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[4 short articles on Immigration & Crime --- count as 1 Rdg. for RDPs and Notes]

Indictment accuses 11 of ruthless gang crimes, including killings, in D.C. area

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By Spencer S. Hsu

Washington Post



February 9, 2011

Federal authorities accused 11 people Wednesday of orchestrating a two-year run of killings, stabbings and beatings across the Washington area as members of a violent Salvadoran gang.

A 35-count federal indictment unsealed Wednesday against 10 men and one women offers a glimpse at the savage tactics of local members of La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

Controlled by ringleaders or "big homies" imprisoned in El Salvador or at large in Central America or Mexico, MS-13 "cliques" with such names as the Sailors, Normandy, Peajes, Uniones and Fultons collaborate across the District, Maryland and Virginia, the indictment says.

Working through a partnership they call "La Hermandad," or "the Brotherhood," clique capos known as "La Palabra" - "shot callers" - allegedly "green-lighted" the killing of rivals, brutalizing of police informants, extortion of business people, and drug dealing in competition with the 18th Street, STC, Mara and other locally active Latino gangs.

Victims included a 14-year-old boy, Giovanni Sanchez, who was stabbed to death and left in the street in Columbia Heights in Northwest Washington in December 2008; and Felipe Leonardo Enriquez, 25, who was fatally shot and dumped on sewage utility property near the Montgomery and Howard county line March 31, prosecutors charged.

"This indictment is our most recent step in a targeted, sustained effort to dismantle MS-13 and other violent gangs that threaten our neighborhoods," U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said in a statement with U.S. Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the criminal division and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton.

The indictment laid out a variety of racketeering offenses against defendants, at least five of whom were previously charged.

Attorneys for Carlos "Cangri" Silva, 28, of Takoma Park; Omar "Flaco" Aguilar, 21, and Wilfredo "Majestic" Mejia, 25, both of Silver Spring; and Henry "Flaco" Sarba, address unknown, would not comment. The men were indicted in September in connection with a December 2009 home invasion in the District.

Hector "Littleman" Diaz-Flores, 20, of the District, could face the federal death penalty for allegedly killing Sanchez. In 2009, he was indicted on a second-degree murder charge and others in D.C. Superior Court.

Of the other defendants, the new indictment said, for the first time, that Enriquez's killing was committed by Manuel "Cholo" Saravia, 31, of Silver Spring; Jose Martinez-Amaya - also known as Crimen or Mecri, 24, of Brentwood; and Noe "Gallo" Machado-Erazo, 28, of Wheaton.

All defendants could face maximum terms of life in prison, and 10 are in in custody, prosecutors said.

Immigrant database failed to detect suspect before rape of young girl

By Tom Jackman

Washington Post Staff Writer

January 27, 2011



Salvador Portillo-Saravia, a member of the MS-13 street gang, was charged with raping an 8-year-old girl at her Fairfax County home last month. But he never should have been in Fairfax in the first place.

Federal officials deported Portillo-Saravia, of Sterling, to El Salvador in 2003, and he sneaked back in illegally. Now, officials are wondering why a much-touted federal program didn't catch him before the rape.

Four weeks before the crime, Portillo-Saravia was in the Loudoun County jail for public intoxication. That's when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program, called Secure Communities, should have identified him as an illegal immigrant and he should have been taken into custody.

Loudoun authorities ran Portillo-Saravia's fingerprints through a federal database, but despite the 2003 deportation, nothing was found. He was released after 12 hours behind bars.

Portillo-Saravia, 29, is now the subject of a manhunt by local police and federal marshals.

Officials involved with Secure Communities and immigration experts said the incident points to confusion about how the program should work and to gaps in the immigration database. Many people who were deported before 2005, including Portillo-Saravia, are not in the fingerprint database, ICE officials said.

Jail officials in Virginia and Maryland who have relied on the program said they were not aware of the gap in the database.

"I was under the impression that everybody they had contact with was in the system," Henrico County Sheriff Michael L. Wade said.

"Secure Communities is a very good program, but it's not a magic solution and shouldn't be sold that way," said Jessica Vaughan, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that advocates tighter immigration controls. "This is why you do go after low-level offenders, because it can turn out they are a threat to public safety."

Secure Communities was rolled out in October 2008 amid much fanfare as a way to transform immigration enforcement, ICE officials said then. Jails would fingerprint all arrestees, not just those suspected of being in the country illegally. Those prints would run through FBI and Department of Homeland Security databases, and ICE would flag immigration offenders for possible deportation.

