Such was the case in early July, Alamance County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeff Randleman learned, when he drove past Marxavi Angel Martinez’s house trailer at Cedar Creek Mobile Home Park and spotted three vehicles registered to the Graham Public Library employee. The deputy, who was cross-sworn as a task force officer of US Immigration and Law Enforcement, had already learned that Martinez’s Social Security number belonged to a dead person, and later through a search of county property records he was to learn that the woman paid taxes on four vehicles.
“How she acquired the Social Security number, I really don’t know,” said Jose Alegria, a 28-year-old Wake Forest University researcher who emigrated with his parents from Mexico to North Carolina in 1994. “Somewhere, here in Alamance County, someone sells them the card. In Marxavi’s case, no one knew that the owner of the card had been dead for a number of years.” Randy Jones, the spokesman for the sheriff’s office said the cardholder died in the 1940s and lived “somewhere out west.” Alegria, a naturalized citizen, wears rectangular glasses, an eyebrow ring and sometimes an Obama sticker. His parents still live in Burlington, and he describes the city with a touch of melancholy as “home.” Beyond his paid job of conducting field research on HIV/ AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, he works as a volunteer organizer for an unnamed local coalition seeking to absorb some of the shock of the county’s aggressive campaign to make life uncomfortable for the undocumented residents who live in the community’s legal shadows. “It’s just me and my kitty cats late at night,” he said. “We have a lot of time to spare.”
Alegria tried to help Martinez, a graduate of Cummings High School with above-average marks, get into college. That didn’t work out because she was undocumented. Martinez came with her parents on travel visas as a 3 year-old in the late 1980s. The visas expired, and the family became illegal. Despite her inability to continue her education, she landed a job at the Graham Public Library in 2006 with the help of a false Social Security number. That event turned out to be both the source of her trouble and the means by which she made her contribution to society.
She went to work part-time, earning $13,800 a year. The county government that employed her withheld federal and state taxes for Social Security and Medicare — programs whose benefits she likely will not enjoy.
The tip about Martinez’s use of a fraudulent Social Security number on her I-9 employment form came to Sheriff Terry Johnson.
“I received information from a confidential and a very reliable source that a county employee had used the Social Security card of another person to gain employment,” Johnson said. “I was eating supper at a local restaurant, and an individual came up to me and said, ‘I understand there is an investigation going on. You should know that there is an individual at the county who is using a false Social Security number.’ He didn’t give her name.” The air in Alamance County has been thick with allegations of illegals breaking the rules, and taking jobs and benefits from good, law-abiding citizens.
“The theory is that the media reports about the health department investigation brought the tipster forward,” Jones said. “We receive tips all the time because of things that come out in the media.”
By the time Martinez was arrested at the library a State Bureau of Investigation probe into maternal health services provided to undocumented women by the county health department was in full swing. The county’s partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to screen pre-trial detainees for immigration violations and set them on a path for deportation was well into its second year. Dark suspicions first raised in 2004 about illegals registering to vote in the course of receiving public assistance had been resurrected in a new presidential election year. The health department’s medical director had fought a pitched battle with the help of the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill to avoid turning over client names. That effort was short-circuited when the board’s chair and a Republican county commissioner seeking reelection brought concerns to the county manager, who in turn enlisted the Republican sheriff to request a state criminal investigation.
Jones said only one employee of the sheriff’s office, Major Tim Britt, had access to the state investigation of the health department and that he did not disclose any patient medical records. Martinez’s supporters remain skeptical.
“She did receive maternal health care from the health department,” Alegria said. “That could be another thing that started the whole investigation. The health department records said that she was a Mexican citizen, while the library application said that she was a US citizen.”
Alamance County residents who have rallied around Martinez contend that even the appearance of confidential patient information being leaked from the health department could have the effect of discouraging undocumented residents from seeking prenatal care to deliver healthy babies or treatment for infectious diseases and other conditions that pose a public health risk. The event immediately preceding Alamance County’s summer of anti-immigrant hysteria was prompted by a complaint from a victim of identity theft, not by the apprehension of criminal aliens identified through the 287(g) program or through evidence of illegals taking advantage of public health services to which they were not entitled.
The sheriff’s office received a call on May 2 from Veronica Arias, a resident of Cameron County, Texas on the Mexican border, who complained that her identity had been stolen. The perpetrator, Maria Sanchez, was later among those whose medical records were subpoenaed by the State Bureau of Investigation during its health department probe. State investigators learned that the woman received a note from health
department staff in Arias’ name indicating to her employer that she was
ready to go back to work after giving birth to her child.
