Posted on 08/09/2003 12:13:28 PM PDT by GoRepGo
Illegals held at gunpoint discuss ordeal
By Louie Villalobos Aug 9, 2003
SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. — The two female illegal immigrants who authorities said were detained at gunpoint by three American citizens a week ago said they initially thought the men were U.S. Border Patrol agents.
But when two of the men pointed guns at them and the three boys traveling with them, Lorena Ocampo said she knew something was wrong.
"(The Border Patrol) doesn't do that to women and children," she said.
More than a week after the incident, Ocampo, 26, her friend Guadalupe Lopez Rodriguez, 31, and the three boys were sent back to Mexico under the agreement that they would return at a later date to testify against Matthew Hoffman, 23, and Alexander Dumas, 26.
The men are each facing six counts of aggravated assault and five counts of unlawful imprisonment and one count of conspiracy to commit unlawful imprisonment, after the Yuma County Sheriff's Office said they handcuffed the group of illegal immigrants and held them at gunpoint until Border Patrol agents arrived.
Authorities said a third man, Martin Hoffman Jr., was with the two suspects but isn't facing charges because he was unarmed and didn't take part in the detention of the illegal immigrants.
Bond for Hoffman and Dumas was recently set at $68,000 and $88,000, respectively. The incident remains under investigation.
Both officials and the women said the incident began just after 1 a.m., a few minutes after the group entered illegally through the Colorado River at County 18th Street.
Rodriguez said they were traveling with a larger group that included the two women's husbands, but the smugglers decided to split everyone up to allow the children to cross at a shallow part of the river. The women said they wanted to go with their children.
"It wasn't that deep," Ocampo said of the river. "The kids crossed easily."
Minutes after crossing, the women said they heard a noise and were told to duck down behind some bushes by the 16-year-old smuggler who was guiding them. After waiting for a while, they decided it was safe to continue, Ocampo said.
"Then these men came out," she said. "I don't know where they came from."
The men started yelling directions in English and motioning the group to get on the ground, Ocampo said. At first, because one was wearing military-style clothes and they all hand handcuffs, the women thought they had been caught by agents and told their boys not to worry.
But when the guns were pointed at them, Ocampo knew the men weren't agents.
"We were all scared," she said. "We didn't know what they were yelling."
After Ocampo said the men handcuffed the women, the smuggler and two of the boys, a helicopter — which belonged to the Border Patrol — arrived at the scene and the men began to flag it down with a flashlight.
Soon after that, the women said agents arrived, uncuffed the group and put them in the back of their vehicles.
"(The agents) told us what those men did was against the law," Ocampo said.
After being taken to the Border Patrol's station house and being questioned about the incident, the women said they were kept in an area hotel and eventually given the option of staying in the United States until it was time for them to testify against the suspects.
Ocampo said they decided to return to Mexico because they are still scared that something will happen to them. She said the group will most likely not try another illegal entry into the United States because of the incident. Their husbands were caught and deported, Ocampo said.
She said they were headed to New York, where they planned to live with family members, get a job and put their children into public school.
Ocampo did promise to return when it came time to testify, though, saying she wants to make sure Hoffman and Dumas are punished.
"What they did was wrong," she said.
--- Louie Villalobos can be reached at lvillalobos@yumasun.com or 539-6858.
© Copyright, YumaSun.com
The three children who were held at gunpoint by Matthew Hoffman and Alexander Dumas sit in the back of a van waiting to be taken back to Mexico at the U.S. Port of Entry at San Luis, Ariz., Friday. Photo by Alfred J. Hernandez
The new testament still predominantly addressed Jewish society, or else cities with a predominantly Greek culture. Christianity was just moving into Roman society during the 1st century. The focus of the NT was not on "this world" but the spiritual world, and how to fit oneself for it. It was not focused on social change; and the emphasis was on the personal, not the political.
1. I hope these two thugs who take what they think is the law into their own hands are rosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and, upon conviction, punished to the max for drawing guns on two women and a few children with no proof whatsoever of their status other than the fact that they looked Mexican, then in semi-uniform barking orders in English at them and making them go face down on the ground.
2. I hope those women and their children sue the thugs and their associates, using the 14th Amendment and the Racketeering Laws to own the homes the thugs now live in and their earnings for life. The thugs are no better than the KKK.
3. I hope the convictions and civil judgments serve as an example to other would-be thugs and self-appointed thugs at that.
4. I absolutely hope that they are constituents of Tommy Temper Tantrum so that he can have a non-stop hissy fit over the treatment of the poor thugs.
5. It is conservative to believe in the enforcement of criminal laws designed to protect the lives and physical safety of people, citizens or not. Transgressions of the border (Arizona, New Mexico, California, Texas?) give rise to no special authority whatsoever to these punks to pull guns on these two Mexican women and their children anywhere, much less in Colorado, far from the border, with no proof whatsoever of their status or otherwise.
6. As to Dubya, I guess you'd like Howard Dean instead or the Hildebeest or maybe Dennis the Menace or Al Sharpton or Carol Mostly Fraud or Dick Gephardt or Joe Lieberman or John Edwards or Ralph Nader or even the Arkansas Antichrist or Mrs. Antichrist?
7. Get down on the floor now. Bang your rattle on it. Punch it with your widdle fists. Kick it with your widdle toes. Whine: I want my borders! I want my borders! I want my borders! AND I want them NOW! OR Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Dubya Bush has gotta go!
Sleep well!
I'm out of here, since I'm going out in a few minutes.
Have a good evening.
So you are admitting that your comment was a falsehood.
No stories about anyone dying of hunger in Mexico. These mothers deliberately exposed their children to death and danger. They could have easily died of heat exhaustion crossing in this time of the year ---child endangerment means nothing when there is a lure of easy welfare money waiting. You can bet these mothers have no intention of paying any tuition for those kids to use the public schools here.
Parents who would endanger their childrens' lives to come over illegally (they all have a choice to come illegally or apply to come legally) are not the kind of people we need in this country. This was child abuse.
I have some sympathy for the illegal immigrant men who only risk their own lives but leave their families back in Mexico and send money back. For one it's much much cheaper if the taxpayers don't have to pay $12,000 every year just in education costs for each child they manage to bring over. The last thing these people do is take out a medical insurance policy ---- they'll take a job with no benefits because they expect free health care. These are classic moochers and they're willing to risk the lives of children to get more handouts.
I would congratulate these two gentlemen for trying to protect our country.
If you don't like it why don't you take your family and sneak into Mexico and pur your kids in school there, take their welfare and live in a house with 6 families in a room with swinging beds.
This family would have been welcome IF they went through the proper procedures. Now, they are CRIMINALS. They are ILLEGAL.
If this were true, then the military would be on the borders where they should be, and illegal aliens would be arrested and removed immediately when encountered. 'Stuff' happens when the feds refuse to do their jobs.
Remember, a dead fish rots from the head. Our laws are not being enforced, and that's where the crime is.
My forebear came to the new world as a slave, captured by Cromwell at the battle of Dunbar. He chose to oppose the goverernemnt in power at the time and risked, and lost, all that he had. Some of his children followed him to the new world and together they made a life for themselves, and eventually for me. Would you characterize that as child abuse?
Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. If they win through I wish them well. If they fail, at the cost of their own and their children's lives, then Darwin has a few more in the ledger books. Do you know how to cure hemophilia?
The problem is that you don't get your property tax refunded. The state still keeps it even if you opt out.
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