Posted on 09/25/2009 6:03:17 PM PDT by SmithL
WASHINGTON – On the morning of Jan. 28, federal agents knocked on Shirley Tan's door, showed her a deportation letter and put her in handcuffs.
"I was put into a van with two men in yellow jumpsuits and chains and searched like a criminal in a way I have only seen on television and in the movies," said Tan, 44, a housewife and mother from Pacifica.
But Tan is still in the United States today, and she says there's only one reason why: "the great compassion" of California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
People seeking to get around U.S. immigration laws have found a good friend in the state's senior senator, who is going to unusual lengths to help her constituents avoid deportation.
Feinstein, a member of the Judiciary Committee, is the Senate's leader in using "private bills" as a way to keep people in the country who otherwise would be forced to leave.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Now rooming with OB’s aunt.
Someone should cross check campaign contributions with these look-the-other-way moves.
Note to Shirley - you are a criminal so were searched because you are a criminal.
She needs every vote she can get. Each deportee means that she loses one vote AT LEAST.
Once you have smuggled yourself into a foreign country and lived a life evading federal authority and living an assumed life then it is a little late to try and pretend to be just another all American housewife and 'Leave it to Beaver" mom.
How about we deport Feinstein, and keep Shirley Tan...
.F.’s ‘sell crack or die’ defendant convicted
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, September 25, 2009
(09-25) 13:48 PDT SAN FRANCISCO —
A San Francisco jury convicted a Honduran immigrant today of felony charges of dealing crack in the Tenderloin, rejecting his defense that human traffickers had threatened to kill him if he didn’t sell drugs.
Rigoberto Valle, 23, has been in custody since his arrest June 4 at Golden Gate Avenue and Larkin Street for selling two rocks of crack cocaine to undercover officers.
Valle will be sentenced Oct. 19. He is expected to receive credit for time served and be placed on three years’ probation. He would then be subject to deportation, however, because he is under a federal hold on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant.
Valle testified that traffickers known as coyotes who brought him to San Francisco had demanded $500 for his passage from Phoenix and ordered him - at the point of a gun and then a knife - to earn it by dealing crack. The sum was on top of the $1,500 his family had paid the smugglers to get across the border, Valle said.
The jury in San Francisco Superior Court deliberated nearly eight hours starting Thursday before convicting Valle.
Outside court, jurors said they sympathized with Valle, who testified that he had traveled a month by foot, bus and boxcar to reach the United States. But they also said they weren’t sure they believed that human traffickers had forced him to deal drugs.
“I wanted to find him not guilty,” said one juror, who did not want to be named. “We all had enormous sympathy for his situation, but that was not what we were there to decide on.
“To me, it came down to that he knew what he was doing was illegal,” the juror said. “I don’t think he honestly cared.”
Jury foreman Daniel Ludwinski said he also sympathized with Valle and believed he had been a victim of human trafficking. But, he said, it “it all came down to whether we could trust the defendant.”
He said he thought Valle could have avoided dealing crack by leaving or seeking help.
Valle’s attorney, Hadi Razzaq, brought in an expert from Oregon who testified that the alleged threats against Valle turned his situation from one of simple illegal immigration to human trafficking.
Razzaq asked that the jury “protect Mr. Valle - he’s a victim.”
“I’m extremely disappointed,” Razzaq said outside court after the jury convicted his client. “It’s unfortunate that somebody who’s been a victim of what I think pretty clearly is human trafficking is being prosecuted and now convicted.”
The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Richard Hechler, told the jury that the case was about a sale of two rocks of crack, nothing more. He said Valle had contributed to his plight by agreeing to come to San Francisco.
“He could have run, he should have run and he didn’t run,” Hechler said in his closing argument. “He may or may not have been trafficked. That’s not the issue. The issue is, did he commit a crime?”
Hechler declined to comment after the verdict, but spokesman Brian Buckelew of the district attorney’s office said, “From day one we said this wasn’t a human trafficking case. It was another crack sale in the Tenderloin. The jury agreed.”
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