Mr. Peabody
03-20-2006, 10:26 AM
Jefferson County judge ordering Hispanics to leave state
Sunday, March 19, 2006
JEFF HANSEN, KELLI HEWETT TAYLOR and DAWN KENT
News staff writers
Illegal Hispanic immigrants booked on minor offenses in Hoover last year were often put in jail without bond and ordered to leave the country by Jefferson County District Judge Robert Cahill, who is not an immigration judge.
Hoover officials call their actions good policing. They and Cahill say they have no arrangement to target Hispanics arrested in Hoover, a city coping with its uneasy role as a hub for Hispanic day labor.
But advocates and other legal experts question the practices that elevate misdemeanor cases like jaywalking to include felony charges and deportation.
Last year Jefferson and Shelby counties had at least 48 cases where Hispanics stopped for misdemeanors were found with false identification cards and charged with felony criminal possession of a forged instrument. In 25 of those cases, county district judges ordered that no bond be allowed, which meant defendants could not leave jail. Twenty-three of those 25 no-bond cases were Hispanics arrested by Hoover police.
Twenty-one of the 25 “no bond” orders came from Cahill, who is also a Hoover resident. The judge, a grandson of Italian and Irish immigrants, speaks his mind from the bench and counts police as his biggest supporters.
Cahill says he works hard to be accessible to officers when they ask him for search warrants or no-bond orders. “You don’t sit and play 20 questions when you have developed a rapport with them; if they have a reason, you accept it,” he said.
Beyond the no-bond orders, Cahill took a further step in 11 cases where a Hispanic defendant pleaded guilty in his courtroom - he banished the defendants from Alabama. Nine of the 11 Hispanics that Cahill ordered out of Alabama had been arrested by Hoover police.
Cahill, for example, ordered Leopoldo Chipahua-Gomez, who was 19 and said he worked at the Bottega Italian restaurant, “to leave Alabama and not return,” a Jefferson County court file shows. He ordered J. Carmen Pacheco-Villa, who was 38 and said he worked at the Birmingham Country Club, to “leave Alabama and USA.” And he ordered Gustavo Flores, 32, no occupation listed, to “leave Alabama and go to Mexico.”
Cahill said for years he has ordered defendants, not just Hispanics, to leave a city or leave the state. He said neither lawyers nor defendants have questioned such orders.
“If I can’t, somebody could appeal it,” Cahill said. “If I can’t do it, then someone should tell me I’m wrong.”
‘Unbelievable’
Legal experts say state judges ordering defendants to leave the country is out of the ordinary.
“That’s unbelievable,” said Judge John Hardwicke, when told of the “leave” orders. Hardwicke is executive director of the National Association of Administrative Law Judges, a nonprofit, professional organization of judges and other legal professionals based at the University of Baltimore’s School of Law. “I just don’t see constitutionally how that could be done,” he said. “A state judge has no authority beyond the territory of that state. Those are federal matters, not state matters.”
Others agree.
“The only kind of judges who can order aliens removed from the country are immigration judges,” said Elaine Komis, spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the part of the U.S. Department of Justice that handles immigration cases. In some instances, other federal judges can also become involved in immigrant deportation, she said.
The director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild in Boston, which works on behalf of immigrants, says an Alabama judge enforcing immigration law is as inappropriate as if he were enforcing Mississippi law.
“I’ve never heard of this before,” said Dan Kesselbrenner, of the National Immigration Project. “Most judges realize it’s not their role. Immigration judges decide who can stay and who can go.”
Kesselbrenner said state law doesn’t allow banishment orders, and numerous appeals cases have upheld that position.
Cahill said his own ethnic heritage, as well as his status as the first Republican Catholic elected to office in Jefferson County, makes him extremely sensitive to discrimination.
“You are not going to pick on someone intentionally because they are Hispanic - or Italian or Korean,” Cahill said. “But if they are charged with a crime, you don’t get a pass just because you are not a citizen.”
