illegal alien gets 17 years for, stabbing, suffocating, and throwing her anchor baby in the garbage

STAMFORD -- A South End mother who worked for low wages to pay back the transporter who brought her to the United States illegally acted out of desperation last year when she wrapped her newborn son in a plastic bag, later stabbed him and left his body in a trash bin, a judge said in state Superior Court on Tuesday.

"This is a woman who's working at slave wages, sending the proceeds of that effort back to her home country to support her very ill child," Judge Richard Comerford Jr. said as Angelina Sarmiento, 26, formerly of 207 Henry St., Stamford, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of the her newborn. "This is a woman who truly loved her children."

While the prosecutor, Senior Assistant State's Attorney James Bernardi, public defender Howard Ehring and Comerford reiterated several times that the killing was not justified, they pointed to what Bernardi called the twilight status of illegal immigrants as mitigating circumstances that called for reduction of a murder charge. The murder statute requires that the defendant did not act under extreme emotional distress, Comerford said.

In exchange for pleading guilty, Sarmiento is to be sentenced to 17 years in prison Dec. 11. She whispered, "Culpable," the Spanish term for guilty, when asked to plea, and she cried through the statements given by the attorneys.

Bernardi said Sarmiento ultimately admitted to police that she had given birth on her toilet Oct. 29. She told police that her husband, Hermando Sarmiento, came here illegally several years before, and she had followed him.

While her husband was able to pay off the transporter relatively quickly, she struggled to meet the demands while cleaning houses through a company in Stamford for 55 hours to 65 hours a week, earning about $350, less than the federal minimum wage.

Additionally, her attorney, Ehring, said Sarmiento struggled to send money home to a daughter, who is about 12 years old and needs dialysis.

Afraid to go to a doctor for birth control because of her immigration status, Sarmiento purchased through the black market birth control she had used successfully in Honduras, Bernardi and Ehring said. She was surprised to learn she was pregnant. When she discovered the pregnancy, she thought she was six months pregnant, but was in her final month, Ehring said.

She was also afraid to seek care once she discovered the pregnancy, he said.

Sarmiento told police she believed her husband would not want the additional financial burden of a new child, Bernardi said.

Police responded Oct. 30 to a report of a dead infant in a garbage bin near the Henry Street apartment, but did not immediately find the child known in court as Baby Boy Sarmiento. They did find and speak to Sarmiento in the apartment she and Hermando Sarmiento shared with another couple. At first she denied that anything had happened, Bernardi said.

A medical examiner determined that the baby was born alive, and "upon birth had cried and attempted to breathe," Bernardi said. The cause of death was asphyxiation.

Ehring said in April that the two sides were working on a resolution, but shortly thereafter, Bernardi requested DNA tests to make sure Hermando Sarmiento was the baby's father and rule out other possible motives. The case was delayed while both sides awaited the results of the test. Psychiatrists also have been examining Sarmiento for psychological conditions, including postpartum psychosis, Ehring has said.

Hermando Sarmiento returned to Honduras but has since had an accident, leaving him a paraplegic, Ehring said. The family can no longer afford the dialysis for the 12-year-old daughter, he said.

Comerford praised the attorneys involved in the case, and said they understood "the great sin of grinding poverty and the desperation of a woman who found herself in the position this woman did."

Source - http://www.newcanaannewsonline.com/default/article/Stamford-woman-pleads-guilty-in-newborn-s-death-138910.php

Texas - Police: illegal alien brothers video taped sexual assault

WACO - Two men are in the McLennan County Jail on nearly $1,000,000 bond each after police said they assaulted a young boy almost daily for the last several years.

Police say brothers 42-year-old Henry Andres Cortez and 38-year-old Jose Olivera sexually assaulted a young boy and took turns video taping the assault.

According to arrest affidavits obtained by News Channel 25, the attacks took place almost every day for the past several years.

Cortez is charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child and continuous sexual abuse; he is being held on $1,000,000 bond.

Olivera is also charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child and continuous sexual assault. He is jail in lieu of $950,000 bond.

An immigration hold has been placed on both men, meaning neither will be released from custody.

http://www.kxxv.com/global/story.asp?s=11183969

Illegal alien charged with assault on federal officer

An illegal immigrant accused of trying to run over a Border Patrol agent has been charged with assault on a federal law enforcement officer, according to federal court records.

