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Flushing Them Out

Continued from page 6

Published on December 27, 2007

On a local level, very few individual cases have made it to trial. The County Attorney's Office would not confirm how many cases have gone before a jury, but a press release from the office names only one jury conviction. Juan Barragan-Cierra was arrested in June 2006 along with three other men and indicted on charges of human smuggling, for smuggling himself into the state. A jury found him guilty, and in December 2006, he was sentenced to two years unsupervised probation and ordered not to remain in the United States illegally. His lawyer, public defender Carissa Jakobe, is appealing the case.

At least one judge has ruled the convictions don't hold up.

In the case of Adolfo Guzman-Garcia, who was convicted by a jury, Judge Timothy O'Toole dismissed the charges after the trial.

Guzman-Garcia was arrested in May 2006 along with 10 others and charged with attempting to smuggle himself into the state. Those with whom he was arrested pleaded guilty and were deported, but Guzman-Garcia posted bond (this was before Proposition 100 was passed) and stayed to fight the case. Though a jury found him guilty of the charges, O'Toole chose to acquit him.

"Evidence showed that the defendant was nothing more than a paying passenger . . . the conspiracy statute does not impose criminal liability on a person who is merely being transported by an alien smuggler for profit or commercial purpose . . . there must be substantial evidence that the person being smuggled also agreed . . . to engage in the offense of human smuggling," he wrote in his ruling.

Antonio Bustamante, a Phoenix lawyer who is working with Schey on the class action lawsuit, says the county attorney knows the best way to ensure a high conviction rate is to push the plea bargains.

"They can't win their cases, so they're taking convictions on the cheap by keeping people incarcerated. You're going to sit there until you cry uncle," he says. "Thomas has no integrity and, to me, is not even a man because of what he's doing. Anyone would rather get out of jail than wait months. That's cowardly, that's not justice and that's not the American way."


Immigrants in drop houses are not the only people in danger. Once they enter the community, they deal with the constant fear of discovery. Getting undocumented immigrants to talk about life in Maricopa County is difficult. They are instinctively distrustful of strangers. When you can be arrested at any moment, you have to be careful whom you invite into your life.

That doesn't mean the undocumented don't have anything to say for themselves. After Alfredo Gutierrez mentioned on his radio program that this story was being written, he received calls during the rest of the day from people who wanted to talk about life without a green card. Most people did not want to say their names or meet in person. Even when a respected Hispanic leader tells immigrants whom they can trust, they don't want to take the chance.

Daniela, the mother of five whose oldest child was almost stolen by a coyote, is one of the few immigrants contacted by New Times brave enough to speak candidly about her fears.

She lives down the street from a known drug dealer, which puts her children in a potentially dangerous situation every day.

"I know where they are selling and I know their name, but I am not going to say nothing. First, when the police come they could have the right to ask me about my situation. I don't know what's going to happen after," she says. "Second, I am afraid about the drug dealers. He [Arpaio] is supposed to fight with those persons, not with me."

But undocumented immigrants like Daniela are exactly whom he wants to fight. One hundred sixty of his deputies and jail officers have been cross-trained as immigration officers, a program known as 287-g after the section of the national Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of 1996 that makes this legal.

The program is intended for local law enforcement to go after known violent, criminals — human smugglers for example — and, if they are undocumented, initiate removal proceedings without waiting on ICE.

In theory, the 287-g training that the Sheriff's Office signed up for is designed to catch people like the drug dealer down the street from Daniela and the coyotes who brutalized the people in the drop house in El Mirage — people who are known criminals. Arizona is not the only state with this funding and training available, nor was it the first to get it. Twelve states have officers cross-trained under the program. But Maricopa County has the more 287-g officers than any other county or state.

Linda Chavez, of the conservative think tank Center for Equal Opportunity, says it's a good program when used sensibly.

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