Spurs lawsuit The practices by Hoover police and Judge Cahill have prompted a class action lawsuit against Cahill, the City of Hoover and Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis.
The lead plaintiff is Anel Mancera-Ramirez, 27, an illegal Hispanic deported in 2005 by federal immigration agents. The cleaning worker was put in jail under a no-bond order from Cahill after she had a fender-bender accident in May. Hoover police found her false U.S. identification after she presented her valid Mexican voter ID.
Unable to understand English, Mancera-Ramirez said she had no idea why an officer handcuffed her.
“When they put them on, I cried,” she said in a telephone interview from Mexico, speaking through an interpreter. “I’d never been arrested. I thought they were taking me to jail for not having a license and the next day I’d be given a ticket for no license and let go.”
Mancera-Ramirez said she spent two days in jail before learning the charges against her in a courtroom hearing.
Her federal class-action lawsuit says her rights under the constitution were violated when police searched her purse without permission, found the forged U.S. identification, and held her without bond.
Mancera-Ramirez, who was held in jail three weeks before pleading guilty, charges that the city unconstitutionally used laws and ordinances to stop, arrest, detain, convict and deport Hispanic immigrants because of their race and ethnic origin.
Derzis declined comment because of the lawsuit.
“We’re not responsible for them getting deported,” Hoover Assistant Police Chief A.C. Roper said. “We just make the arrests.”
Attorney George Huddleston III filed the class action lawsuit. He believes Hoover has worked with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to learn the best ways to take misdemeanors and establish the felonies needed for “no bond” orders and deportation.
“I believe they are cracking down on jaywalkers and those who reject seatbelts because they are cracking down on Hispanics, as the mayor and some of the City Council promised to do before taking office,” he said.
Ellis Bingham III, a Bessemer-based lawyer specializing in criminal immigration law, said Hoover police have long overreacted in immigration cases. The number of no-bond cases has declined since the class action lawsuit was filed, he said.
“That practice was really pushed by the City of Hoover,” Bingham said. “The climate has become a little more relaxed. This Latino community, for a period of about six months, was really stressed out over things like the dragnets set up by Hoover police. They did not want to pursue action because they were petrified.”
A jaywalker, a renter
Hoover police reports show a variety of minor incidents led to arrests of people who were later charged with criminal possession of a forged instrument and then got “no bond” orders from Cahill at the Jefferson County District Criminal Court.
Landscaper Colin Angel Alcantara, for example, was arrested on June 16 for jaywalking in the 3300 block of Lorna Road at 9 a.m. Cahill ordered no bond, but another judge later allowed bond. Alcantara pleaded guilty to the felony charge in circuit court, and he received a two-year suspended sentence.
Nahum Montes Valentin was arrested on May 29 when he walked into the leasing office at the Colonial Grand at the Galleria apartment complex at 3:11 p.m. to rent an apartment. A police officer happened to be inside when Valentin presented a Social Security card, the police report said. Cahill ordered Valentin to “leave Alabama.”
Cesar Garcia and Aguilar Luis Zuniga were stopped for an improper turn on May 30 at 6:55 p.m. Zuniga was the driver and Garcia the passenger. Cahill ordered both to leave Alabama, and also ordered Garcia to “remain in Mexico” and “do not return.”
Edwin R. Perez was arrested around 8:15 a.m. June 2 when someone complained about people stopping cars in the 3300 block of Lorna Road and asking motorists for work. The officer stopped Perez and asked for identification, and Perez presented a California state identification card in the name of Alfonso Lopez. Circuit Judge Teresa Pulliam later allowed bond and Perez pleaded guilty to misdemeanor criminal possession of forged instruments, rather than the original felony charge. His sentence was the time he had already spent in jail.
Oswaldo Rodriguez Alvarado was arrested at 8:43 a.m. Oct. 13 when he was a passenger in the front seat of a car and not wearing a seatbelt. District Judge Sheldon Watkins later allowed bond and Alavarado was given a suspended sentence and two years probation after he pleaded guilty.
