Posted on 11/06/2001 6:20:31 AM PST by csvset
| Omar S. Yahia |
Officials said that Omar S. Yahia, 31, born in Israel of Palestinian parents, was in the country on a student visa that expired nine years ago. He was detained by Immigration and Naturalization Service officials on Oct. 19, just hours before being convicted of assault and battery in Marshalltown, Iowa.
Despite Yahia's lengthy record of arrests in Virginia, Iowa and two other states during the nine years he has been in the country illegally, his immigration status was never questioned by law enforcement authorities until after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
His recent detention is a stark example of how immigration law suddenly is being enforced vigorously, particularly against those of Middle Eastern and Arab descent.
Tom Derouchey, deputy district director of the INS office in Omaha, Neb., could not say Monday whether Yahia is among the 1,147 people picked up since Sept. 11 under a variety of circumstances and held mainly on immigration charges while federal investigators determine whether they have any connection to terrorist plots.
|
David C. Miller, a sheriff's deputy in Marshall County, Iowa, who sat in on Yahia's interview with INS officials last month, said that Yahia came to the United States on a student visa in 1988. He was enrolled at the time at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.
Yahia became illegal, according to the deputy, after he quit the university. His visa expired in 1992.
``He did not inform the INS and nobody followed up,'' Miller said.
After that, Yahia moved freely about the country, establishing a home in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, according to police records, and running afoul of the law in at least four states.
He came to Virginia Beach, where he had a confrontation with a motel employee on Jan. 3. Yahia was charged with assault and battery of a clerk at the New Castle Motel on Atlantic Avenue. He was jailed, but was released on bond hours later.
Steve Powell, of Absolute Bail Bonds, who paid Yahia's bond, said that after he was released, Yahia made a threat against the government that Powell and police heard.
Yahia said Muslims had been persecuted by the police and the government long enough and ``we were going to get ours soon,'' Powell said.
Powell said he thought nothing about the threat, recalling it only after the Sept. 11 attacks. He then called federal authorities to report it.
Powell said Yahia had plenty of money, which allowed him to easily post bond. He never returned to Virginia Beach to face trial.
Less than two months later, Yahia was arrested in Iowa after allegedly using a box-cutter to tear up a motel room.
According to a police report and a sheriff's deputy in Marshalltown, Yahia did about $1,000 worth of damage to the motel room's carpet and bedspread. Jailed on Feb. 28, Yahia later assaulted three law enforcement officers while behind bars, the deputy said.
The vandalism charge was withdrawn before Yahia was tried Oct. 19 on the assault charges. He was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in jail, said Paul G. Crawford, a Marshall County prosecutor who handled the case.
Meanwhile, the Virginia Beach assault and battery charge was withdrawn at the request of a public defender assigned to Yahia's case. The FBI returned to the New Castle Motel in October to question employees, according to a motel source.
Crawford said Yahia would have been released after the Iowa conviction had the INS not detained him.
``They would not tell me what they were detaining him for,'' Crawford said.
Yahia's criminal charges in Iowa are only his most recent. In 1995, Yahia pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed weapon in Utah. He also was charged with assault, but was found not guilty.
In Nevada, Yahia was charged with battery. No record was available of how that charge was resolved.
Any one of those charges should have been enough to alert INS officials that Yahia was in the country illegally, Derouchey said. Iowa police routinely check with INS officials regarding the immigration status of people placed under arrest, he said.
Don Rimer, a spokesman for the Virginia Beach Police Department, said that all suspects placed under arrest are checked on a computer database to determine whether other warrants or alerts against them have been issued. Rimer said that no INS alert had been issued against Yahia in January.
Reach Jon Frank at 446-2277 or jfrank@pilotonline.com
Notice the use of the box cutter.
We are at war and its time to purge ourselves of non-citizens and stop all immigration into our country until this time of war passes.
That's more than they do in Southern California. I heard some numbnuts local prosecutor from there on the radio just this morning saying that enforcement of federal immigration laws was "not the job of local police," and I couldn't help but wonder if that moron's oath of office included a phrase that required him to support the Constitution of the United States.
It is time to use confiscation against the hirers of illegal aliens. It would only take a Meat packing plant or a major construction company to send the message.
Not good enough. Immigration law needs to be vigorously inforced against illegals of ALL ethnicities.
This coddling of illegal alien criminals filters back to every single 3rd world pesthole. Word is out that the USA is a good place to pull scams and be a criminal.
It's just that "your" national government - particularly during the Klintons/Gore Regime - has seen the rights of foreigners, even ones here as illegal aliens, as outranking those of native-born Americans.
My mother - an elderly, native-born middle-class American - suddenly started getting dun letters from the IRS several years ago, threatening even criminal prosecution if she didn't immediately pay $700+ in back taxes; we took it to her tax lawyer - who called the local "problems resolution office" of the IRS, which replied that she didn't owe anything, to ignore the letters, and that they'd stop in several months. (Eventually they did stop.) During that time, did the INS spend 1% the resources hassling the estimated 700,000 illegal aliens here in North Carolina that the IRS spent hassling my innocent mother? (NO.)
Before Sept. 11, INS would get after illegal aliens - but only on fake-ID stuff, illegals convicted of other felonies, cases instigated by unions, bus lines specializing in moving illegals, or mass-scale hiring of illegals.
IMMIGRATION resource library - with local INS phone numbers coast to coast
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay Armed - Yorktown
Why?
Do you really think this is all by accident? The name of the game is tyranny by any means necessary. The method is simple, for example importing terror (via unlimited mass immivasion by illegals, etc.) as a justification for tyranny. Another example is drugging up kids in schools, turning them into ticking time bombs, and then using the resulting carnage as a justification for more gun registration and anti-Second Amendment programs. It just goes on and on, but the goal is clear.
The new anti-terror laws just signed by President Bush pretty much wrap up the agenda. At this point anyone can be arrested for any reason, and then things get very bad from them after that. Did anyone notice that our public officials are now floating "trial balloons" about using torture against suspected terrorists? Remember when RICO laws and asset forfeture were only going to be used against gangsters? Does anyone else see a trend here?
God help us all, we have lost the nation our forefathers fought for, and we have become something very, very different indeed.
And you, GWB, stop pussy-footing around the Mexican Border situation. Take 50 Thousand troops from Germany and seal it!
FBI: get a memo out to every last PD in this country and tell the donut-suckin' Barney Fifes to stop releasing foreigners until they are thoroughly checked out, no matter how long it takes. You can charge their embassies room and board. Hat's off to the Iowa cops who finally busted this creep. Them, I'LL buy a donut and coffe anytime.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
