Posted on 06/22/2004 1:18:39 AM PDT by sarcasm
Cruel smugglers masquerading as a suburban Long Island family held dozens of illegal aliens as virtual slaves, seizing their wages and forcing them to live in squalor, officials said yesterday. Federal agents rescued 69 Peruvian aliens, including 13 children, the youngest a 1-year-old, officials said. The leaders of the shocking smuggling ring were an Amityville couple and their daughter, who neighbors thought were just an average middle-class family. But Mariluz Zavala, 42, her husband Jorge Ibanez, 41, and their daughter, Evelyn Ibanez, 20, were accused of running the smuggling ring since 2000. "These aliens were held in virtual servitude as they paid off their debts, proving that smugglers are more interested in profits than in people," said Martin Ficke, special agent-in-charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Officials said the family not only stripped their captives of their dignity, they also took most of the money that was earned at factory jobs. "I'm so surprised it was going on right under my nose. It's terrible," said Dennis Johnson, 65, who lives across the street from the family's home on Great Neck Road. "I'd see people leaving early in the morning and get home late at night." As many as 30 people lived in small cubicles in the house, garage and tool shed. The garage and shed had no running water or toilets, officials said. The other illegal aliens lived in houses the family owned in Brentwood and Coram. "I'm outraged now that I know what was going on," said Deborah Ammann, 44, who lives near the family's home on Fourth Ave. in Brentwood, which has a white picket fence. Ammann said she would see the victims working on the house after they got home from a full day at the factories. "It's inhuman," Ammann said. "I hope they put the creeps who did this away for a long time." Ibanez and his family routinely berated the aliens, telling them they were "nothing" and threatening to have them deported if they dared to cross them, Customs Enforcement Agent Leigh Senzatimore stated in an affidavit released yesterday. Federal agents said Zavala and Ibanez garnished the wages to pay off the smuggling fees, which averaged nearly $7,000 per visa. "Ibanez deducted the cost of room, board, transportation and repayment of the visa fee . . . leaving \[the aliens\] with approximately $50 or less per week," Senzatimore stated. A Huntington woman, who would only give her name as Blanca, said she befriended one of the aliens who lived in Amityville. She said the woman she knew as Marietta worked with her at a shampoo factory. "She wasn't happy," said Blanca. "She would cry and say she had to pay Mariluz all her check. She didn't have money to do anything."
Same thing that happens to people in Mexico --- this isn't illegal in Mexico to hold people as virtual slaves, this is about Mexican culture and ways and squalor setting up in the USA. It'll be viewed as normal soon enough.
Who cares if PRI goes back into power? It's not as though Fox has done his country any good ---- drugs are certainly not down, crime in Mexico is skyrocketing, immigration is way up --- all signs that Fox never followed through with his campaign promises. More people than ever are dying trying to get out of his regime --- so he's done nothing.
How VERY, VERY, INCREDIBLY ASTUTE! Yes indeedy, you win the prize! At least they are nothing if not across the board consistent.
Also, we have them to thank for the thankless discount "cards" we are being conditioned to use before making a purchase of anything, anywhere, anytime.
Lol, it was a shot in the dark :-)
Those cards are starting to worry me.
Right?
And the damn judges that tie the hands of law enforcement.
Fitz, I could care less about who the president of Mexico is. I was just relating an article I had read in the Mexican newspapers regarding the bill that Fox wants passed so the illegal aliens in the Us can vote in their elections.It stated in the article that the Mexican congress would not let this bill pass for the 2006 election.
Lol, now I get it. Oh, I'm sure he's up to speed on this issue. He just has his hands full right now.
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