Many of the police reports said that the Hispanics who were arrested said they had bought their false identification cards for amounts ranging from $50 to $450. One man said he needed the cards to get work.
Targets of police?
As a son of Greek immigrants, Hoover Mayor Tony Petelos says Greek was his first language. He bristles at the suggestion that Hoover targets Hispanics, though during his campaign, he stressed his interest in working with federal officials to crack down on Hispanic day laborers on Lorna Road.
In 2005, Hoover ended its lease with the Multicultural Resource Center assistance agency, forcing its relocation. The organization allowed Hispanics to gather and solicit work from the center’s parking lot. Hoover council members also passed an ordinance limiting housing and apartment occupancy to two adults per bedroom to address overcrowding. Opponents, including Hoover councilman Mike Natter, said the measures single out Hispanics.
The police do not target any specific group of people, Petelos said. “What matters is whether you’re violating the law.”
Petelos also said there is no arrangement with Cahill to set up a Hoover municipal immigration agency.
The mayor has known the judge for years through his wife, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Teresa Petelos, but said he has not asked for Cahill’s help with Hoover’s Hispanic population. All three are Republicans.
Assistant Chief Roper said Hoover police “have no special arrangement with Judge Cahill beyond a good working relationship with him and various other judges.”
Police sometimes ask a judge for a higher bond amount or no bond, Roper said, and one of the primary factors is whether police can positively identify the defendant.
“If we can’t verify who the defendant is, it’s virtually impossible to have an expectation that that person will show up for court,” he said.
Others say the procedures are inconsistent.
“There are U.S. citizens who don’t have birth certificates and they get bond,” said Kesselbrenner, of the National Immigration Project. “Immigration courts set bond all the time.”
Identity can be established through fingerprints, other documents, or the verification of family members, employers, Kesselbrenner said.
In 2003 and 2004, bonds were allowed in every case of Hispanics charged with criminal possession of forged instruments in Jefferson County’s Birmingham district, where Cahill is judge. In 2005, bonds were allowed in 16 of 40 cases in that district. In four of the cases where Cahill ordered no bond, a different judge later allowed bond.
Cahill said numerous legal channels exist for a client’s attorneys to request bond. “If any attorney is worth his salt, he says, ‘Judge, I want a bond hearing,’” he said.
In other Alabama counties with high Hispanic populations, bonds were allowed for those charged with criminal possession of forged instruments in 2005. They were allowed in all 11 cases in Franklin and DeKalb counties, and in both cases in the Bessemer Cutoff district of Jefferson County.
In Shelby County, bonds were allowed in five out of the six cases in 2005. The single no-bond order was an Hispanic arrested by Hoover police. Hoover lies partly in Shelby County.
What caused the sudden surge of Hispanics arrested with false identification in Hoover last year?
Assistant Chief Roper said it was the result of ICE agents teaching Hoover police how to spot forged documents.
Officers had begun to see more forged documents being presented, Roper said. “This issue is a national problem, but the only difference is our department has decided to do something about it.”
More than 70 officers from the traffic, patrol and investigations divisions had four training sessions with ICE agents in May 2005. Arrests of Hispanics for criminal possession of forged instruments rose sharply after that.
Both Cahill and Watkins said they had heard that ICE agents in North Alabama stepped up efforts in part of 2005 to deport illegal immigrants with false identification.
“I know for a while they were doing it, and then they didn’t have the folks to do it,” Watkins said.
ICE officials declined comment. “Since apparently there is now litigation involved surrounding this issue, we will be unable to provide anything additional until the matter is resolved,” said ICE spokesman Temple Black, who is based in New Orleans.
Watkins said he and Cahill, who holds the same position, have never had a conversation about handling forged document cases.
“He does his court, I do my court,” Watkins said. Though Watkins did order three Hispanics held without bond in 2005, he said he is fair to Hispanics.
“I have hundreds and hundreds of traffic tickets with Hispanics,” Watkins said. “I give them time to pay. I dismiss cases. I’m treating them like any other person, whether they have green cards or not.”
