Free Republic

While presidential scion Jeb Bush was out jogging last week, Miami immigration officials deported his maid to her native Honduras. The Immigration and Naturalization Service used to send a deportation letter ahead of their agents. But a new law allows the agents to apprehend someone without any forewarning once all deportation appeals fail, said Richard Smith, director of the INS office in Miami. The new law, called the Immigration Act of 1990, was signed on Nov. 29 by Jeb`s father, President Bush. The maid, Maria Magdalena Romero, had used up all of her appeals, Smith said on Monday. Romero had...

The Savopoulos family was having a busy week. The husband was trying to get a new martial arts center in Chantilly, Va., ready for a grand opening, and he enlisted the help of one of his housekeepers. His wife was ill, and their 10-year-old son was recovering from injuries suffered in a go-kart crash. The days and hours leading up to the deaths of Savvas and Amy Savopoulos, and two others believed to be their son and another housekeeper, came into sharper focus Saturday with new details from police records. They show attempts by friends and relatives to reach the...

Do you leave a tip in your hotel room for the maid? Marriott is launching a program with Maria Shriver to put envelopes in hotel rooms to encourage tipping. The campaign, called 'The Envelope Please,' begins this week. Envelopes will be placed in 160,000 rooms in the U.S. and Canada. Some 750 to 1,000 hotels will participate from Marriott brands like Courtyard, Residence Inn, J.W. Marriott, Ritz-Carlton and Renaissance hotels. The name of the person who cleans the room will be written on the envelope along with a message: 'Our caring room attendants enjoyed making your stay warm and comfortable....

Saudi police are searching for an Indonesian housemaid accused by her employer of casting a magic spell on all his family, causing fainting and epileptic fits to them. The Saudi man said the maid joined his family in the capital Riyadh nearly three years ago and that she has been treated nicely by all family members. “Recently, all family members has started to suffer from fainting and epileptic fits. After the housemaid fled, we found magic items planted in various part of our house,” the unnamed man said, quoted by Sabq Arabic language daily. “I swear that we do not...

Prosecutors are reportedly set to ask a judge to abandon the case against Dominique Strauss Kahn. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is preparing to ask that all charges against the former head of the IMF accused of attempting to rape hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo are dropped Tuesday. Such requests from the DA 'are never denied', an expert told the New York Post meaning Strauss-Kahn could finally return to his home country after being forced to remian in the U.S for months.

The prosecutors in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal will meet the hotel maid accusing the former IMF chief of sexual assault on Monday, in a sign the case may be headed for dismissal. Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for the maid, Nafissatou Diallo, said the Manhattan district attorney's office requested in a letter that Diallo meet with them at 3 p.m. The letter also said that, if she failed to appear, prosecutors would assume she was not interested in discussing the case, Wigdor said. 'This is just another piece of evidence demonstrating what may be the ultimate outcome of this case,' Wigdor...

The hotel maid who has accused former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of trying to sexually assault her in a New York City hotel room has broken her public silence in an exclusive broadcast interview with ABC News. "I want justice. I want him to go to jail," Nafissatou Diallo told ABC's Robin Roberts in an interview to air Monday on "Good Morning America" and "World News with Diane Sawyer" and Tuesday on "Nightline." "I want him to know that there is some places you cannot use your money, you cannot use your power when you do something like...

The hotel maid who claims former IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn raped her has been accused of working as a prostitute. Allegations have emerged that the 32-year-old cleaner was was taking extra money from male guests at the hotel for sex. 'There is information... of her getting extraordinary tips, if you know what I mean. And it's not for bringing extra f**king towels,' a source close to the defence investigation told the New York Post. The woman also had 'a lot of her expenses – hair braiding, salon expenses – paid for by men not related to her,' the source added....

The sexual assault case against ex IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Khan is close to collapse, it was tonight revealed. The New York hotel maid who accused Strauss-Khan of raping her in his $3,000-a-night suite, lied to investigators, law enforcement sources told the New York Times. Despite a wealth of forensic evidence against the 62-year-old, prosecutors have dismissed a lot of what the maid said about the alleged encounter, according to the newspaper.

Indonesia will suspend sending domestic helpers to Saudi Arabia after the beheading of a maid convicted of murdering her Saudi employer.Migrant worker Ruyati binti Sapubi, 54, was executed after she was convicted of murdering her Saudi employer, Khairiya bint Hamid Mijlid, with a meat cleaver. The maid carried out the killing after she was denied permission to leave the kingdom and return to her family in Indonesia, according to officials in Jakarta.

