man arrest for detaining illegal immigrants

Yuma Sun ^ | LOUIE VILLALOBOS, Staff Writer

[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

[Cultural Jihad]

>> If they see a speeder on the highway, do they draw guns upon them, too?

> Nope, but then that's not a felony.

Neither did these women and children commit a felony, assuming it was their first time crossing. Now, the vigilante clowns did commit felonies.

[El Gato]

alleged unlawful detention of six illegal immigrants

Spark, spritz, zap, pop... Does Not Compute...

How can there be and unlawful detention of illegal immigrants? (Unless excessive force were used, beyond that necessary to stop and detain them, while assuring the safety of those doing the detaining, which as far as I can see is not being alleged)

[BJungNan]

Bratcher said the department will continue to investigate the case and warned citizens against taking the law into their own hands.

There is no law anymore.

[Cultural Jihad]

These are the very people who...

How fortunate for law enforcement in Phoenix that a concerned citizen such as yourself can predict that these women and children are going to carjack when they reach your city. (sheesh. More 'Dead Birds' tribal justice being advocated)

[lepton]

It is good that these vigilante criminals who commit aggravated assault and unlawful imprisonment are being prosecuted for their crimes. Vigilantism erodes justice.

Vigilante? Are you claimning these three prosecuted, tried, or otherwise condemned the Mexicans?

No, the problem is if they operate in a manner prone to make mistakes, violate actual laws themselves (not just self-serving interpretations of the laws) like not turning them over to the police, or come across people who are not doing wrong.

[Tancredo Fan]

Since you asked, I am in favor of instituting a bracero-type program again to bring in those who choose to work in North America. Once the work is completed the guest workers are sent home.

This won't work unless the anchor baby syndrome nightmare (14th amendment) is corrected, and a foolproof means is developed to locate these people at any time. We all know thay aren't going to leave unless they are caught and deported to begin with. There's no need to import these bums anyhow... just raise wages to what they should be in 2003 and Americans will do the work.

[Cultural Jihad]

There is no law anymore.

Tell that to the vigilante clowns who are being charged with felonies.

[DoughtyOne]

"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."

And of course we can't have the law enforcement agencies do this work either, obviously! This gets more absurd by the minute.

[KEVLAR]

That sounds ok. Charging all of them and detaining them for a hearing would be expensive. I guess we just need to catch more of them or prevent them from crossing to begin with. The numbers of illegals here does indicate that our current efforts are not very effective. If congress does not want to adress the issue, US citizens should, and I believe have every right to, get involved.

[Cultural Jihad]

Nice idea. Raise the minimum wage, eh? We could use more unemployed.

[eldoradude]

Remember that cuban kid in Florida? The one with the mp5 in his face? That gunman had a badge. What do you think of that?

Well? So if a man with a badge points a gun in a kid's face is that okay?

[Cultural Jihad]

They have every right to get involved but they have no right to commit crimes in doing so.

[BJungNan]

Shoving a gun in the faces of women and children is not an assault?

Cute response, but how about a constructive one. What would you have done to stop them?

[DoughtyOne]

Please point out for us the spot where anyone shoved a gun in the face of the detainees. They were carrying weapons. So do the police, but they don't wave them in anyone's faces just because then have them on them.

[lepton]

Shoving a gun in the faces of women and children = aggravated assault.

So who is going to arrest the police? ...since your definition is so simplistic. Or are women and children to be immune to such automatically?

[El Gato]

Can you tell an illegal by looking at them?

If you see them coming across the border you can. And if they are crossing private property, it's trespassing, even if they aren't illegal.

[moehoward]

"Should we just stop you since you might be carrying dynamite? (sheesh)"

Illegals could be carrying any number of things. The least of which are drugs or small explosives. How about highly contagious diseases. TB, SARS, this list could be quite long.

[risk]

Once the work is completed the guest workers are sent home.

You hope they'll go home?

And you think that a few businesses are worth establishing a bureaucracy for sub living wage temporary workers? Workers who will get pregnant. Workers who will slip through the cracks. Workers who will grow to be bitter critics of an American economic system that underpays them and treats them like second-class citizens?

Have you ever thought about the fear the Germans have today of their Kurdish and Turkish populations? Populations that were brought in for the sole purpose of feeding their unquenchable labor appetite? Where are the plentiful jobs today? Where are the businesses that could sustain all of that labor and the labor requirements of the German people?

I am not against immigration, but I think we need to start setting some standards. I don't think we need "cheap labor." That's a special interest that is just as damaging as the Democratic immigrant voter harvesting that we've all criticized so harshly.

Get real. Latinos are just like the rest of us who immigrated to this country, some longer ago than others. But we don't need to flood the country as we've been doing with people who don't care about the American dream and only want to build a beach head in this country for sending cash back to Latin America or establish a human wave of Spanish-speakers for the purposes of reclaiming California for Mexico. Have you ever talked to an immigrant janitor or other unskilled worker who can barely speak English? Some will tell you in California they don't have to speak anything but Spanish. These are not good prospective American immigrants. They're here for the quick cash and that's it.

Immigrants who come here should be able to offer us something more than unskilled labor and a promise to send all their cash south of the border.

The Bracero Program: