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February 28, 2012
Cedar Park man gets 41 months in visa fraud scheme
A federal judge in Austin today sentenced a Cedar Park man to almost three and a half years in prison for spearheading a scheme in which his company fraudulently obtained work visas on behalf of several Austin companies and then sold some of the visas to hopeful immigrants in Mexico, according to prosecutors.
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel also ordered Jose Ramiro Vicharelly, 55, and four previously convicted co-defendants to forfeit to the government about $312,000, five vehicles and to pay a $1 million judgment, according to a news release by federal prosecutors.
All of the defendants had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit visa fraud. Vicharelly also pleaded to an additional count of conspiracy to encourage aliens to illegally enter and reside in the United States.
Vicharelly was president and executive director of International Staffing Solutions, Inc., which did business as Texas Staffing Resources.
The company’s fraudulent scheme was explained by prosecutors as follows:
The defendants approached several Austin businesses and offered to obtain H-2B visas for foreign workers as well as for undocumented aliens already working for their companies. The defendants then submitted fraudulent visa petitions requesting authorization for significantly more visas than requested by the companies. Vicharelly and his co-defendants then sold the excess visas for between $1,500 and $2,200 and traveled to Mexico to help immigrants submit the bogus visa forms and to prepare for consular interviews.
Also convicted were Vicharelly’s wife, Irma Lopez Vicharelly, 29, who was sentenced to two years probation; his daughter, Angela Paola Faulk, 32, who was sentenced to 17 months in prison; Faulk’s husband, Servando Gonzalez Jr., 25, who received two years probation; and former company account manager Pedro Saul Ocampo Munguia, who did not show up for sentencing and is considered a fugitive.
Vicharelly was sentenced to 41 months in prison.
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February 23, 2010
U.S. attorney defends Austin immigration prosecutions
U.S. Attorney John Murphy today fired back at Austin federal Judge Sam Sparks’ recent accusations that seeking criminal convictions against some illegal immigrants is a waste of taxpayer money.
In a court filing, Murphy wrote that the three Mexican citizens whose prosecution for illegally re-entering the United States after deportation prompted questions from Sparks had each been deported multiple times in the past before recent arrests in Travis County for driving while intoxicated.
“The agency (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and possibly other prosecutors, have chosen less costly means of dealing with each of these defendants on prior occasions, and in response, the defendants have returned unlawfully and engaged in serious criminal conduct,” Murphy wrote.
On Feb. 5, Sparks wrote in an order that “like many of the defendants prosecuted under the (federal illegal re-entry law) in the last six months” the men “have no significant history.”
The men were each found by immigration officers while in the Travis County jail last fall.
While they were each sentenced to time served, Sparks noted that as of the date of his order it had cost more than $13,350 to jail the three men and noted that charging them criminally means additional costs and work for prosecutors, defense lawyers, court personnel and others.
“The expenses of prosecuting illegal entry and re-entry cases (rather than deportation) on aliens without any significant criminal history is simply mind-boggling,” Sparks wrote.
Read Murphy’s court filing (pdf file) here:
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January 21, 2010
Five more sentenced in immigrant smuggling case
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel today sentenced to probation five people who were convicted of conspiracy to commit money laundering as part of a San Marcos immigrant smuggling operation that was broken up by local and federal authorities in 2008.
The defendants sentenced today had previously admitted that they made and received wire transfers comprised of fees collected from the families of smuggled immigrants. Authorities tracked more than $1 million in wire transfers associated with the ring, which they said operated in Central Texas from 2003 until 2008.
On Wednesday, Yeakel sentenced 10 people in the case, giving three of them probation. The rest received prison terms of up to 12 1/2 years. Three people indicted in the case are fugitives. The ringleader, Rosalinda Trevino-Alvarez, has agreed to a 20-year prison term but her sentencing has been indefinitely postponed because of her health problems.
The group smuggled people originally from Central America and Mexico from stash houses along the U.S.-Mexico border into Central Texas and beyond from 2003 to 2008, according to court documents. Those stash houses in the Tamaulipas cities of Ciudad Ordaz and Reynosa — the latter across the Rio Grande from McAllen — were operated by Los Zetas, one of the biggest drug cartels in Mexico, prosecutors said in court documents.
The immigrants were taken to a trailer on Iris Street in San Marcos, where they were stripped to their underwear to prevent escape and guarded by men carrying pistols until their relatives paid their smuggling fees, which some witnesses told authorities were raised after their arrival in the United States, according to court documents.
After fielding complaints by family members of the smuggled immigrants, authorities stormed the trailer in July 2008, finding four smugglers and 26 unauthorized immigrants.
Here is the breakdown of the defendants, their home towns according to authorities (they did not disclose which city in Mexico some defendants are from) and the disposition of their cases:
— Luz Maria Garcia-Garza, Rio Grande City, 21 months in prison
— Julio Cesar Salgado-Ortega, Mexico, 5 years and 11 months in prison
— Humberto Alcides Salgado-Ortega, Mexico, 3 years and 1 month in prison
— Argeo Salgado-Ortega, Mexico, 12 1/2 years in prison
— Saul Romero-Salgado, Mexico, 12 years in prison
— Fulgencio Loredo-Rubio, a Mexican citizen living in San Marcos, 5 years and 3 months in prison
— Juanita Leija-Trevino, Staples, probation
— Sandra Leija, Austin, 2 years in prison
— Concepcion Loredo-Leija, Austin, probation
— Marisavette Esteves-Leija, Sugar Land, probation
— Wendy Nadine Adame, San Marcos, probation
— Letecia Ann Miranda, San Marcos, probation
— Randy Rene Contreras, Maxwell, probation
— Leslie Denise Vargas, San Marcos, probation
— Mary Salinas, San Marcos, probation
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January 20, 2010
Six sentenced for role in immigrant smuggling ring
Members of one of the largest human smuggling operations busted in Central Texas in recent years are being sentenced in federal court in Austin today, bringing to a close part of an investigation that began months before authorities stormed a San Marcos trailer in July 2008.
The group smuggled immigrants from Central America and Mexico from stash houses operated along the U.S.-Mexico border, some by members of the violent Zetas criminal gang, into Central Texas and beyond from 2003 to 2008, according to court documents.
The immigrants were brought to a trailer on Iris Street in San Marcos, where they were stripped down to their underwear to prevent escape and guarded by men carrying pistols until their relatives paid their smuggling fees — fees that some witnesses said was increased upon their arrival to the United States — according to court documents.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Brown told U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel this morning that investigators tracked wire transfers that were made or received by members of the smuggling ring that totaled more than $1.1 million dollars.
In all 19 people in Austin were indicted in the case. Fourteen have pleaded guilty. Three are fugitives.
By mid-day Wednesday, Yeakel had sentenced six defendants to prison terms ranging from 21 months to 12½ years. Nine more defendants are scheduled to be sentenced this afternoon.
The lead defendant in the case, Rosalinda Trevino-Alvarez (pictured at right), is in the hospital and will not be sentenced as scheduled. Alvarez is expected to receive 20 years under her plea agreement with prosecutors.
One of the men sentenced Wednesday was Argeo Salgado-Ortega, a 32-year-old Mexican man who had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to smuggle aliens and of using a firearm during a crime of violence.
On May 26, 2008, Salgado-Ortega and another worker from the organization drove with one of the men they had been holding for fees to a CVS parking lot in San Marcos to meet the man’s relatives, who were to pay $2,000 for his release, court documents show.
The meeting resulted in a shootout between members of the man’s family and the smugglers, who were arrested, the court documents show.
In July, after fielding complaints from the family members of those who had been smuggled, authorities busted the San Marcos trailer. Four smugglers were arrested and 26 people that were being held there were also detained. The investigation later broadened.
William Ibbotson, the public defender representing Alvarez, disputes the government’s contention in court documents that the group mistreated the people they were smuggling or resorted to violence.
While most of those immigrants found in the trailer were deported, four of them were kept as witnesses in the case. Ibbotson wrote in a court filing that those four were interviewed by defense investigators and “stated that the San Marcos smugglers never threatened them, and they also stated that they never overheard the smugglers threaten to harm anyone in telephone conversations with their relatives.” They also never saw the smugglers with guns, Ibbotson wrote.
Ibbotson said the violence happened at the safe houses across the border, including one in Reynosa. He said the people who ran those houses mistreated their human cargo and often collected their portion of the smuggling fee as well as the portion that was supposed to be paid on arrival into the United States. Ibbotson wrote that when the group in San Marcos once again asked for that portion of the payment from San Marcos, they were accused of overcharging.
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December 4, 2009
Man charged with transporting undocumented immigrants
A man has been charged in federal court in Austin with transporting illegal aliens after a Round Rock police officer arrested him driving a truckful of immigrants to a job site on Wednesday, a federal affidavit said.
