“They’re real good neighbors,” said George Ruffin, who rents a house from Curl Rentals next door. “They loved to work. They ain’t dangerous; they just as calm as a tick.” Then, he clarified, “Well, a tick will bother you, but you get my point,” adding that one of the older men in the household had become a regular churchgoer.
Ruffin seemed unsurprised to learn that Negrota had been arrested for shoplifting. “The little one, he used to walk through the backyard and take all this stuff in,” he said. It was not Negrota’s first brush with the law. He had been arrested on Jan. 17 for stealing cologne from Kohl’s, and was released on the same day on a written promise to appear. Despite the fact that his first appearance was scheduled for a day in March, the courts issued an order for arrest against Negrota in February.
Within a week of Negrota’s arrest in April, he would be in federal custody. Court records show that Negrota’s bond was set at $500, an amount higher than recommended for his offense, for the extraordinary reason that the defendant could produce no identification. Before he was booked in the Guilford County Jail in Greensboro, the Guilford County Sheriffs Office submitted an Immigration Alien Query to ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center. An immigration judge in Charlotte had ordered Negrota’s deportation in March, and the next morning an ICE official from Charlotte faxed an immigration detainer to the sheriff’s office ordering them to hold him for 48 hours, not counting the weekend, to allow the feds time to take custody of the young man. “It clearly violates the intent of Congress,” said Marty Rosenbluth, an immigration lawyer from Hillsborough who represents clients across the state.
“Congress has clearly said that these cooperative agreements between local law enforcement and ICE are supposed to target dangerous felons.”
A US Government Accountability Office released in January faulted ICE for using the controversial 287(g) program “to process individuals for minor crimes, such as speeding, contrary to the objective of the program.” The report also noted that “ICE officials stated that the objective of the program is to address serious crime, such as narcotics smuggling committed by removable aliens; however, ICE has not documented this objective in program materials.
Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes has acknowledged that his office, which does not hold a 287(g) agreement with ICE, checks the immigration status of all detainees who cannot confirm their identity through valid legal documents, exceeding the requirements of North Carolina’s legal status of prisoners law, which went into effect in 2008. Rosenbluth called Barnes’ policy “voluntary and arbitrary.”
Negrota appeared before Judge Patrice Hinnant in an orange jail-issued jumpsuit by video teleconference on the same day the detainer was issued against him. The prosecutor said ICE had a detainer for Negrota, and the judge certified Negrota’s charges, bond amount and his next scheduled appearance.
“He had an immigration hold, and we rescheduled his case
for May 1,” said Wheaton Casey, who heads pre-trial services for
Guilford County Courts. “It was minor charges, so we try to move those
cases pretty fast.” At Negrota’s May 1 trial, another judge sentenced
him to time served for one misdemeanor larceny charge, and the District
Attorney’s office dismissed a second misdemeanor larceny charge and the
misdemeanor shoplifting charge.
“It was, ‘Judge, we don’t
object to time served because we are informed that he has a detainer
from ICE on him,’” Assistant District Attorney Tom Carruthers recalled.
“The only thing the state could do is keep him in jail longer
and then turn him over to ICE.” The sheriff’s office notified ICE after
the trial that Negrota’s state charges had been disposed on May 1, a
Friday, and the following Monday, the defendant was handed over to the
feds. “When we’re finished with him in Guilford County we have to
notify them,” said Maj. Debora Montgomery, court services bureau
commander for the sheriff’s office. “They acknowledge that they’ve
received notice, and that’s when the 48 hours begins.”
Because
of overcrowded conditions in Guilford County detention facilities,
Chief Deputy Randy Powers said Guilford County Sheriff’s Office holds
federal prisoners for only five days. The next stop for deportees from
the county is often the Alamance County Jail, which is under contract
with ICE to hold federal detainees. An agency spokesman confirmed on
Monday that Negrota was being held at the Stewart Detention Center, an
ICE facility in south Georgia administered by Corrections Corporation
of America, a publicly held company with shares on the New York Stock
Exchange.
ICE has issued 24 immigration detainers against
detainees awaiting trial in Guilford County in the past 30 days, and
taken custody of at least 10, according to information provided by the
sheriff’s office.
The records indicate that almost 80 percent
of the 50 detainees in custody as of May 15 and flagged for deportation
by ICE face felony charges, including trafficking cocaine, assault by
strangulation and statutory rape. Nine detainees, or 18.4 percent of
the total, were being held for misdemeanors, including failure to
appear in court and public intoxication. One man, 31-yearold Armando
Quintero Fernandez of Thomasville, was arrested by the High Point
Police Department for driving while license revoked, a traffic offense.
“Very few people would argue that a murderer or drug
trafficker, if they’re in the US illegally, should be released back
into the community and not deported after they have completed their
sentence,” Rosenbluth said. That’s the purpose of 287(g) and a related
program called Secure Communities, he said, adding, “This wasn’t
intended to cover people who are arrested for misdemeanor shoplifting.”
The vast majority of the detainees are men ranging in age from
18 to 48, almost half of whom were initially arrested by the Greensboro
Police Department. About a third were picked up by the Guilford County
Sheriff’s Office, and more than a fifth were ensnared by the High Point
Police Department. One, 30-year-old Misael Garcia Espindola, was
arrested by the UNCG Police for no operators license and other related
misdemeanors.
The group includes only two women. One of them,
21-year-old Alheli Ramirez Chavez of Greensboro, was arrested by a
Greensboro police officer on April 30 for failure to appear in court
and for resisting, delaying and obstructing an officer, both
misdemeanors.
Most of the detainers issued by ICE against people currently in the custody of the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office are identified as Mexican, but Guatemala, El Salvador and Laos are also represented.
They include 19-year-old William Javier Revas-Rodriguez, arrested for misdemeanor breaking and entering, who faces deportation to El Salvador, and 29-year-old Eleazar Quevado Pena, arrested for public intoxication, who faces deportation to Mexico.
