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Posted on Fri, Sep. 19, 2003 | |
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LAW ENFORCEMENT: Illegal aliens arrested at GFAFB Herald Staff Writer Four construction workers were arrested this week at Grand Forks Air Force Base because they were in the United State illegally, said Glen Schroeder, chief patrol agent with the U.S. Border Patrol office in Grand Forks. Two of the workers will appear in U.S. District Court today in Grand Forks to face charges of using fraudulent alien registration cards to live and work in the United States. Two others are being summarily deported. All four are citizens of Mexico. The four were employees of Lockett Construction based in Ridgefield, Wash., just north of Portland, Ore., said Nedra Fortish, accounting manager for the company. The four men were part of a crew hired in Washington and had just arrived in North Dakota to work on a project Lockett is subcontracting from Sundt Construction of Tucson, Ariz. They were renovating base housing when they were arrested Monday, Fortish said. Monday morning, a member of the base security police in charge of checking documents of workers coming on the base saw something in the records that made him suspect that one of the men, who is 26, had previously been deported from the United States as "an aggravated felon," according to the complaint written by a Border Patrol agent. Border Patrol informed As other workers then were checked more closely, other problems were found in their documentation. Two Border Patrol agents were sent to the base and the four men were arrested. Timoteo Carranza-Mora, 24, and Gildardo Estrada-Acosta, 23, will appear in federal court today in Grand Forks before Magistrate Judge Alice Senechal on charges of using false alien registration cards to live and work in the United States. The maximum penalty for the charge is 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The two men declined to comment to Patrol agents and said they wanted to obtain attorneys, according to the complaint. The men had "I-551" documents, which are alien registration cards for employment, using numbers that had been issued properly to other legal residents, but did not belong to the two men, according to the complaint. The Mexican consulate in Omaha was contacted by federal officials about the arrests. The names of the two other men arrested were not available Thursday from the federal magistrate judge's office nor from the Border Patrol. The 26-year-old man has appeared this week in federal court and is in the process of being deported once again to Mexico, Schroeder said. He did not know why the man originally had been deported, Schroeder said. The youngest of the four men is 18 and is being deported to Mexico under a "voluntary departure," Schroeder said. Work at the base Lockett Construction does commercial and residential framing construction and is working on a large project at the Army's Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Wash., Fortish said. Schroeder said the Lockett company had the proper "I-9" documents for each worker that showed their legal residence for employment in the United States. The problem was the documents were false, he said. "There is a penalty for knowingly hiring an illegal alien, but there is no indication there was any wrongdoing on the part of the company," Schroeder said. Fortish said, "We make sure we get, as far as we can tell, their proper documents. We do everything the federal government requires us to do." Lockett Construction has about eight workers now at the Grand Forks base and is looking for at least four more, Fortish said. Lockett's project manager at the base, Brad Smith, told her the "area is pretty busy with construction," so he was having difficulty finding replacement workers, Fortish said. "We are trying to get another crew together from Washington," she said. "Because the weather will be upon us soon." These are not the first illegal aliens arrested recently at the base, since security has tightened after 9-11, Schroeder said. "We have worked really closely with base security here and in Minot to screen some of the construction crews coming in," Schroeder said. "I don't know how these guys got in there. We have made arrests right at the main gate, of people before they even have gotten to enter the base for the first time." The Grand Forks Border Patrol office is the headquarters for a sector covering eight states: Minnesota, Montana, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri, as well as North Dakota. The sector has stations in Bottineau, Pembina and Portal in North Dakota, as well as Grand Forks, and Duluth, Grand Marais, International Falls and Warroad, in Minnesota. Reach Lee at (701) 780-1237, or (800) 477-6572, ext. 237; e-mail slee@gfherald.com |
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