Staff writers Jon Anderson and Kent Faulk contributed to this report.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
JEFF HANSEN, KELLI HEWETT TAYLOR and DAWN KENT
News staff writers
Illegal Hispanic immigrants booked on minor offenses in Hoover last year were often put in jail without bond and ordered to leave the country by Jefferson County District Judge Robert Cahill, who is not an immigration judge.
Hoover officials call their actions good policing. They and Cahill say they have no arrangement to target Hispanics arrested in Hoover, a city coping with its uneasy role as a hub for Hispanic day labor.
But advocates and other legal experts question the practices that elevate misdemeanor cases like jaywalking to include felony charges and deportation.
Last year Jefferson and Shelby counties had at least 48 cases where Hispanics stopped for misdemeanors were found with false identification cards and charged with felony criminal possession of a forged instrument. In 25 of those cases, county district judges ordered that no bond be allowed, which meant defendants could not leave jail. Twenty-three of those 25 no-bond cases were Hispanics arrested by Hoover police.
Twenty-one of the 25 “no bond” orders came from Cahill, who is also a Hoover resident. The judge, a grandson of Italian and Irish immigrants, speaks his mind from the bench and counts police as his biggest supporters.
Cahill says he works hard to be accessible to officers when they ask him for search warrants or no-bond orders. “You don’t sit and play 20 questions when you have developed a rapport with them; if they have a reason, you accept it,” he said.
Beyond the no-bond orders, Cahill took a further step in 11 cases where a Hispanic defendant pleaded guilty in his courtroom - he banished the defendants from Alabama. Nine of the 11 Hispanics that Cahill ordered out of Alabama had been arrested by Hoover police.
Cahill, for example, ordered Leopoldo Chipahua-Gomez, who was 19 and said he worked at the Bottega Italian restaurant, “to leave Alabama and not return,” a Jefferson County court file shows. He ordered J. Carmen Pacheco-Villa, who was 38 and said he worked at the Birmingham Country Club, to “leave Alabama and USA.” And he ordered Gustavo Flores, 32, no occupation listed, to “leave Alabama and go to Mexico.”
Cahill said for years he has ordered defendants, not just Hispanics, to leave a city or leave the state. He said neither lawyers nor defendants have questioned such orders.
“If I can’t, somebody could appeal it,” Cahill said. “If I can’t do it, then someone should tell me I’m wrong.”
‘Unbelievable’
Legal experts say state judges ordering defendants to leave the country is out of the ordinary.
“That’s unbelievable,” said Judge John Hardwicke, when told of the “leave” orders. Hardwicke is executive director of the National Association of Administrative Law Judges, a nonprofit, professional organization of judges and other legal professionals based at the University of Baltimore’s School of Law. “I just don’t see constitutionally how that could be done,” he said. “A state judge has no authority beyond the territory of that state. Those are federal matters, not state matters.”
Others agree.
“The only kind of judges who can order aliens removed from the country are immigration judges,” said Elaine Komis, spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the part of the U.S. Department of Justice that handles immigration cases. In some instances, other federal judges can also become involved in immigrant deportation, she said.
The director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild in Boston, which works on behalf of immigrants, says an Alabama judge enforcing immigration law is as inappropriate as if he were enforcing Mississippi law.
“I’ve never heard of this before,” said Dan Kesselbrenner, of the National Immigration Project. “Most judges realize it’s not their role. Immigration judges decide who can stay and who can go.”
Kesselbrenner said state law doesn’t allow banishment orders, and numerous appeals cases have upheld that position.
Cahill said his own ethnic heritage, as well as his status as the first Republican Catholic elected to office in Jefferson County, makes him extremely sensitive to discrimination.
“You are not going to pick on someone intentionally because they are Hispanic - or Italian or Korean,” Cahill said. “But if they are charged with a crime, you don’t get a pass just because you are not a citizen.”
Spurs lawsuit The practices by Hoover police and Judge Cahill have prompted a class action lawsuit against Cahill, the City of Hoover and Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis.