The
sheriff’s office would determine that Sanchez used Arias’ Social
Security number and name to obtain employment at Honda Power Equipment,
a Japanese-owned manufacturing company in Swepsonville.
Sanchez
was charged with identity theft by the sheriff’s office on May 6 and
transferred into the custody of ICE for deportation a month later.
Three
days after Sanchez’s arrest, Dr. Shapley-Quinn, medical director for
the health department, met with Assistant County Attorney Clyde
Albright to discuss the legal implications of county health providers
using aliases in work notes written to employers on behalf of clients.
It
was at the end of the workweek, and Albright recalls that Shapley-Quinn
insisted on meeting first thing in the morning so she could see him
before he left for court at 8:30 a.m. Shapley-Quinn thanked Albright in
an electronic message later that day. “I’m looking forward to a clear
policy on how we should best deal with the complexities of people using
multiple names,” she wrote. “That will really help us all.” “You are
welcome,” Albright replied. “I think we will come up with a solution.”
An audience that included many sympathetic to undocumented residents packed an Alamance County courtroom on Aug. 18 to hear a presentation concerning a State Bureau of Investigation probe of the county health department’s use of aliases in work notes written for women receiving maternal health services.
It
would be another month before Shapley- Quinn heard from Albright again,
and on May 18 the medical director turned to Jill D. Moore, a professor
at the Institute of Government at UNC- Chapel Hill. “Can you give us
guidance on, from a legal perspective, if we put ourselves at risk by
writing work notes for a patient in a name other than what they have on
their [health department chart]?” Shapley-Quinn asked. “E.g. a patient
comes in at 4 weeks postpartum and wants to return to work. Her
employer needs a note to let her return to work. Patient requests we
put down a different name than on our chart. Can we do it?”
Shapley-Quinn added that administrators had discussed having health
department employees write work notes, but allowing the patients to
write their own names on the forms.
Moore advised that using
only a patient’s work name was risky, but not necessarily a violation
of the law. The health department would be on more solid ground, she
said, if instead it used only the patient’s employee ID number, only
the patient’s “real” name, or both the name listed on medical charts
and the patient’s alias.
By then, Keith Whited, a local lawyer
who chairs the board of health, was on Shapley- Quinn’s case to turn
over medical records disclosing clients’ identities.
“If there is a note, list, book, writing, or other data collection where one of
our
employees is gathering information that identifies our patients by more
than one name or identification device (whether called a black book or
not), then I would like a copy,” Whited wrote in a May 23 message.
Shapley-Quinn
told Whited she did not see any language in the federal medical privacy
law known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act,
or HIPAA, allowing the health department to release patient medical
information to a board member.
Whited remained insistent. “I
am still waiting to see the particular record that we discussed last
week,” he wrote to Kathy Brooks, the department’s HIPAA privacy
officer, on June 3. “That is, the log or record that apparently is not
kept in the individual patient’s medical chart, which aligns alias
names with real names.”
The next day Shapley-Quinn turned
again to the assistant county attorney for help. “Hello Clyde,” she
wrote. “I’m wondering if you can help resolve a question about
releasing information.
The
chair of our board of health (Mr. Keith Whited) is asking for protected
health information to be released to him on one of our clients.
According to what I have learned from the public health attorney at the
Institute of Government, that information cannot be released to him
under our agency HIPPA guidelines (because board members are not listed
as covered agents in our ACHD HIPPA policy.)” Albright’s response was
encouraging.
“Dear Dr., I have prepared a data use agreement
based on these HIPPA regulations,” he said. “I’ll have it completed
soon.” “Thanks so much!” Shapley-Quinn said. “You are welcome!”
Albright wrote back. “This is fun stuff!” Albright told YES! Weekly he
provided no legal advice to Shapley-Quinn after their initial meeting
in early May. Major Britt of the sheriff’s office would later disclose
that the State Bureau of Investigation initiated its probe of the
health department at the request of Sheriff Johnson after Whited and
Commissioner William Lashley brought concerns to Albright’s boss, David
Smith, who serves as the county’s manager, attorney and clerk.
The
investigation concerned whether Shapley-Quinn and nurse Karen Saxer
knowingly and willingly falsified patient medical records.
“On
more than one occasion nurse Karen Saxer at the direction of Dr.
Shapley-Quinn prepared or made health related employer work notes for
patients under alias names,” Britt would later tell county
commissioners, “knowing that the names on the documents were in fact
not the birth name or the legal name of the patient.”
