standards into law so that they are enforceable.

-- Anna Gorman

Former Armenian consul among those charged with helping illegal immigrants avoid deportation

Five people, including a former Armenian consul in Los Angeles and a Beverly Hills immigration attorney, have been arrested on charges that they sold official letters to illegal immigrants to help them avoid deportation, prosecutors said today.

The arrests, which took place in the last 24 hours, were the result of a two-year investigation by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The five are accused of supplying so-called letters of refusal from the Armenian Consulate for as much as $35,000 apiece, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office for the Central District of California.

These letters state that a country will not issue a travel document for a particular individual, essentially blocking that person's deportation to that nation.

16 detained in immigration raid on Compton house

L.A. County sheriff's deputies turned over 16 people to immigration agents after raiding what was believed to be an illegal immigrant drop house in Compton.

Deputies were called to the house on North Dern Avenue on Monday night after someone tossed a note written in Spanish from an open window to a child outside. The note read, "We are being held inside against our will. Please help us," sheriff's officials said.

More than a dozen people fled the house when deputies tried to enter. Someone inside ordered a pit bull to attack the deputies, but when the dog approached it was shot and killed by a deputy.

Inside, deputies found 14 adults and two children, who were turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

One deputy was injured during an altercation with a man trying to flee the house. The deputy was bitten on the leg after he and another deputy tackled the man, officials said. The man was charged with felony resisting arrest and taken to Century Regional Detention Center. The deputy was taken to a hospital for treatment of the bite wound.

-- Raja Abdulrahim

Immigration detention centers fail government's own standards

The federal government routinely failed to follow its own standards regulating immigration detention centers across the country, denying detainees sufficient recreation time and adequate access to attorneys, legal materials and telephones, according to a new report issued today.

As a result of the widespread violations, hundreds of thousands of detainees faced tremendous challenges in making their case to stay in the U.S. and were frequently denied basic due process rights, according to the report.

“The findings in our report raise serious of doubts as to whether the hundreds of thousands of immigrant detained each year get a fair shot at justice,” said one of the authors, Karen Tumlin of the National Immigration Law Center.

The report is based primarily on thousands of pages of reviews conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from 2001 to 2005, turned over by court order in a legal case. The authors also studied reviews of detention centers by the American Bar Assn. and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Among the findings were that at least 41 facilities did not give detainees the minimum number of hours and days of recreation required by the standards, and that 19 centers did not offer any outdoor recreation time. The report also found deficiencies in access to phones and legal information.

For example, at least 29 detention facilities had no law library and 30 centers failed to provide reasonable privacy for legal calls. In addition, detainees were often placed in solitary confinement without justification.