Jose Rolando Ibarra-Gonzalez, a Mexican citizen, was driving a gray Ford pickup near Interstate 35 and Chisholm Trail when Officer Robert Lloyd noted about 10 people packed into the cab of the truck, the affidavit said. Ibarra, 29, is from San Luis Potosi and had been living in Houston, court records show.
Lloyd pulled the car over because the occupants were not wearing seat belts and after he found that none of the passengers spoke English, he contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the affidavit said.
“ICE Special Agent Ron Estrabo arrived at the scene to determine the alienage of the subjects at the traffic stop,” the affidavit said.
Estrabo determined the truck contained “citizens and nationals of Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala and were in the United States illegally,” the affidavit said.
Two of the immigrants said that Ibarra was transporting them from their home in Houston to a jobsite in the Round Rock area, the affidavit said.
Ibarra is awaiting trial on the criminal charge and the officials have initiated deportation proceedings against the eight passengers.
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January 14, 2009
New drivers' license rules challenged
An Austin woman and two others claim in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Travis County District Court that new Department of Public Safety driver’s license requirements for non-citizens discriminate against them, even though they are legally in the United States.
The women, who are represented by the Texas Civil Rights Project, are identified in the lawsuit as Sonia Castillo, a Mexican national who resides in Austin; Jocelyn Alvarez Torres, a Mexican national from Mt. Pleasant; and “Jane Doe,” a political refugee from Honduras living in Houston. Castillo and Alvarez Torres are domestic violence victims and have legal rights to be here while their petitions are pending for legal status under the federal Violence Against Women Act, said James Harrington, the project’s director who is representing the plaintiffs.
All three women had driver’s licenses but were denied renewal or likely will be denied because they are not citizens and the DPS does not accept their federal work authorization status, Harrington said. The DPS rule changes, which went into effect Oct. 1, are intended to prevent undocumented immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses.
The lawsuit seeks to force the DPS to stop enforcing the rules, which Harrington called “an unconscionable burden on immigrant survivors of domestic abuse and discriminatory against the Hispanic community.”
A spokeswoman for the governor’s office said it had no comment on the lawsuit. “The governor for some time has been in support of those (license rule) changes to ensure public safety and national security and to enhance the integrity of the driver’s licenses,” said the spokeswoman, Katherine Cesinger.
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July 8, 2008
Illegal immigrants in Austin area continue to face felony charges
The criminalization of illegal immigration continued in Austin in June as federal prosecutors kept on filing felony charges against previously deported immigrants at rates unmatched in recent years.
About three to five people a month were charged by indictment or information with the crime of illegal entry after deportation in recent years, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
In June, 23 people were charged with the crime, a review of cases at Austin’s federal courthouse shows.
That continues a trend reported in late May by the Austin American-Statesman. That story, which can be found here, said such prosecutions were surging in Austin as part of a federal effort to charge even those with minor or no criminal history with the felony crime. Previously, prosecutors in U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton’s office only pursued criminal cases against immigrants who had serious felony convictions on their records or had sneaked back across the border numerous times after being deported.
In January, five people were charged with illegal re-entry and in February three were charged, according to review of cases. In March, that number surged to 17; in April it was 21; and in May, 27 people were charged.
Immigration officers discovered 59 of the 96 people charged this year at the Travis County Jail, where the presence of the officers has been controversial.
After inquiries by the American-Statesman in May, immigration officials acknowledged that the increase in Austin cases was part of a nationwide push to prosecute more people who enter the United States illegally.
On June 11, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in San Antonio issued a press release stating that in the previous eight months, 3,831 people were prosecuted for re-entering the country after deportation, more than double the number of such cases recorded in all of last year.
ICE credited “Operation Repeat Offender,” which began in the San Antonio, El Paso, Houston, Phoenix and San Diego ICE field offices. The San Antonio field office includes Austin. That initiative was expanded to all ICE field offices in June, the ICE press release stated.
The released stated that “the heightened emphasis on felony immigration cases reflects a commitment … to send a strong message of deterrence to illegal aliens with lengthy criminal and immigration records.”
However, anecdotal evidence from the Austin court shows that many of those being prosecuted under the new initiative only have cursory involvement with the law. One person recently charged, for example, is a student who was discovered by immigration officers in the Travis County Jail after he was charged with smoking marijuana near the Barton Springs pool.
Federal authorities say that pursuing those who return to the United States after deportation is just one of many ways they are cracking down on illegal immigration. Those who have not been previously deported are returned to their home countries without a criminal record and prison sentence.
Immigration officials say they are also cracking down on those who employ illegal immigrants. Statesman reporter Juan Castillo’s recent look at that effort can be found here.
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