OC Immigration Attorney

A Miami high school valedictorian who gained national attention with her fight to avoid deportation back to Colombia has been granted a two-year reprieve by federal authorities who now say that their bigger goal is going after illegal immigrants who are criminals — and not dutiful students.

Daniela Pelaez, and her sister, Dayana, were ordered to leave the country just last week by a federal immigration judge. But U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday issued a statement saying the agency would defer carrying out the court order for at least two years.

The decision, which elated many in South Florida, followed growing local protests aimed at keeping the two teens in the United States, not to mention a steady din of news coverage about the family’s plight. Several lawmakers also interceded on the girls’ behalf, including Republican congresswoman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Thousands took to the streets just last week in North Miami to protest the court ruling. They held banners and chanted “Justice for Daniela.” The Miami Herald said it was the single largest immigration demonstration in the area since then-President George W. Bush proposed legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants back in 2004.

In Sarasota, Florida, two residents were sentenced on June 17 following an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE, the FBI and the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office MCSO.

Erisbel Artiles, 31, a Cuban national residing in Hialeah, Fla., was sentenced to 121 months in federal prison for hostage taking. And his mother, Lazara Z. Moreira-Penin, 54, also a Cuban national residing in Hialeah, was sentenced to one year in prison for conspiracy to transport illegal aliens.

After a Guatemalan citizen illegally present in the United States contacted MCSO deputies and reported that an alien smuggler was holding his 30-year-old brother for more unpaid smuggling fee, MCSO requested the assistance of ICE Sarasota office.

As a result of the cooperation and ability to work together that existed in Florida between state, local and federal law enforcement, they recovered the hostage victim without incident.

Eventually the victim was delivered at a gas station where ICE agents along with MCSO officers arrested Moreira-Penin. Artiles was arrested in Miami at a later date.

The investigation was conducted by ICE’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations in Sarasota, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, the Miami Violent Crimes Task Force and the Southwest Florida Violent Crimes Task Force consisting of the Bradenton Police Department, the Sarasota Police Department, and the Sarasota FBI Office. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald L. Hansen.

On March 12, while Leslie Cocche stood at the Fort Lauderdale Tri-Rail station awaiting the train to Miami, where she attends College, a U.S. Border Patrol agent suddenly began questioning her, and eventually discovered that the 18-year-old Peruvian was in the country illegally. Cocche then was arrested, handcuffed and handed over for deportation proceedings.

In contrast to the controversial Arizona state law that would allow police officers to request immigration papers from individuals, federal immigration agents are allowed to demand documents from any foreign national at any time.

Even after Homeland Security said that immigration authorities would focus on removing convicted foreign criminals, apparently the situation has not changed much.

Officials of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Homeland Security agency in charge of deportations, acknowledge that deportations of noncriminal immigration-law violators are continuing, but say the agency now views them as “low-priority.”

However, figures from Oct. 1 to June 7 show that the number of criminal and noncriminal removals are almost even. The number of noncriminal removals still exceeds that of criminal deportations, but only by 257 people.

According to Cheryl Little, executive director of the Miami-based Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, the ICE definition of criminal includes people found guilty of minor violations, such as expired driver’s license and illegal entry into the United States.

The Cocche case is particularly galling to immigrant rights advocates because she is in the country not by choice but because her parents brought her here when she was a child and legislation repeatedly introduced in Congress as the DREAM Act would grant young undocumented students green cards.

The U.S. Border Patrol’s assistant chief patrol agent for the Miami Sector, stated that she was found to be illegally in the US, arrested and placed in removal proceedings. Subsequently, her sister and parents were placed in deportation proceedings as well.

Cocche was detained for 11 days and eventually released with the promise that she and her family would report later to immigration court in Miami.

If they lose their case they could all be deported.