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A NIGHTMARE ON KROME STREET
Christina Madraso, a 35-year-old Mexican transexual, claimed that an immigration officer raped her on two occasions when she was a detainee at Krome Detention Center in Sept. 2000. Madraso said she was further humiliated when officers touched her breast implants and followed her to the bathroom to gawk. "I felt that Miami was more safe for people like us," Madraso told reporters during an interview, describing how her hope of being accepted as a transsexual in Miami quickly turned into a nightmare. "Just thinking about it makes me sad, makes me wonder what I did wrong to the system." Detention guard Lemar Andre Smith pleaded guilty to the rape charges and was sentenced to serve 16 months in prison. (ImmigrationNewsman.com)
Immigration Newsman file photos
ARCHBISHOP SAYS 'THANK GOD!'
Catholic Archbishop Patrick Flores holds a copy of the San Antonio Express-News with the headline "Thank God!," following a news conference on June 29, 2000. Flores shared the details of his being held hostage at a San Antonio church building for nine-hours. Flores said a man who held him hostage threatened to kill them both by detonating a grenade if the priest didn't help him with his immigration trouble. The suspect was identified as Nelson Antonio Escolero, 40, an El Salvador native also known as Carlos Cruz. Police said Escolero was upset over his possible deportation for driving with a suspended license. The standoff ended after authorities faxed to Escolero immigration status papers he had requested. He then allowed Flores to go free, placed the grenade-like device on a table and walked out. He was arrested without a struggle, handcuffed and taken to police headquarters. He was charged with aggravated assault, unlawful restraint, terroristic threat and possession of a prohibited weapon. (ImmigrationNewsman.com)
NO FAIRY TALE ENDING FOR PRINCESS
Their immigration life provided the basis for a made-for-television movie, "The Princess and the Marine." But after five years of marriage, the fairy tale went flat. Bahraini Princess Mariam Al Khalifa created a stir after she eloped to the U.S. with an American soldier, Pfc. Jason Johnson. They are shown here holding hands as they arrive for her political asylum hearing in July 2000. Al-Khalifa is one of five daughters of Sheik Abdullah bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa, a distant relative of Bahrain's king, Sheik Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa.They met at a mall and fell in love, though he was a Mormon and she was a Muslim, forbidden to marry a non-Muslim. Her family ordered an end to the romance, but the soldier sneaked her into the U.S. He was court-martialed, then demoted and discharged from the Marines because of the "Romeo and Juliet" love affair. They married in Las Vegas in 1999 when he was 23 and she was 19. They filed for divorce on Nov. 17, 2004, the day after their fifth wedding anniversary. (ImmigrationNewsman.com)
SAY AHHHHHH!
Along with tending to travellers with emergency tooth ailments, Dr. Robert Trager, the dentist at John F. Kennedy airport, has an unusual responsibility. Immigration officials call on him to perform dental and bone X-rays to determine an immigrant's age, which can be critical to his or her effort to gain entry into the United States. Thus hundreds of Chinese, Somalis, Sri Lankans, Albanians, Hondurans and others who claim on travel documents to be under 18 years old have filed through Trager's office in recent years. The use of x-rays to determine age — they measure growth of wisdom teeth and whether the radius and ulna bones have fused in the wrist — is hotly contested. Adults have narrower
Suspects net $1 million in one of biggest immigration flimflams
By Ricardo Gonzalez
SANTA ANA — Federal officials said that they uncovered one of the nation's biggest immigration scams involving allegedly phony political asylum claims.
The Los Angeles County businesses filed about 3,700 asylum applications since 1995, netting them more than $1 million. All the applications, which claimed the immigrants faced threats and possible violence in Mexico because of affiliations to major political parties there, were rejected, officials said.
Immigrants who paid about $500 apiece were told they were getting work permits, but weren't told they were filing for political asylum, officials said. It appears to be one of the largest such schemes uncovered, said Kathryn Terry, an immigration law professor at Western State University in Fullerton.
It's unlikely that immigrants got work permits, officials said, but they do face deportation. The allegedly false applications contained their names, addresses, phone numbers and pictures.
“That's the sad thing about this kind of scam. The aliens are duped,” Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said. “In many cases, they lose their money and may end up losing their immigration cases.”
With very few exceptions, political asylum claims by Mexicans are denied by U.S. officials, who don't believe that political persecution is widespread in Mexico.
A 25-year-old Los Angeles woman pleaded guilty Monday in Santa Ana to federal mail fraud in connection with the case, said Assistant U.S. Attorney David Lavine.
More arrests are expected. Julia P. Spratley was one of several workers tied to the Centro de Immigracion Hispano in Bell and D&X Immigration Services in Los Angeles, Lavine said. Officials began to suspect a scam after noticing similarities between dozens of asylum applications filed by the two Los Angeles County businesses.
“It's because of the sheer desperation Mexicans feel because there's no legitimate way for them to get legal,” Terry said. “They're desperate to get work permits.”
