enforcement

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on the federal government’s challenge of an Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship before allowing someone to register to vote. But most voters think everyone should have to prove their citizenship before being allowed to sign up for voting and don’t believe such a requirement is discriminatory.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 71% of Likely U.S. Voters believe everyone should be required to prove his or her U.S. citizenship before being allowed to register to vote. Twenty-one percent (21%) disagree and oppose such a requirement. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Read more about 71% Favor Proof of Citizenship Before Allowing Voter Registration

A 24-year-old Keizer man will serve 25 years in prison in connection with the 2011 death of his girlfriend’s 4-year-old son.

Marion County Presiding Judge Jamese Rhoades handed down the sentence Tuesday to Gerardo Chavarria, who changed his plea to guilty to charges of manslaughter and two counts of criminal mistreatment of Sebastian Iturbe, waiving his right to a trial.

A jury trial had been scheduled for the first week of April. Chavarria’s convictions will result in his deportation from the United States after he finishes his sentence.

After a change to the indictment, which changed a murder charge to manslaughter, Rhoades asked Chavarria what he did the day of Nov. 5 that made him feel he was guilty of causing Sebastian’s death.

“The day this happened I had just gotten up. I was drinking beer, watching TV with Sebastian,” Chavarria said. “He did something, I don’t remember what, that knocked over the bottle of beer. For whatever reason I got angry, and I hit his head against the floor.”

The gasps of Sebastian’s mother, Erika Iturbe, and her parents rang out in an otherwise quiet courtroom as Chavarria said he pounded the boy’s head against the floor with his hands. Sebastian then became quiet, he said, and he put the boy to bed.

“I got nervous. I didn’t know what to do,” Chavarria said.

He said he took Sebastian to Salem Hospital two to three hours later. The boy was later transferred to Oregon Health and Science University where he died of blunt force trauma to the head Nov. 6, 2011.

According to documents written by Keizer police, Chavarria first told a detective that Sebastian fell and hit his head outside the family’s basement.

Medical staff said the boy’s injuries weren’t consistent with that kind of fall.

According to the statement, Chavarria later said he pushed the boy with a plastic child carrier and saw him fall down the stairs, hitting his head multiple times.

Chavarria recounted two other incidents in court in which he caused injury to Sebastian, including one when he hit the boy with a belt and another when he hit the boy on the shoulder with his sandal.

District Attorney Walt Beglau said that he wanted to bring the case back to Sebastian.

Through organ donations, Beglau said, Sebastian saved three separate lives.

“It’s hard to describe with words what Sebastian’s death has caused on his mother and family who are here today,” he said. “For his family, it’s been loneliness, anger that comes and goes and irrepressible grief.”

Erika Iturbe and her parents were each given an opportunity to speak in court.

“We miss his laugh, his smiles ... I will never get to hear him say ‘I love you Mommy,’ ” Erika Iturbe said to Chavarria, who looked away and hung his head. “I can’t say I forgive you because I don’t. I hate you with all my heart.”

Chavarria refused the opportunity to speak in court, but after the hearing, his attorney Stephen A. Lipton spoke on his behalf.

“He is genuinely remorseful,” Lipton said. “He’s getting a sentence better than what he had the right to expect.”

Before the hearing, Rhoades viewed a home video of Sebastian playing and singing to his sister.

“It’s difficult to talk to you knowing you killed this beautiful little boy,” Rhoades said to Chavarria. “He was a delightful little boy and a beautiful child and now he’s gone.”

As recommended by deputy district attorney Jodie Bureta, Rhoades imposed a 25-year sentence, one she felt was not hard enough.

“Twenty-five years may not be enough, but it is what the court will impose,” Rhoades said.

NOTE:  Gerardo Chavarria - ICE hold
  Read more about Man gets 25 years in child's death

I just returned from Congressman John Lewis’ Faith and Politics Pilgrimage to Alabama and was deeply moved by the experience.

Fifty years ago, courageous Americans stepped out of their comfort zone and confronted an unjust segregation system that not only debased black America but white America as well.

I was struck by the intimate stories of complacency toward an immoral social norm by white businessmen and the church. I was amazed by the bravery of the black youth who saved a foundering downtown economic boycott in Birmingham, despite the water hoses and dogs of Bull Connor. I was entranced by the bravery of two black students willing to face a hate-filled Gov. George Wallace and a thousand others at the college doors in Tuscaloosa. I was overwhelmed with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s epiphany at the kitchen table in Montgomery late one night that he must conquer his fears and do what is morally right. I was in awe of the marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma who knew they faced violent opposition on the other side, but marched and suffered horribly anyway.

Much like then, America now faces another soul-searching moment surrounding an outdated, irrational and dehumanizing immigration system. One hundred years ago, America took all comers to its shores. Now our byzantine immigration system encourages would-be immigrants to put their livelihoods on the line in order to seek the American dream. It makes criminals out of business owners and farmers for hiring folks to do work that no one else will do; work that Americans benefit from and take for granted every day. And it generates an unconscionable trade in human beings and human rights violations that operate in dark shadows, often beyond our legal and law enforcement systems.