A New York assemblyman says he wants the state to require hotels to provide their housekeepers with an emergency "panic button" that would help protect them from sexual assaults on the job. Assemblyman Rory Lancman, a Democrat from Queens, said he will introduce the bill Monday. The move comes a week after former International Monetary Fund Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged with sexually assaulting a Manhattan hotel maid. "We send hotel workers, housekeepers into rooms by themselves without any other staff, without any other security," Lancman said at a news conference Sunday outside the Sofitel Hotel, the site of Strauss-Kahn's...

Will Arnold be back? Do you think news of Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child will hurt his plans to return to the big screen? Absolutely. He's toxic right now. No way. He'll bounce back. I'm strongly ambivalent.

Now for a few humble thoughts about Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his recent brush with law and journalism, bearing in mind that it's possible indeed, maybe even likely, that he is guilty as the prosecutors charge: 1.) If he is such a womanizer and violent guy with women, why didn't he ever get charged until now? If he has a long history of sexual abuse, how can it have remained no more than gossip this long? France is a nation of vicious political rivalries. Why didn't his opponents get him years ago? 2.) In life, events tend to follow patterns. People...

No anonymity in France for Strauss-Kahn's accuserName of NYC hotel maid who says IMF chief attacked her is published in Paris msnbc.com staff and news service reports updated 5/17/2011 9:06:18 PM ET The hotel maid who accuses International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her is a 32-year-old immigrant from Guinea who told her brother, "somebody has done something really bad to me," according to media reports. Her identity has been withheld in U.S. media publications, in accordance with standard journalistic practice. But media outlets in France, where Strauss-Kahn is from, began reporting her name Tuesday. Among...

The French political bigshot who heads the International Monetary Fund was arrested for allegedly sodomizing a Manhattan hotel maid today — hauled off an Air France flight just moments before takeoff from Kennedy Airport, police said.

Lawyer Gloria Allred released a letter today that she claims proves California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman knowingly employed an undocumented immigrant as her housekeeper. The letter was sent from the Social Security Administration to Whitman and her husband Griffith Harsh on April 22, 2003. It advises the couple that the Social Security number of their housekeeper, Nicky Diaz, did not match their files. The back of the letter includes a handwritten note, which Allred said was written by Harsh, that reads: "Nicky, please check this. Thanks." Allred said that neither Whitman nor her husband followed up with Diaz about the...

(Aug. 25) -- A 50-year-old Sri Lankan woman who worked as a maid for a large family in Saudi Arabia for five months was allegedly tortured by some of the family members hammering nails into her body, doctors said. The woman, who flew back to Colombo, Sri Lanka, from Riyadh on Saturday night, was brought to the hospital by her concerned children Monday. X-rays showed there were 23 nails embedded in her body. "Some of the nails were 2 inches long," Dr. Prabath Gajadeera of Kamburupitiya Base Hospital told AOL News today. "Most of the nails were embedded in her...

An acquaintance of mine, Rebecca (not her real name), agreed to take me with her on a day of cleaning. I was curious how housecleaners were faring in this economy, and I wanted to get some perspective on how it feels to get paid for something most people don't consider "real work." Her gig was at a recently vacated apartment in Oakland. While Rebecca perched on a ladder and scrubbed six years of grease off the kitchen ceiling, we chatted about money. Rebecca started the business six years ago, with a friend. "Me and my friend were both getting fat...

TAMPA, Fla. -- The wife of a Tampa man who hired a nude maid to clean their home while she was away is speaking out about jewelry stolen from their home. Police say Kenna Dimartini is a person of interest in the case. The wife, who does not want to be identified, says $40,000 worth of jewelry was stolen from their home. The husband was able to point officers to the woman's Web site and give a description. The wife says she plans to file for divorce.

A nude maid cleaned up good at a Florida man's home. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office says the maid stole more than $40,000 from a Cheval home despite not wearing any clothes. The 50-year-old man hired the maid through the Internet on Friday to clean his suburban Tampa home. Authorities said the woman arrived at the home in a one-piece, light colored dress. She took off the dress and cleaned the house for $100 per hour. Sheriff's office spokeswoman Debbie Carter said the man told deputies he left the maid alone in the bedroom to clean. When the man's wife...