Hourly Update

Migrants say arrests hurting families financially

PHOENIX - The five men knew their two-day walk across the Arizona desert could end with the Border Patrol swiftly returning them to Mexico. But they never imagined that they would be stuck in a county jail for more than three months under a novel interpretation of an Arizona immigrant smuggling law that allows the customers of human traffickers to be charged as conspirators to the crime. They said their plan to earn a better living working construction and landscaping jobs in the United States backfired and that their incarceration has caused their families to suffer financially. "We didn't come to conspire," said Juan Carlos Gutierrez, who wanted to earn enough money so he could open a boot-making business back in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. "We came to work." The five, among the first 48 people charged as conspirators under the new law, told The Associated Press in exclusive jailhouse interviews conducted in Spanish that they knew they weren't supposed to sneak across the border, but that people shouldn't blame them for trying to improve life for their families. Of the more than 250 people arrested in Maricopa County under the 10-month-old law, most are illegal immigrants who are accused of paying smugglers to bring them across the border. A fraction of those arrested were accused of working as smugglers. Immigration analysts said it's rare for local police agencies to jail immigrants for having crossed the border illegally, though many immigrants have been arrested for crimes unrelated to immigration. Supporters said the conspiracy prosecutions were necessary to hold the customers of smugglers accountable because the federal government hasn't done enough to fulfill its responsibility to enforce immigration laws. The charges were brought under an interpretation of the law by the top prosecutor in Maricopa County, who said in a legal opinion that, under Arizona law, people may be charged with an offense if there is evidence that they solicited someone to commit the offense. Maricopa County is the only county in the state where the law is being applied in this way. Critics said the approach was overreaching, potentially expensive and that the law was never intended for that use. The law's authors have said they intended it to be used to prosecute smugglers, not the immigrants being smuggled. Before the first 48 rank-and-file immigrants were arrested in early March, they crossed into the country near the western Arizona border city of San Luis, carrying jugs of water for their trek. They came from places throughout Mexico and intended to find work or join family members already living in the country. Most were headed to California, though a few were going to Oregon, Utah, South Carolina and Wisconsin. Several said they were piled like sacks into two vans that picked them up for the second leg of their trip. Even after they were pulled over by a sheriff's deputy about 50 miles west of Phoenix, they figured it wouldn't be long until they were allowed to return home. "I thought the sheriff was going to turn us over to the Border Patrol," said Jorge Saavedra, a construction worker who planned to meet his wife and two U.S.-born children in California. Mexicans caught trying to cross the border frequently bypass formal deportation proceedings and are returned to their country within a day or two. Immigrant advocates said the 48 might have fared better had they been picked up by federal authorities, because they probably would have stood less chance of being charged Both civil and criminal federal law prohibit sneaking into the country. But the federal government usually uses civil actions against illegal border-crossers, immigration law experts said, saving its limited criminal prosecution resources for more serious crimes. "For the most part, people who make it across the border are home free, but that doesn't mean if the law is enforced that it's unfair," said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors limiting immigration. Mehlman said he was unmoved by the argument by immigrant advocates that the only crime that the vast majority of illegal immigrants commit is crossing the border to do right by their families. "The motivation for most crimes is economic," Mehlman said. Tanya Broder, an attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, a nonprofit group that aims to protect the rights of low-income immigrants, said it's not productive to lock up immigrants who want to improve their lot and are contributing to the economy. "You have kids and moms who don't have the benefit of having a parent in a home, economically or emotionally," said Broder, whose employer isn't involved in defending the 48 immigrants. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who sought the prosecutor's opinion on the legality of arresting the customers of smugglers, rejects arguments that enforcing the smuggling law would be too expensive, given the tens of thousands of immigrants who try to sneak into Arizona each year. "I don't even want to hear that there's not room (to jail them)," said Arpaio, the state's only police boss to arrest immigrants as conspirators. "That's a cop-out. That's a way to ease out of this. That's what the federal government is saying." The five inmates said they were getting used to living in a cell block and aren't afraid of the 100 other inmates. But they said they worried about their families, because they haven't been able to provide for them for more than three months and don't know when their cases will be resolved. Antonio Hernandez, who left his home in the northern Mexican state of Sonora with plans to join relatives in California and work as a landscaper, said his first two attempts to sneak into the United States ended with the Border Patrol sending him back to Mexico. The need to earn higher wages in the United States drove him to try again, Hernandez said. "I just came to give my children a better life," Hernandez said. "It's more difficult in Mexico. Here, you have a chance to give your kids something more."