Mexican gets jail for illegal re-entry & Border agents arrest 50 immigrants on labor buses (Spanish language tv in DC is saying it was 150 not 50)
Mexican gets jail for illegal re-entry
Published: Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2004
CONCORD (AP) – A federal judge sentenced a 36-year-old Mexican national to two years in prison Tuesday for illegally re-entering the country after being deported.
U.S. Attorney Tom Colantuono said Eduardo Garcia-Cecenas was arrested in March when he tried to register a car in Mexican Voter Identification Card.
Garcia-Cecenas had received a 25-year suspended sentence and was deported to Mexico after he was convicted of a drug-related offense in Iowa in 1996.
Federal authorities said he would be deported again once he serves his prison term.
Border agents arrest 50 immigrants on labor buses
Associated Press
Dec. 21, 2004 12:15 PM
YUMA – The U.S. Border Patrol arrested about 50 illegal immigrants who were riding labor buses into Arizona.
The immigrants were traveling Monday in four buses as they tried to avoid checkpoints along U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 8, said Michael Nicely, chief agent of the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector.
More than 50 people on the labor buses, which bring workers to local agriculture fields, had no immigration documentation, he said.
“We’re going to follow up to determine what labor companies they worked for and what growers they worked for,” said Nicely.
None of the workers had counterfeit or altered identification.
Nicely said the arrests are proof that illegal immigrants are being hired to work in fields, a claim that the California-based Western Growers Association denied in late November when it protested Border Patrol enforcement during harvest season.