Posted on 08/07/2003 8:27:02 PM PDT by AZ GRAMMY
Second arrest made in immigrant incident
BY LOUIE VILLALOBOS, Staff Writer Aug 7, 2003
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Yuma County sheriff's deputies have arrested a second man in connection with the alleged unlawful detention of six illegal immigrants on July 31 in Gadsden.
Alexander David Dumas, 26, was arrested Tuesday evening after driving to Yuma from his home in Big Bear Lake, Calif., for an interview, said sheriff's spokesman Lt. Eben Bratcher.
Dumas was charged with six counts of aggravated assault and five counts of unlawful imprisonment following the early morning July 31 incident where deputies said he and Matthew Paul Hoffman, arrested on the same charges on Monday, detained a group of six illegal immigrants that had just entered the United States through the Colorado River.
A third man, Martin Hoffman Jr., was with the two suspects but won't be charged because he was not armed and did not take part in the handcuffing of the illegal immigrants, Bratcher said.
Bratcher said the department will continue to investigate the case and warned citizens against taking the law into their own hands.
He said anyone who sees a group of suspected illegal immigrants should call the Border Patrol, and not take it upon themselves to apprehend the group by using guns and handcuffs. Asking a group to stay put while making a phone call is permitted and would constitute a citizen's arrest, he said.
"When you have someone holding someone against their will with the use or the threat of the use of force, you've crossed the line between a citizen's arrest and unlawful detention," he said. "There was no justification for the use of force."
Deputies said the two men handcuffed five members of the group, which included three children and two women, and held them at gunpoint until U.S. Border Patrol agents arrived.
Agents have said they were dispatched to the scene when a surveillance camera operator noticed the incident unfolding. The agents called the sheriff's department, who then identified and interviewed all three men before letting them go, officials said.
Bratcher said the men are not believed to be part of a larger group, such as the citizen patrol groups that operate on private property along the Tucson border and use various forms of technology to alert Border Patrol agents to the presence of illegal immigrants in the area.
Also being charged with five counts of endangerment is a 16-year-old Mexican national who Bratcher said was paid $600 to bring the illegal immigrants into the United States. Bratcher also said the illegal immigrants were planning to meet with a taxi cab in Gadsden and were to be taken to a unidentified Yuma hotel, according to interviews done of the illegal immigrants by detectives.
William Robbins, Border Patrol spokesman, said the six illegal immigrants were in the agency's custody as of Wednesday morning but couldn't be interviewed.
Hugo Oliva, Mexican consul in Yuma, said the group was in good condition following the incident and that his office is encouraged by the sheriff's department's efforts regarding this case.
"This is a very disturbing thing to happen here," Oliva said. "We can't have people with guns do the job of law enforcement agencies."
http://yumasun.com/artman/publish/a...tory_6619.shtml
However, if they were watched on camera, why weren't the feds there sooner???? Are they just getting paid to sit on their asses and watch TV?
Seems the Feds are more interested in busting Americans protecting their borders and property than in protecting the American borders. Or are they just interested in protecting their 'turf'?
And you have very little here. That's because you're wrong and being bitter about it.
And I laugh at the extremism you spout on this post. But I've told you, here in the USA we believe you have the right to show your ignorance. So good luck and thanx for the laughs.
If you read the article you would learn how to effect a valid, lawful, citizen's arrest.
It's always interesting to meet up with some slave-driving exploiter of criminals every once in a while.
I like to think of my self as someone who has empathy for 2 moms and their children attempting to escape a life of poverty. I know you believe that Dubya, and myself are somehow making a buck off the illegal immigrants, but in fact, we just have hearts and souls. I will admit the Dubya may be thinking about the political consequences of gunning down Mexican families as they cross the border. I know if the TV stations air footage of that you will vote for Dubya but most humans will not.
Those impoverished Mexicans do the jobs Americans refuse to do like clean cars and toilets, all while smiling and happy for the chance to live in a country where their wife won't be raped and killed by a crooked cop. Pedro can’t speak English he isn’t asking for a government bailout of Chrysler. They aren’t taking my job and I don’t employ illegals. If you are a disaffected janitor you have my sympathies, but even if they do build a 20 foot steel fence around the "Land of the Free," Dubya is still not gonna force businesses to pay $15 an hour for grocery store baggers no matter how loudly you scream "Seig Heil!"
There were no INS agents at Plymouth Rock.
I'm not sure how many immigrants you speak with from Latin American countries. But having lived in South America, and having personally spoken with thousands of Mexicans, Central- and South-Americans, I can assure you that they DON'T refer to us as "America." We are "los Estados Unidos" to them, and we always will be. It's just the accepted norm in Spanish. And, they feel that everybody in this hemisphere is an American.
(That fine semantic point out of the way, they still don't have the right to cross our borders illegally.)
So no citizens are able to execute a citizens arrest without being charge with assault? That's an interesting point of view.
If you read the article you would learn how to effect a valid, lawful, citizen's arrest.
226 posted on 08/07/2003 11:16 PM PDT by Cultural Jihad
Your suggestion is silly. This group of illegal aliens appeared to be a group of men, women and children. Another type of group could have just as easily come up that river bed. You don't come unarmed to a possible drug trafficing encounter. And you effect every arrest as if the people are a threat. There's not a police officer around that won't tell you that you take each arrest as seriously as the worst type of arrest.
YES!
And it should be altered. This is the law back from when illegal aliens were not invading us in droves
Nor did I...your "point" is meaningless.
Citizen arrests for misdemeanors must be witnessed, and even then the citizen must follow the other rules regarding making citizen's arrests. We don't want to commit felonies while griping about the misdemeanors of others.
Some people are their own worst enemy.
Now I understand! They were not assaulted they were legally assaulted...oh well, then never mind. I got confused and mistook you for someone who was sane.
sorry my mistake
233 posted on 08/07/2003 11:24 PM PDT by Once-Ler (This Bushbot sez "I vote Dubya")
Most people think of a beating when they think of assault. They picture some guy in a bar breaking a bottle over someone's head or a real brawl. Or they think of a man who robs and beats up a victim. Or they think of some guy who just beats another person to a pulp.
These six men put handcuffs on the illegal aliens. This is exactly what the INS would have done with them. Would that have been assault? Be reasonable.
You may not like it because ordinary citizens made an arrest here, detaining the illegal aliens, but I have seen no solid proof that anything they did was unquestionably wrong.
We have thousands of illegal aliens comming across our borders every day. People who's farms and property are on the border are having a real problem with vandalism, thievery, dead pets, and destroyed property. These men tried to take action to help discourage illegals from entering their area. The INS isn't stopping it. The local police aren't stopping it. Our federal government isn't stopping it.
In certain areas, our citizens on the border have to put bars on their windows and lock themselves inside at night. Essentially they are imprisoned in their own homes because our nation is being overrun with illegal aliens, and nobody will put an end to it. That is my first concern.
Illegal aliens would not be subjected to any negative consequences if they didn't invade our nation. That's the solution to them being submitted to citizen's arrest. Preventing our citizens from executing a citizen's arrest serves no purpose other than to legitimize the seige mentality that our border citizens must live under.
Putting the handcuffs on has been charged as an assault. The fact that guns were present brings the additional charge of aggravated. This is clearly an abuse of power on behalf of the local authorities.
Why do I say this? There have been literally thousands of illegals apprehended in that area over the last six months, and tehn turned over to the INS without a single arrest of the citizens who executed citizen's arrests in the same manner these men did. Why weren't those aggravated assaults?
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