News From the Border

Providing the news from a different front but from a war that we must win as well! I recognize the poverty and desperate conditions that many Latinos live in. We, as the USA, have a responsibility to do as much as we can to reach out to aid and assist spiritually with the Gospel and naturally with training, technology and resources. But poverty gives no one the right to break the laws of another sovereign nation.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Migrants jailed as 'conspirators'

By Jacques Billeaud
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by Will Powers / The Associated Press

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.

They were held under a novel interpretation of an Arizona immigrant smuggling law that allows the customers of human traffickers to be charged as conspirators in 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.

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.

posted by missionaryman | 5:43 AM

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