The health department investigation and two high-profile
arrests
would bring unwelcome attention to one of Johnson’s signature
initiatives, the 287(g) partnership between the county, its sheriff’s
office and the US Immigration Customs and Enforcement agency, or ICE. A
memorandum of agreement finalized in January 2007 gives the sheriff’s
office the authority to interrogate any person believed to not be a
citizen about her right to remain in the United States, and to initiate
deportation proceedings.
“We were seeing a disproportionate
number of Hispanics arrested on state charges and as repeat offenders,”
Johnson said in a recent interview at the sheriff’s office. “Our belief
is that we were dealing with some recidivists.
We were finding
some people who were deportable.” He added that after 90 days the
county jail’s immigration detention population dropped from 100 to 120
down to around 30 per day. The sheriff said crime in Alamance County
dramatically declined in 2007, noting that while he has no proof that
287(g) caused the drop the department made no other major changes that
would account for the change.
The sheriff’s office interviewed
52 inmates about their immigration status last month. Thirty-one were
processed for deportation. Of those, only two had been arrested for
felonies. Judging by their charges few of them might be classified as
dangerous criminals: Five were arrested for driving while intoxicated,
one for drugs, two for sex crimes, two for assault, three for fraud and
13 for traffic offenses.
“There’s no big difference,” said
Jones, the public information officer. “It’s pretty well representative
of what you see in the overall community.”
Alegria said the
ethnicity of those detained and processed for removal under 287(g) and
the fact that the vast majority of them were picked up for misdemeanors
is proof that the program is profiling Hispanics.
Johnson
adamantly denied that his sheriff’s office engages in ethnic profiling.
He cited a study requested by Sen. Ellie Kinnaird (D-Orange) comparing
Alamance County with the state as a whole by the number of Hispanics
arrested. The sheriff said the statistics surprised Tony Queen, who
conducted the study.
“He was totally amazed that we weren’t
arresting as many illegals as the other counties,” Johnson said. Jones
interjected: “I would say,
‘Hispanics,’ Sheriff, not ‘illegals.’”
Later during an interview the public information officer displayed a similar confusion, raising the question of whether deputies patrolling the Interstate 85 and the county’s highways differentiate between Hispanics and undocumented residents.
“The number of Hispanics arrested at any given time is eight percent,” Jones said. “We’ve been told that the number of illegal immigrants in the county is ten percent. So the numbers are already out of whack.”
Days before the health department investigation began, residents got a vivid picture of the 287(g) at work, when Deputy M. Herron stopped 26-year-old Maria Chavira Ventura on Interstate 85 near Mebane at 1:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning as she was traveling with her two children and an adult companion at the start of a trip to see her husband in New Jersey. Her citation indicates she was traveling 5 mph over the speed limit.
The deputy arrested her after running her tag and determining that it belonged to another vehicle. That the children were left unattended in the car is not in dispute, but accounts vary as to why that happened. The adult passenger reportedly fled after Ventura was taken to jail. “The deputy said that Maria said through her child that it would be best for the children to stay
with
the other adult,” Alegria said. “The two children stayed there
overnight until the father came down from New Jersey to see about the
kids the next morning.” Ventura has been turned over to immigration
authorities and faces deportation.
The incident would put
Sheriff Johnson on the defensive at a pair of county commission
meetings in August. “I did go through your handbook, your policies and
procedures book,” Democratic Commissioner Ann Vaughan told the sheriff
at a commission meeting held in court chambers with capacity attendance
on Aug. 18. “I could not find anything about leaving anyone is a
vehicle while someone is being taken in. I saw where the deputy has to
secure the vehicle, secure the contents… make sure everyone is safe,
but it doesn’t talk about people.”
Sheriff Johnson complained
that people intent on disrupting the 287(g) program had deliberately
spread misinformation about the incident. He said the sheriff’s
office’s hands were tied legally, contending, “Unless there’s neglect
and abuse, I can’t take that child.”
“But if you leave the
child, isn’t that abuse and neglect?” Vaughan asked. “What’s gonna
happen?” Johnson shot back. “I’m gonna drag them children into my car.
What are the newspapers going to say?” First- and second-generation
immigrants at the county commission meeting voiced raw displeasure at
the arrests and probes. Joining them were clergy members and faculty
from Elon University. One of the immigrants was Heiderose Kober, who
lives across the Orange County line in Efland and came to North
Carolina from Germany in 1973. “I did not graduate from a North
Carolina high school like that young woman did,” she said in reference
to Martinez, the library employee arrested in July. “I did not grow up
saying the Pledge of Allegiance like that young woman did. The
difference is I am white, and I am coming from a preferred country.