Armando Terriquez Zarate, who was shot during the confrontation on Sept. 16, was also charged Monday with human smuggling, court records showed.

According to an FBI investigation, Zarate borrowed a pickup truck and drove to Monument Road in the Tijuana River Valley to pick up a man and a woman who paid about $3,000 each to be sneaked into the United States.

The pair set off a sensor at the border and agents detained the pair. Zarate sped toward a Border Patrol agent and the agent and his partner opened fire when Zarate refused orders to stop, the FBI said.

Zarate was chased to the nearby neighborhood of Nestor, where he was arrested and taken to a hospital for treatment of a gunshot wound.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/sep/22/bn22bpshoot-man-charged/?metro&zIndex=170413

Private company plans to build a private prison for illegal aliens in Adelanto

ADELANTO • A private prison operator has plans to build a 2,200-bed detention center that holds illegal immigrants on 51 acres near two other local prisons.

City Council will decide on Wednesday whether to approve the GEO Group Inc.’s development plan and conditional use permit to construct a new correctional facility on the northeast corner of Raccoon Avenue and Rancho Road.

But the proposed facility also hinges on GEO Group winning a federal contract from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Adelanto City Manager Jim Hart.

Earlier this year the Department of Homeland Security posted a notice saying it would be looking for contractors to construct a possible detention center that can hold up to 2,200 illegal immigrants and others suspected of violating immigration laws. The notice said the center should be located within 120 miles of downtown Los Angeles and privately owned and operated.

However the official request for proposals for the new ICE center has not yet been issued, according to ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice, while the agency undergoes a comprehensive overhaul of its detention system.

http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/adelanto-14600-prison-private.html

Video - Illegal Alien Kills Policeman

Religious leaders seek healthcare for illegal aliens

Calling access to healthcare a moral and spiritual imperative, Los Angeles faith leaders held a religious service and launched a phone bank Friday to urge congressional leaders to include illegal immigrants in any healthcare reform plan.

The question of whether illegal immigrants should have access to a government-sponsored health insurance marketplace has provoked heated debate and criticism of President Obama’s proposals from both the left and right. Obama’s position that his plans do not include illegal immigrants has been attacked as dishonest by some conservatives and as a betrayal by some liberals.

“If we were politicians, this would be definitely political suicide to come out for healthcare reform for those who are undocumented,” said Father Roland Lozano, pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church, known as La Placita, near Olvera Street. “But we’re doing it because we believe ... it’s what God wants us to do.”

Father Richard Estrada, who heads an immigrant services organization known as Jovenes Inc., said inclusion of all immigrants was consistent with biblical teachings that all people are children of God who must care for society’s most vulnerable.

And the Rev. Will Wauters, vicar of the Church of the Epiphany, an Episcopal church in Lincoln Heights, said inclusion of all immigrants would benefit the proposed health insurance marketplace by expanding it with those who numerous studies have shown are younger and healthier than native-born Americans.

According to a July 2009 study in the American Journal of Public Health, even immigrants with health insurance use less medical care than U.S.-born citizens and are less likely to suffer from arthritis, diabetes, coronary heart disease and other chronic health conditions.

The Roman Catholic Church, the nation’s largest religious denomination with 67 million members, considers healthcare a basic human right, a position the church has articulated since 1963, when it was included in a papal encyclical by Pope John XXIII. As a result, the church believes that illegal immigrants should be included in any healthcare reform plan, according to Kathy Saile, director of domestic social development with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“If healthcare is a basic right, you can’t start cutting people out,” she said.

But some religious conservatives disagree. Richard Land, who heads the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, said biblical exhortations to care for the poor apply to people of faith, not to governments, and should inspire private charitable efforts but not taxpayer-funded plans for illegal immigrants.

“It’s noble and commendable to be charitable with your own money, but it’s something different to be charitable with other people’s money,” he said.

At La Placita on Friday, more than 150 worshipers attended a Mass of “reconciliation and hope” for an all-inclusive healthcare reform plan. Later, parishioners were asked to call their elected officials to ask that all immigrants be granted access to health insurance.