The discussion about immigration is not about documented and undocumented immigrants. It is about the very nature of who we are as Americans — our beliefs, our morals and our need to share the unalienable rights our immigrant forefathers bequeathed upon us 238 years ago. The loud lack of acceptance among a vitriolic few diminishes hope in aspiring Americans and undermines the progress we have strived for since our country’s inception. Is this our Christian theology? Are these the values of our Declaration and Constitution? Is this how we raise our children?

Merchants and farmers whisper to me that they need and value their employees as individuals and they are critical to the fabric of a recovering American economy. But these voices must be raised loudly and convincingly in your community, in the papers and with your state and federal representatives. As Dr. King often quoted, “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.”

While individual churches and their charities have exhibited great acts of kindness toward many vulnerable families who have immigrated to our country, the leaders of organized religion must collectively demand an end to an unjust system — a system that separates husbands, wives and children for years; a system where getting to the “back of the line” means waiting 20 years; a system that allows a two-caste system for worker rights in this country.

I am pleased to see young people, particularly in Latino communities, begin to step up like the African-American youth did 50 years ago. Their bravery in stepping up without legislative guarantees and solely on the president’s executive order on the Dream Act is courageous. They captured America’s attention with their votes in this last election. Without Mano y Mano and thousands of youth-oriented groups like it across America, we would not be having the discussion of comprehensive immigration reform today in Congress.

What remains is for Congress to have our own epiphany. To do right no matter the political cost and march across that bridge despite some vehement opposition at home. As Dr. King said in his letter from his Birmingham jail cell, “Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere ... Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.” Read more about Rep. Kurt Schrader: Faith, politics and immigration reform

Three individuals were arrested in Keizer on Wednesday following a long-term methamphetamine distribution investigation.

Keizer Police Department detectives working with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Salem-Area Task Force along with agents from the Oregon Department of Justice served search warrants at the Platinum Spa Auto Detail on River Road N and at the location at Lana Avenue NE as well as a residence at 5270 Woodwind Court N.

Investigators arrested Samuel Diaz-Zermeno, Cesar Leon-Barbosa and Jesus Leon-Barbosa on charges including unlawful delivery of methamphetamine and unlawful possession of methamphetamine.

The investigation started in 2010 when Keizer police detectives got information that Cesar Leon-Barbosa, who owns Platinum Spa Auto Detail, was selling methamphetamine from his business locations with help of his brother Jesus Leon-Barbosa.

Officials said Diaz-Zermeno was contacted as part of this investigation on Wednesday and was found with one pound of methamphetamine.

Investigators recovered more than one and one half pound of methamphetamine, about one and a half ounces of cocaine as well as scales and more than $67,000 in cash.

The street value for the controlled substances is about $25,000.

The three individuals were booked into the Marion County Corrections Facility.

Officials said the investigation is still on-going and additional charges and additional arrests are expected.
 

ICE HOLD - Samuel Diaz-Zermeno, Cesar Leon-Barbosa and Jesus Leon-Barbosa Read more about Meth investigation leads to three arrests in Keizer

A Stockton man was arrested Monday for allegedly carrying 4.5 pounds of methamphetamine on a bus passing through Medford.

Police received a tip that Flavio Jaimes-Toribio, 18, was hauling the meth north from California and into Oregon, Medford Area Drug and Gang Enforcement officials said in a news release.

Jaimes-Toribio was charged with delivery and possession of methamphetamine and lodged in the Jackson County Jail on $510,000 bail.

Flavio Jaimes-Toribio - ICE HOLD

  Read more about California man found with 4.5 pounds of meth on a bus near Medford

House investigators learned Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials developed plans to release about 5,000 illegal immigrant detainees, although Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has denied responsibility for the decision.

“An internal document obtained by the House Judiciary Committee shows that Administration officials at ICE prepared cold calculations to release thousands of criminal aliens onto the streets and did not demonstrate any consideration of the impact this decision would have on the safety of Americans,” committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., announced.

The ICE document contains a table that proposes “reduc[ing] invoiced daily population by 1,000 weekly.” Between February 22 and March 31st, this plan would drop the number of detainees from 30,748 to 25,748.

“The decision to release detained aliens undermines the Department of Homeland Security’s mission to keep our homeland secure and instead makes our communities less safe and more vulnerable to crime,” Goodlatte said. “[R]egardless of sequestration, DHS actually has plenty of funding to pay for the detention of criminal aliens. Unfortunately, it seems Administration officials are more interested in using sequestration to promote their political agenda than as an opportunity to get our nation’s fiscal house in order.”

Napolitano said that it wasn’t her decision, even though ICE is part of DHS. “Detainee populations and how that is managed back and forth is really handled by career officials in the field,” she told ABC.

She also confirmed that the releases would continue. “We are going to manage our way through this by identifying the lowest risk detainees, and putting them into some kind of alternative to release,” Napolitano said at a Politico event, per The Daily Caller.

The New York Times profiled a “low risk” detainee released by ICE. The detainee was taken into custody “when it was discovered that he had violated probation for a conviction in 2005 of simple assault, simple battery and child abuse, charges that sprung from a domestic dispute with his wife at the time.” NRO’s Jim Geraghty asked, “If convictions for ‘simple assault, simple battery and child abuse’ make you ‘low-risk,’ what do you have to do for Janet Napolitano to consider you ‘high-risk’?” Read more about DHS plans to release 5,000 illegal immigrants due to sequestration