But it didn't work in Portillo-Saravia's case.

Loudoun jail deputies submitted Portillo-Saravia's fingerprints on Nov. 21 and received a "no match" message. Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for ICE, said Loudoun then should have done a manual record check or contacted ICE if the person was "foreign-born and of concern to local law enforcement."

Loudoun Sheriff Stephen Simpson was frustrated by Hale's response. Simpson said that ICE advertised the program as a way to electronically check all people arrested as soon as they are fingerprinted, eliminating the need for additional investigation.

"Nobody's ever heard of calling for a manual check," he said. "The point of the program was it replaced the need to do what they now say we should have done."

He added, "We did everything we were supposed to do."

… Said Mary Lou McDonough, director of the Prince George's County jail: "We process about 25,000 people a year. There's no way I'm going to second guess" a "no match" result. "They either have a federal detainer or they don't. If they don't, they go."

Even though Portillo-Saravia had been deported, ICE officials said he wasn't in their IDENT database, which has fingerprint and biometric data for more than 91 million people. Fingerprints before 2005 were taken the old-fashioned way, by rolling ink-stained fingertips on a card, ICE said, so deportees removed before 2005 may not be in the electronic system.

From 2001 to 2005, the United States deported more than 751,000 people, according to ICE statistics. ICE officials do not know how many of those people were fingerprinted manually and are not in the database.

Hale said that, as a result of the Portillo-Saravia case, ICE will send a reminder to all program participants that they should consider taking extra steps, such as requesting a manual records check or contacting ICE directly, if they receive a "no match" message but still suspect an immigration violation….

Secure Communities is used by 986 jurisdictions in 38 states, including every jail in Virginia and the jails in Prince George's, Frederick, Queen Anne, St. Mary's and Anne Arundel counties in Maryland. It is not used in jails in the District. By 2013, ICE hopes to have the technology hooked up in jails nationwide, with the intent of detaining and deporting illegal immigrants convicted of crimes.

In slightly more than two years, jails nationwide have submitted 5.5 million sets of fingerprints through Secure Communities, resulting in the deportation of more than 58,000 people, according to ICE statistics.

The program remains controversial, with some law enforcement officials saying that the prospect of deportation discourages immigrants from cooperating with police or reporting crime.

Arlington is trying to remove itself from the program - Virginia State Police signed up the entire state in 2009 - because officials think it threatens public safety by promoting distrust between police and the immigrant community, the county's board declared in a resolution last fall.

Secure Communities overcame the concerns of some sheriffs, such as Simpson and Barry, by allowing checks of every arrestee, to avoid racial-profiling accusations. If an illegal immigrant was arrested for a serious crime, had a conviction or a pending detainer, or had been deported, ICE would notify the jail to hold him for pickup by immigration authorities when he was due to be released.

ICE said Portillo-Saravia illegally entered the country in 2000. He was deported in October 2003 after what ICE called an encounter with the Prince William police gang unit. It is not known when he reentered the country, but reentry is a federal offense.

When Portillo-Saravia was arrested Nov. 21 on a public intoxication charge, Simpson said his department sent Portillo-Saravia's fingerprints to the ICE database.

"We never heard anything from them," he said. "By law, if we don't have anything to hold them on, then away they go. We didn't know any more about him than he was arrested. We had no reason to believe he was a gang member. There was no other reason for him to be on our radar screen. Why it didn't hit, I don't have a clue."

On Dec. 26, Portillo-Saravia was visiting a home on Cardigan Square in Centreville with a friend. Fairfax police said Portillo-Saravia's friend was dating a woman who lived there. The woman has an 8-year-old daughter.

Fairfax Detective Darrin DeCoster said Portillo-Saravia went to the girl's room and sexually assaulted her at 10:30 a.m., while other people were in the house. No one heard the attack, but the girl reported it to her mother that day, and "we do have evidence to support that allegation," DeCoster said.

Vaughan, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the case "illustrates a number of the pros and cons of the Secure Communities program," such as that "ICE has not been giving the local users of Secure Communities enough information on how they should handle these 'no matches' when they happen. Leadership in that [ICE] office acts like it's apologetic, pandering, instead of getting out and using it more actively."

Michele Waslin, a senior policy analyst at the Immigration Policy Center, which has raised concerns about Secure Communities, said it was "ridiculous" for ICE to say Loudoun should have done further checks on Portillo-Saravia. "The fact is they did everything right, but he didn't appear."