“Every
wave of immigration has been met with the same myths: ‘They bring
diseases; they take our jobs; they are all criminals,’” she continued.
“It is dangerous for them here, but the danger to our democracy, the
danger to our
freedom,
the danger to our sense of being a good human being is far greater. I
want to look in the mirror and see a good person. There is a saying,
‘Many laws but little justice,’ that applies here. Our laws must honor
our heritage as a nation of immigrants and our shared humanity.”
Marilyn
Tyler remembers Martinez as a 12-year-old girl coming to the Alamance
County Library in Burlington, where Tyler went to work in the mid-1990s
after retiring as a teacher. That Martinez would later land almost the
same job left an impression. Tyler has had spirited discussions with
Commissioner Tim Sutton, an ardent proponent of rooting out immigration
fraud, and she concedes one point to him. She recalled Sutton telling
her: “You’re only making a big deal about this because she worked at
the library. What if she worked at McDonalds?” “I and others who have
raised a commotion about this, we’re not going to let it go,” Tyler
said. “When it was people who were nameless and faceless, we didn’t say
anything. This woman wasn’t.
She waited on people; she had
friends and family that we knew. I’m sorry it took this to happen when
apparently it’s been going on for years.”
Martinez’s husband
and her parents also face deportation. Alegria said the former library
employee is still waiting to learn from ICE when her hearing will take
place. Martinez’s one hope for leniency is the fact that her child is a
citizen by virtue of being born on US soil. “It’s been my experience
that the immigration judge may say, ‘You have two options: Take the
child with you, or leave it behind with someone else.’” Alegria said.
“What parent in her right mind is going to leave a child behind?’”
While Martinez, Sanchez and other women who received maternal health
services through the health department were sent on a path to
deportation because of their fraudulent use of Social Security numbers,
state investigators could find nothing wrong with county employees
providing services to them without verifying their legal residency.
Britt
told the county commissioners on Aug. 18 that federal prosecutors had
declined to try the two health department employees, adding that only
hours earlier Alamance County District Attorney Rob Johnson had taken a pass also. Britt noted that none of
five clients identified as “persons of interest” received federal
Medicaid benefits in violation of the law because the cost of their
care was absorbed by the county’s maternal health budget line. The
State Bureau of Investigation also addressed the potential for voter
fraud by undocumented immigrants who might become registered to vote in
the process of receiving public assistance.
Cathy Holland,
director of elections, was present to answer the commissioners’
question. As she noted, it’s a felony for a non-citizen to attempt to
register to vote. “Mr. Britt and I had a conversation with the general
counsel at the State Board of Elections, and it’s been their, I guess,
position, if you will, that a person who is not in the country legally,
is trying to fly under the radar,” she said. “They’re not going to do
things to present themselves in a manner that would bet themselves
caught. So I don’t think, in our personal opinions in the election
field, that that is an issue.”
Sheriff Johnson made an
emotional address to the commissioners. “Are we providing services and
assistance to all the Alamance County citizens in need?” he asked. “Or
are those persons taking away from elderly, taxpaying citizens and our
needy children? …. Think of the enhanced services that could be helped
with the taxpayers’ dollars that are being diverted and consumed in the
illegal population.”
He did not acknowledge that undocumented
immigrants like Martinez and Sanchez working in the county under false
Social Security numbers also paid taxes. And he expressed defiance to
those who characterize his enforcement practices as unnecessary and
inhumane.
“What has happened to our country, our state and our
county when a government employee cannot report a felony crime?” he
asked of those who question why he could not have overlooked Martinez’s
offense. “This is absurd and goes against the very moral fiber that our
country was founded upon, the nation of laws. And it is a great nation.
Yet some in our government wants me and other officials here in our
nation to turn our back on violations of the law. I’m gonna tell you
something: I will not do it, I have not done it, and I’m not gonna do
it. If you want to come here illegally and live in this country, do not
violate any laws.” The following night, the board of health — Chairman
Whited and Commissioner Lashley included — met with health department
staff at the county building on Highway 87 north of the shuttered
Western Electric plant on the outskirts of Graham. Cattycorner to the
county building sets Taqueria Karla, a white brick building with blue
trim, a neon “open” sign and a prominent menu posted on the outside
wall. “When I came here thirty years ago, this was a very stable
community — I grew up in the Midwest — a stable community that had the
same people with the same stores,” said Tyler, the former teacher and
librarian. “They think this is the way things should be. Then in the
nineties Hispanics started coming and putting up signs in Spanish
on
the stores. I see it in my neighborhood. I find it interesting. Some
people find it frightening. I think a couple of the commissioners spent
their whole life here. They don’t like change. Change hurts. I suspect
they wouldn’t like any change. Latinos are just one visible evidence of
change.”