For Josephina Dedoy, a 58-year-old Mexico native and legal U.S. resident, the debate is intensely personal. She and her husband, a naturalized U.S. citizen, have a daughter who has epilepsy and is undocumented, having been born in Mexico before her parents earned legal status.

Dedoy said the family had insurance coverage until recently, when her husband was laid off after 17 years as a painter and designer. The family looked into private health plans but found them unaffordable at nearly $1,000 a month.

Now, Dedoy said, she is anxious over how they will pay for their daughter’s medical care. But as Obama supporters, Dedoy said, she believes the president will support people like them.

“We’re waiting for the mercy of the government for those in need like us,” she said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/09/religious-leaders-seek-healthcare-for-illegal-immigrants.html

Health care HR 3200 costs $31 billion to cover 6.6 million illegal aliens

Over the long weekend the country was busy talking about the President´s speech to school children and the resignation of Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, but the folks at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) were putting the finishing touches on a new report.

If the current bills floating around Washington D.C. garner a signature from President Obama, the taxpayers could see $31 billion of their money to provide health care for more than 6.6 million in this country illegally.

While HR 3200 states illegal immigrants can not receive benefits, every time amendments are put forward to ensure enforcement – they are voted out leaving many loopholes.

The following is a summary of what CIS found regarding health care bill HR 3200.

In 2007, there were an estimated 6.6 million illegal immigrants without health insurance who had incomes below 400 percent of poverty, which is the income ceiling for the new affordability premium credits.

If all uninsured illegal immigrants with incomes below 400 percent of poverty received the new credits, the estimated cost to the federal government would be $30.5 billion annually.

The current cost of treating uninsured illegal immigrants at all levels of government is an estimated $4.3 billion a year, primarily at emergency rooms and free clinics.

On July 16 an amendment by Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) that would have required the use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program to prevent illegal immigrants from receiving the affordability credits was defeated by the House Ways and Means Committee.

At present 71 other means-tested federal programs require use of the SAVE system to prevent illegal immigrants and other ineligible non-citizens from accessing them.

Even though there is no mechanism to prevent enrollment, it is likely that many income-eligible illegal immigrants would not enroll out of fear or lack of knowledge of the new programs. Thus the actual costs would be less than the maximum estimate of $30.5 billion. However, if illegal immigrants are legalized and could receive affordability credits, a much larger percentage would be expected to enroll, with a corresponding increase in costs.

Uninsured illegal immigrants tend to use less in health care on average than others without health insurance because they tend to be young. This fact is incorporated into the current cost estimate of $4.3 billion. However, government-provided affordability credits paid to insurance companies are the same for everyone regardless of age or preexisting conditions. Therefore, the younger age of illegals does not result in lower average costs for taxpayers for this program.

It is also worth noting that the report estimates that 38 percent of illegal immigrants had health insurance in 2007. Additionally, the report estimates that there are at least 360,000 uninsured illegal immigrants with incomes above 400 percent of poverty who would not qualify for benefits under H.R. 3200.

It is also possible that illegal immigrants could benefit from the expansion of Medicaid under H.R. 3200. The bill does not require identity verification for those claiming U.S. birth. Of illegal immigrants with incomes under 400 percent of poverty, about half live under 133 percent of poverty, which is the new ceiling for Medicaid eligibility.

On July 30 an amendment by Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) that would have required identity variation for those claiming U.S. birth was defeated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

CIS used March of 2008 Current Population Survey collected by the Census Bureau to determine the number of illegal immigrants in the United States.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/118206

26-year-old illegal alien gets 24 years in prison for kidnapping and two counts of rape

CLEVELAND — Elvis Torres, 26, of Archwood Avenue, was sentenced last week by Judge John O'Donnell to 24 years in prison for raping a 28-year-old woman April 4 in a bar in the 3800 block of Denison Avenue.

He pleaded guilty to kidnapping and two counts of rape and may be deported to Mexico after he's released, or serve five years of probation and have to register his home and work addresses with a sheriff's office every 90 days for life.

The maximum sentence for the three felony offenses is 30 years in prison.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/09/cuyahoga_county_jailelvis_cone.html

I was replaced by an illegal alien

Source - http://balooscartoonblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/illegal-alien-cartoon.html