Waslin added, "This is what they're pushing as the answer to everything. Clearly it's not. That's why it's important for police to have good relations with their communities, so people share information with them, maybe tell them who's not here legally. But if you're scaring everybody in the community, because they're afraid you're going to deport them, you're not going to get that information."

Police Forum Recommends Limitations on Investigating Immigration Status

By Michele Waslin, Immigration Policy Center

March 9, 2011



The role of local police in immigration enforcement continues to be a complex[pic] policy and legislative issue at both the state[pic] and federal level. State legislatures, for example, are contemplating bills designed to increase the role of local police in immigration enforcement while federal legislation targets cities with so-called “sanctuary policies.”[pic] And as programs like 287(g)[pic], Secure Communities and other federal/local partnerships continue to expand, local police are now more involved in identifying undocumented immigrants than ever before. Many law enforcement officers[pic], however, find that enforcing federal immigration law may interfere with their ability to prevent crime and keep neighborhoods safe, so they have designed tailored local policies to ensure that they maintain the best possible relationship with their communities. In a new report[pic] by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), local police speak out on the difficulties of enforcing immigration laws and talk about best practices for navigating immigration issues in the future.

In Police and Immigration: How Chiefs are Leading their Communities through the Challenge[pic], (PERF) looks at several case studies (New Haven, CT; Prince William County, VA[pic]; Montgomery County, MD; Minneapolis, MN; and various law enforcement agencies in Phoenix, AZ) to show how police efforts to engage with immigrant communities makes cities safer.

Each of these cities works with ICE in one way or another to aid in immigration enforcement. However, these cities have worked with local police on policies regarding the way police enforce federal immigration laws, i.e. when police officers can question arrestees about immigration status, when cops contact ICE, and how witnesses and victims of crime are treated. While each of the policies is different, each one was developed over time with input from various stakeholders and was custom-made to serve the best interests of the local community.

However, federal, state, and local policymakers continue to impose policies and responsibilities on local police without getting their input. In the interest of looking tough on illegal immigration, some policymakers continue to claim that these localities are giving “sanctuary” to unauthorized immigrants and to criminals, and seek to undermine all of the hard work and thought put into designing their community policing policies.

At the same time, ICE continues to expand the Secure Communities program,[pic] forcing local police to send fingerprints to DHS to be matched against immigration databases. When there’s a hit, local jails are asked to hold those individuals that ICE is interested in, at the expense of local taxpayers. While the police aren’t deputized agents making arrests for immigration violations, the effect on the community can be the same—immigrants fearful of reporting crimes to the police, endangering everyone. DHS is not giving local police jurisdictions the ability to opt out of Secure Communities[pic], even if the locality determines it is in its own best interest to do so.

PERF’s report offers many excellent recommendations[pic] for ensuring that federal agencies consult with state and local police as they craft immigration policies—not just impose something on them after the fact. They also recommend ICE increase coordination with and responsiveness to local police agencies and be more engaged and active in explaining their policies and actions to local communities. Furthermore, the role and authority of local police needs to be more clearly defined by the federal government.

As for the police, PERF recommends officers be prohibited from arresting or detaining persons just to investigate their immigration status. Police must uphold Constitutional and civil rights, and protect crime victims and witnesses regardless of their immigration status. Similar to their recommendations for ICE, local police must engage their communities in dialogue about their policies and programs, educate their communities about their authority and actions, and develop clear, written policies and procedures regarding the handling of unauthorized immigrants.

Enacting these recommendations would go a long way toward ensuring that police and policymakers are on the same page, and that the best interest of the entire community is front-and-center in the immigration debate.

[FYI, Police Forum Report link ]

[Also, see “Secure Communities” overview by ICE, below]

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)



Secure Communities Program

[pic]

Through the Secure Communities strategy, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) improves public safety every day by transforming the way criminal aliens are identified and removed from the United States. This strategy leverages an existing information sharing capability between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to quickly and accurately identify aliens who are arrested for a crime and booked into local law enforcement custody. With this capability, the fingerprints of everyone arrested and booked are not only checked against FBI criminal history records, but they are also checked against DHS immigration records. If fingerprints match DHS records, ICE determines if immigration enforcement action is required, considering the immigration status of the alien, the severity of the crime and the alien's criminal history. Secure Communities also helps ICE maximize and prioritize its resources to ensure that the right people, processes and infrastructure are in place to accommodate the increased number of criminal aliens being identified and removed.

Secure Communities modernizes the identification and removal processes by:

• Using fingerprint-based biometric identification technology,

• Prioritizing resources toward the greatest threats, and

• Sharing information between law enforcement partners

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