A health department administrator distributed a draft
“service eligibility policy” to the board members. It states that “all
forms of correspondence completed on behalf of the client (i.e. work
notes, disability forms, etc.) will include both the name under which
they are registered and the alias name.” The Board members decided to
review it and consider it for approval at their next full meeting in
October.
Dennis Harrington,
the deputy state public health director, was on hand to support his
friend, Health Director Barry Bass. Harrington reminded the board
members of the department’s mandate.
“Our patient in the public health department is the community,” he says.
“You
see individual clients in clinics. Ultimately, the community is the
patient of the health department. Whether it’s your son, your daughter,
nephew, niece, whoever, they all go to Wal-Mart, they all go to school.
Whatever clinical service, if the individual presents himself and it’s
Barry Bass, or Barry Bass presents himself as Dennis Harrington — he’s
got my ID, you know — it doesn’t really matter.
If I need an
immunization, if I need treatment for an STD, if I need a prenatal
visit, if I need family planning, it really doesn’t matter what you are
or who you call yourself.”
“I ask you to talk to your
neighbors and friends and people at church,” he continued. “If they
feel strongly about your health department not serving a certain group,
just go back to them and say, ‘That group, whoever they are, they’re in
our community. If they’re in our community, they’re having contact with
our children, our grandchildren. Or a pregnant woman, God forbid, that
got exposed to measles.’”
Then he told them they ignore their mandate at the peril of losing federal and state funding.
“And
that big fat document I put together and send out to y’all every year
that says, ‘Here’s your consolidated agreement,’ the first thirty pages
is all the federal requirements from about sixty nine grant sources
that we receive,” he said. “And it condenses everything into one
document, so you don’t have to sign it so many times you get carpal
tunnel syndrome. You sign the consolidated agreement so you say, ‘If I
take these federal and state funds I agree to comply with the
requirements.’”
Then he quipped, “I can’t tell you how proud I
am that we can send you forty eight thousand more dollars. I done
killed myself lobbying for that money.”
Chairman Keith Whited
was ready to let go. “In this case we can prove that there is no
criminal conduct because the highest legal authority in the county has
said there is no criminal conduct,” he said. “In that regard we have
finished what we started.
We can rest assured that no other
agency can complain that we have somehow fallen short. If there’s
anything else out there I’d like to see it too, but I suspect it’s a
fairly complete investigation.”
Not William Lashley, the Republican commissioner seeking reelection.
He
called the disposition of the SBI investigation a “cover-up,” later
citing an unnamed SBI investigator as his source for information
indicating that health department employees switched billing for
services to undocumented residents from federal Medicaid funding to
local funding streams.
“There are e-mails between Dr. Shapley-
Quinn and the nurses saying, ‘This doesn’t qualify for Medicaid, so we
should charge it to local funds,’” he said after the meeting. “It
relays to me that there’s a problem with the people doing things that
should be prosecuted . They elected to cover it up.” The NC Justice
Department, which oversees the State Bureau of Investigation, disputes
Lashley’s assertion that a state investigator shared information with
the commissioner.
“I checked with the SBI agents who were
involved in this investigation and specifically the
special-agent-in-charge,” said Jennifer Canada, a spokeswoman for the department, “and none of the agents
said they had spoken with this particular county commissioner.” Randy
Jones, the public information officer for the sheriff’s office, said
Britt, the only person in his agency with access to the State Bureau of
Investigation information, told him he had no conversations or contact
with Lashley. The county commissioner did not return multiple calls
seeking clarification.
As for the changes wrought on Alamance
County by immigration — the browning of the county, the
Spanish-language signs, the profusion of Latin food options — the
commissioner was the first to say that he has nothing against
Hispanics.
Before retiring from Burlington Engineering he
traveled around the world setting up textile plants. Some of his
fondest memories come from his visit to the state of Quertaro, north
of Mexico City. “There are no better people on the earth,” he said. “The best people I’ve ever worked with are in Mexico. They accept you and treat you like family.”
To comment on this story, e-mail Jordan Green at jordan@yesweekly.com.
Troy