The lead plaintiff is Anel Mancera-Ramirez, 27, an illegal Hispanic deported in 2005 by federal immigration agents. The cleaning worker was put in jail under a no-bond order from Cahill after she had a fender-bender accident in May. Hoover police found her false U.S. identification after she presented her valid Mexican voter ID.
Unable to understand English, Mancera-Ramirez said she had no idea why an officer handcuffed her.
“When they put them on, I cried,” she said in a telephone interview from Mexico, speaking through an interpreter. “I’d never been arrested. I thought they were taking me to jail for not having a license and the next day I’d be given a ticket for no license and let go.”
Mancera-Ramirez said she spent two days in jail before learning the charges against her in a courtroom hearing.
Her federal class-action lawsuit says her rights under the constitution were violated when police searched her purse without permission, found the forged U.S. identification, and held her without bond.
Mancera-Ramirez, who was held in jail three weeks before pleading guilty, charges that the city unconstitutionally used laws and ordinances to stop, arrest, detain, convict and deport Hispanic immigrants because of their race and ethnic origin.
Derzis declined comment because of the lawsuit.
“We’re not responsible for them getting deported,” Hoover Assistant Police Chief A.C. Roper said. “We just make the arrests.”
Attorney George Huddleston III filed the class action lawsuit. He believes Hoover has worked with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to learn the best ways to take misdemeanors and establish the felonies needed for “no bond” orders and deportation.
“I believe they are cracking down on jaywalkers and those who reject seatbelts because they are cracking down on Hispanics, as the mayor and some of the City Council promised to do before taking office,” he said.
Ellis Bingham III, a Bessemer-based lawyer specializing in criminal immigration law, said Hoover police have long overreacted in immigration cases. The number of no-bond cases has declined since the class action lawsuit was filed, he said.
“That practice was really pushed by the City of Hoover,” Bingham said. “The climate has become a little more relaxed. This Latino community, for a period of about six months, was really stressed out over things like the dragnets set up by Hoover police. They did not want to pursue action because they were petrified.”
A jaywalker, a renter
Hoover police reports show a variety of minor incidents led to arrests of people who were later charged with criminal possession of a forged instrument and then got “no bond” orders from Cahill at the Jefferson County District Criminal Court.
Landscaper Colin Angel Alcantara, for example, was arrested on June 16 for jaywalking in the 3300 block of Lorna Road at 9 a.m. Cahill ordered no bond, but another judge later allowed bond. Alcantara pleaded guilty to the felony charge in circuit court, and he received a two-year suspended sentence.
Nahum Montes Valentin was arrested on May 29 when he walked into the leasing office at the Colonial Grand at the Galleria apartment complex at 3:11 p.m. to rent an apartment. A police officer happened to be inside when Valentin presented a Social Security card, the police report said. Cahill ordered Valentin to “leave Alabama.”
Cesar Garcia and Aguilar Luis Zuniga were stopped for an improper turn on May 30 at 6:55 p.m. Zuniga was the driver and Garcia the passenger. Cahill ordered both to leave Alabama, and also ordered Garcia to “remain in Mexico” and “do not return.”
Edwin R. Perez was arrested around 8:15 a.m. June 2 when someone complained about people stopping cars in the 3300 block of Lorna Road and asking motorists for work. The officer stopped Perez and asked for identification, and Perez presented a California state identification card in the name of Alfonso Lopez. Circuit Judge Teresa Pulliam later allowed bond and Perez pleaded guilty to misdemeanor criminal possession of forged instruments, rather than the original felony charge. His sentence was the time he had already spent in jail.
Oswaldo Rodriguez Alvarado was arrested at 8:43 a.m. Oct. 13 when he was a passenger in the front seat of a car and not wearing a seatbelt. District Judge Sheldon Watkins later allowed bond and Alavarado was given a suspended sentence and two years probation after he pleaded guilty.
Many of the police reports said that the Hispanics who were arrested said they had bought their false identification cards for amounts ranging from $50 to $450. One man said he needed the cards to get work.