— Wire services contributed to this story. It was first published on Nov. 5, 1999 in the weekly Immigration Newsman.
UNDER INVESTIGATION:
Centro de Inmigracion Hispano
(Bell, California )
D&X Immigration Services
(Los Angeles, California )
FACT:
With very few exceptions, political asylum claims by Mexicans are denied by immigration officials, who don't believe that political persecution is widespread in Mexico.
ODDLY ENOUGH
Compiled from wire services by Steve Lau
Immigration authorities grant political asylum in female circumcision case
AN APPEALS COURT in New York has ruled in favor of a Ghanaian woman fighting deportation on the grounds that she feared female circumcision if she returned home.
The court said the fears of the woman, Adelaide Abankwah, aged 29, were grounded in reality, and she should be granted asylum in the United States. Miss Abankwah, who was chosen through heredity as the queen mother of her tribe in Ghana, fled after being threatened with genital circumcision because she had sex with a boyfriend and refused to undergo an arranged marriage.
The court said although female circumcision had been outlawed for five years in Ghana, the number of prosecutions of those who carried it out had been insignificant.
The court heard there had been only seven arrests for the crime since 1994.
The ruling reverses a decision by the immigration courts that Miss Abankwah was not eligible for asylum. Abankwah has been held in detention since she arrived in the United States in March 1997. After her mother died in 1996, Abankwah was chosen by tribe elders to become the next queen mother.
However, she turned down the position and refused to perform rituals intended to determine if she was a virgin or enter into an arranged marriage. She fled Ghana when genital circumcision was threatened as a punishment.
Man launches petition drive to halt deportation
PHILL BRENTOR needs a chorus. For months, he's been a lone voice protesting his imminent deportation.
Now, the Englishman is asking the public for its support. Recently, he decided to “hit the streets” with petitions. He wants 3,000 signatures of people who support his effort to stay in the United States. He plans to submit the signatures to the offices of top politicians in hopes that they can persuade immigration authorities to let him and his four children remain in the United States.
Brentor came to the U.S. last year to live with a woman he met on the Internet. The relationship soured a few months ago and he and his children are living at a homeless shelter in Jackson, Florida.
Because he did not enter the country on a work visa, he's unable to earn money while he's here and is dependent on charity to get by.
“We're existing, that's all,” he said. “We can't afford to do anything. Even food is hard to come by.” He and the children have been illegal immigrants since their three-month tourist visa expired last year. At the time, he planned to marry his Internet sweetheart once their divorces were final. He did not think he needed a more long-term visa.
However, immigration authorities have caught up with him and told him he will be deported.
Deported by mistake, U.S. citizen dies of heart attack
THOMAS SYLVAIN, the U.S.-born young man who was mistakenly deported to Haiti for several months before immigration officials brought him home, has died of cardiac arrest at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida.
He was unable to recover from the serious deterioration of his health that occurred during his months in Haiti. Since his return, he had been on life support in Jackson 's critical care ward.
Doctors here have not been able to pinpoint exactly the cause of his illness, but physicians at a private hospital in Haiti had diagnosed him with AIDS.
“They couldn't bring him back,'' said Sylvain's younger brother, Andy. “His blood pressure dropped and they couldn't do anything more.”
Sylvain was 20 years old.
Immigration officials said Sylvain was deported based on claims he made that he was a Haitian citizen while in Miami-Dade County Jail and at Krome. He also swore under oath that he was a Haitian citizen before an immigration judge, officials said. His birth certificate and his U.S. passports had been altered, they contended.
Sylvain, however, had asserted on several occasions before his deportation that he was a U.S. citizen. He wrote several notes to fellow inmates that began, ‘'I am a U.S. citizen,'' then signed them, ‘'Thomas Sylvain, American.'' He also told an attorney, who says she told immigration authorities.
Following a story in several newspapers about the deportation, members of Congress and activists prodded officials to do an investigation. Immigration authorities finally concluded that he was a citizen and brought him back to Miami.
Lawyer loses immigration case on car — not in court
MANY PEOPLE have left something on the roof of a car and driven off without it.
But when an immigration agent lost a case file that way recently, it was more than embarrassing. It cost her a trial.
U.S. District Judge G. Kendall Sharp told prosecutors that they could proceed with the trial or drop the charges. Without the evidence, they could not continue.
“Obviously, we were ready to go to trial, but we couldn't do it because the agent made a mistake,” said Deputy Managing Attorney Ralph Hopkins of the U.S. Attorney's Office. “Everyone is human and everyone makes mistakes.”
Charges cannot be refiled against Lilla Headley, 57, an Orlando teachers aide. She was indicted earlier this year on charges of passport fraud and submitting a false birth certificate.
“She was obviously overjoyed,” said her attorney, H. Manuel Hernandez. “It's one of the few cases where I believe God had a hand in helping her.”
This article was first published on Nov. 5, 1999 in the weekly Immigration Newsman.
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