Judge throws out charges against 11 people arrested during ropa usada raids

McALLEN, Texas (ValleyCentral) — A judge on Friday dismissed the charges against 11 people arrested during a major immigration raid after concluding the government had stretched the law to charge them with a crime that didn’t apply.

Agents with Homeland Security Investigations arrested more than 30 people last week, when they raided five ropa usada warehouses in McAllen.

Many people who allegedly worked in the warehouses had used tourist visas to enter the United States. Prosecutors charged them with fraud and misuse of visas, which is a federal felony.

During two hearings on Friday, however, a judge dismissed the charges against 11 people.

“The question was one of law,” said U.S. Magistrate Judge Juan F. Alanis, who announced his decision from the bench.

After listening to hours of testimony, Alanis said people arrested during the raids had clearly entered the country using tourist visas, which don’t allow people to work in the United States.

Prosecutors charged them with fraud and misuse of visas.

Under that law, anyone who “knowingly presents any such application, affidavit, or other document which contains any such false statement or which fails to contain any reasonable basis in law or fact” commits a crime.

Prosecutors argued the people who allegedly worked at the warehouses had presented an “application” every time they entered the United States using a tourist visa.

Attorneys for the defendants accused the government of stretching the word “application.”

David Lindenmuth of McAllen and Simran W. Singh of McAllen, who represented people accused of working at the warehouses, said the statute referenced the application for a visa, not presenting the visa when they crossed the border.

At one point, Singh cross-examined a U.S. Customs and Border Protection employee about the word “application.”

“I asked him: What did you think ‘application’ meant before you went into law enforcement? Because that’s the standard that applies to an ordinary person,” Singh said. “It shouldn’t take you 12 years of law enforcement experience to know what the word ‘application’ means in this very technical context.”

Singh said the government had clearly attempted to stretch the definition.

Alanis, the federal judge, agreed.

The context — “application, affidavit, or other document” — and the plain meaning of the word suggested a written application, Alanis said, regardless of how Customs and Border Protection might use the term.

“Again, the issue is how to interpret that word,” Alanis said, in the context of the statute.

As a result, Alanis said the charge didn’t apply.

Alanis made a similar decision on Tuesday, when he dismissed the charges against three other people arrested during the raid.

The hearings on Friday brought the total number of dismissals to 14 — nearly half the people arrested during the raids.

Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, raided the ropa usada warehouses on Oct. 2.

Agents charged nine people who owned or operated the businesses with money laundering, harboring people without legal status in the United States and other crimes.

They also charged 22 people with tourist visas who allegedly entered the United States to work at ropa usada warehouses. Cases against eight remain pending.

In his remarks from the bench, Alanis cautioned that prosecutors could still take the exact same charges to a grand jury. Prosecutors could also bring new charges that don’t involve visas.