Targets of police?
As a son of Greek immigrants, Hoover Mayor Tony Petelos says Greek was his first language. He bristles at the suggestion that Hoover targets Hispanics, though during his campaign, he stressed his interest in working with federal officials to crack down on Hispanic day laborers on Lorna Road.
In 2005, Hoover ended its lease with the Multicultural Resource Center assistance agency, forcing its relocation. The organization allowed Hispanics to gather and solicit work from the center’s parking lot. Hoover council members also passed an ordinance limiting housing and apartment occupancy to two adults per bedroom to address overcrowding. Opponents, including Hoover councilman Mike Natter, said the measures single out Hispanics.
The police do not target any specific group of people, Petelos said. “What matters is whether you’re violating the law.”
Petelos also said there is no arrangement with Cahill to set up a Hoover municipal immigration agency.
The mayor has known the judge for years through his wife, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Teresa Petelos, but said he has not asked for Cahill’s help with Hoover’s Hispanic population. All three are Republicans.
Assistant Chief Roper said Hoover police “have no special arrangement with Judge Cahill beyond a good working relationship with him and various other judges.”
Police sometimes ask a judge for a higher bond amount or no bond, Roper said, and one of the primary factors is whether police can positively identify the defendant.
“If we can’t verify who the defendant is, it’s virtually impossible to have an expectation that that person will show up for court,” he said.
Others say the procedures are inconsistent.
“There are U.S. citizens who don’t have birth certificates and they get bond,” said Kesselbrenner, of the National Immigration Project. “Immigration courts set bond all the time.”
Identity can be established through fingerprints, other documents, or the verification of family members, employers, Kesselbrenner said.
In 2003 and 2004, bonds were allowed in every case of Hispanics charged with criminal possession of forged instruments in Jefferson County’s Birmingham district, where Cahill is judge. In 2005, bonds were allowed in 16 of 40 cases in that district. In four of the cases where Cahill ordered no bond, a different judge later allowed bond.
Cahill said numerous legal channels exist for a client’s attorneys to request bond. “If any attorney is worth his salt, he says, ‘Judge, I want a bond hearing,’” he said.
In other Alabama counties with high Hispanic populations, bonds were allowed for those charged with criminal possession of forged instruments in 2005. They were allowed in all 11 cases in Franklin and DeKalb counties, and in both cases in the Bessemer Cutoff district of Jefferson County.
In Shelby County, bonds were allowed in five out of the six cases in 2005. The single no-bond order was an Hispanic arrested by Hoover police. Hoover lies partly in Shelby County.
What caused the sudden surge of Hispanics arrested with false identification in Hoover last year?
Assistant Chief Roper said it was the result of ICE agents teaching Hoover police how to spot forged documents.
Officers had begun to see more forged documents being presented, Roper said. “This issue is a national problem, but the only difference is our department has decided to do something about it.”
More than 70 officers from the traffic, patrol and investigations divisions had four training sessions with ICE agents in May 2005. Arrests of Hispanics for criminal possession of forged instruments rose sharply after that.
Both Cahill and Watkins said they had heard that ICE agents in North Alabama stepped up efforts in part of 2005 to deport illegal immigrants with false identification.
“I know for a while they were doing it, and then they didn’t have the folks to do it,” Watkins said.
ICE officials declined comment. “Since apparently there is now litigation involved surrounding this issue, we will be unable to provide anything additional until the matter is resolved,” said ICE spokesman Temple Black, who is based in New Orleans.
Watkins said he and Cahill, who holds the same position, have never had a conversation about handling forged document cases.
“He does his court, I do my court,” Watkins said. Though Watkins did order three Hispanics held without bond in 2005, he said he is fair to Hispanics.
“I have hundreds and hundreds of traffic tickets with Hispanics,” Watkins said. “I give them time to pay. I dismiss cases. I’m treating them like any other person, whether they have green cards or not.”
Staff writers Jon Anderson and Kent Faulk contributed to this report.