Spokesman for Potato Workers
Posted on 10/03/2004 9:49:11 AM PDT by buccaneer81
Five potato workers arrested
BANGOR - Five Spanish-speaking men who apparently were harvesting potatoes in Aroostook County appeared Monday in federal court on charges of possessing false identification documents. Each man had fake Social Security cards and fake resident alien cards, according to court documents.
Julio Cesar Erazo, 45, Roberto Erazo-Santos, 44, and Carlos Ernesto Vasquez-Espana, 48, all of El Salvador, and Jose Alfonso Vasquez-Rodiguez, 25, and Fernando Garcia, 38, both of Honduras, appeared Monday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Kravchuk.
If convicted, they each face up to one year in prison, a $250,000 fine and eventual deportation.
They were arrested Sunday afternoon outside a residence on the Houlton Road in Mars Hill after a border patrol agent on routine patrol saw them lying on the ground outside the house, according to court documents.
The men had been working for McCrum-McCrum-Lunney, a large potato and rotation crop operation based in Mars Hill.
No one connected with the farm has been charged in connection with their arrest, according to court documents.
Garcia and Erazo-Santos had been arrested previously and deported, according to court documents. The other men had no previous immigration violations or criminal histories.
The men admitted to border patrol agents on Sunday that they had entered the U.S. illegally earlier this year, according to court documents.
Four said they had crossed the Rio Grande into Texas; the fifth said he crossed the desert into Arizona. The four apparently purchased their false documents in Boston or Baltimore for between $120 and $150. A fifth man told border agents a person connected with an employment service gave him the documents.
In court Monday, a Bangor attorney was appointed to represent each man. The effort to move the legal proceeding along quickly stalled when Erazo-Santos indicated through the interpreter that he did not understand what was happening.
Paul Garcia of Appleton spent more than four hours interpreting for the defendants when they met with probation officers and their attorneys. He told Kravchuk that the task of translating for all five men at once in the courtroom was difficult because some words, such as bail and hearing, are not the same in El Salvador and Honduras.
Instead of waiving their rights to preliminary examinations and detention hearings, attorneys and the judge agreed to hold those hearings in five days so they could have more time with their clients and the interpreter.
They're a few miles from Canada and swear they entered the US illegally in Texas and Arizona.
Wonder how many child-laborers and illegal aliens help pick cucumbers and tomatoes on the various Heinz plantations. Someone should investigate this... unfortunately, almost all investigative reporters are raving mad liberal leftists and would never dare uncover uncomfortable information about an opponent of Bush.
Forgive me, but-
Let the chips fall where they may.
I say, "Fry em."
I got an eye out for the potato men.
Spokesman for Potato Workers
Homeland security without secure borders and enforced immigration laws is nothing less than a JOKE!
Lol, done within five posts -- EXCELLENT!
Why isn't the company liable for review of the I-9s? Or is this how they were found to be illegal? What was it that led to the arrest?
There could be more to the story. It's more politically correct to grab a few Central Americans than to take Mexicans. And the grower involved may have somehow fallen afoul of the local establishment.
But I agree the US can't have unknown, undocumented illegals from any source.
And if it wasn't for falsified documents, these "Illegal Aliens" would be free most likely.
After all, carrying "illegal" documents is against the law, however being an "Illegal Alien" apparently isn't.
Go figure...
ping
Good questions. My thoughts.
"Skip the prison and fines. Document them with biometrics and deport them."
You forgot that -to avoid repetition - they better be visibly branded ( say, on all four cheeks each).
Thanks!
Having them walk through the newly invented and painless "Reproductive Gland Obliterator" (patent pending) would also be a good idea. What's nice about this device is that, although it renders testicles useless, they remain intact, so a person can still go to a dance in their Wranglers and not look, well...less than manly. Everyone wins!!
Because you must accept document presented to you as legal.
You may run a background check however if you do so you must run on on everybody you hire not just people who's documents you suspect. If you hire a lot of temporary labor this can become very expensive.
Or is this how they were found to be illegal? What was it that led to the arrest?
Every three months or so you get a report from the IRS that will tell you if the SS numbers you submit are erroneous.
This is probably how they were caught.
Five workers? This story seems like small potatoes.
If this results in a shortage of McDonald's fries, then there will be hell to pay. No one messes with my addiction.
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