Utah death row inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner was strapped to the chair, his head hooded and a target affixed to his chest. Asked if he had any final words before he was executed by firing squad inside a state prison, Gardner said: "I do not. No."

Death by firing squad spotlights old execution method Utah essentially banned the practice in 2004, but some death row inmates, such as Ronnie Lee Gardner, have been allowed to opt for it. By Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times June 18, 2010 (Click HERE for Video:) http://www.latimes.com/videobeta/?watchId=e04b6ab7-ac23-456d-a49f-d2be8bf55908 Reporting from Denver Ronnie Lee Gardner, the convicted double-murderer executed by a firing squad in Utah in the predawn hours Friday, died in a manner that even the state that killed him no longer wants to use. Utah essentially banned firing squads in 2004. "We had come to a point in Utah where execution by firing squad was overshadowing the victim and the crime," said Ron Gordon, who was the director of the state's Sentencing Commission, which recommended the ban.

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From the New York Times

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U.S. Cracks Down on Farmers Who Hire Children

WHITE LAKE, N.C. — The Obama administration has opened a broad campaign of enforcement against farmers who employ children and underpay workers, hiring hundreds of investigators and raising fines for labor and wage violators.

A flurry of fines and mounting public pressure on blueberry farmers is only the opening salvo, Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis said in an interview. Ms. Solis, the daughter of an immigrant farm worker, said she was making enforcement of farm-labor rules a priority. At the same time, Congress is considering whether to rewrite the law that still allows 12-year-olds to work on farms during the summer with almost no limits.

The blueberry crop has been drawing workers to eastern North Carolina for decades, but as the harvest got under way in late May, growers stung by bad publicity and federal fines were scrambling to clean up their act, even going beyond the current law to keep all children off the fields. The growers were also ensuring that the workers, mainly Hispanic immigrants, would make at least the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

“I picked blueberries last year, and my 4-year-old brother tried to, but he got stuck in the mud,” said Miguel, a 12-year-old child of migrants. “The inspectors fined the farmers, and this year no kids are allowed.”

Child and rights advocates said they were encouraged by these signs of federal resolve, but they were also waiting to see how wide and lasting the changes would be. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of children under 18 toil each year, harvesting crops from apples to onions, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch detailing hazards to their health and schooling and criticizing the Labor Department for past inaction.

“The news from North Carolina shows the value of strong enforcement,” said Zama Coursen-Neff, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch and the report's author. “We also need to change the law to make sure this isn't a flash in the pan.”

Unannounced visits to several fields here by a reporter and by migrant aid groups, and interviews with workers from more than a dozen blueberry farms, indicate that the changes — for this crop and this region — are real.

Soon after dawn, the vans stream through the roads here, ferrying migrant workers from trailer camps to blueberry farms, where they pluck the fragile fruits for 10 hours or more.

“Last year, the fields were filled with children, so this is encouraging,” said Emily Drakage, North Carolina regional coordinator of the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs , a national network of state and private agencies.

Beyond barring children from the fields, growers here also spruced up migrants' trailers and barracks and adopted scanners to record the buckets of berries collected by each worker.

A federal law adopted in 1938 exempts agriculture from child-labor rules that apply to other industries. It permits children 12 and up to work without limits outside of school hours, exposing them, critics say, to pesticides that may pose a special threat to growing bodies and robbing too many of childhood itself.

After years of what rights groups said was lax attention, the Labor Department this week announced a large increase in the fines that farmers can face for employing children, to as much as $11,000 per child, from around $1,000.

On May 24, the department fined a labor contractor and a farmer in Arizona more than $30,000 for employing 10- and 11-year-old children, underpaying workers and other violations.

In an interview, Ms. Solis said she had added more than 250 workplace investigators, bringing the department's total to near 1,000, and started a campaign to educate workers about their rights. Acknowledging that officials had sometimes ignored child farm violations in the past, she added, “I am totally changing the direction of this department.”

But to make deep inroads, Congress would first have to change the law. A proposal to ban the hiring of 12- and 13-year-olds, cap working hours by 14- and 15-year-olds and keep teenagers out of hazardous jobs is gaining support in Congress. Some 91 representatives have co-sponsored the Care Act , put forth by Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat of California .

Senator Tom Harkin , Democrat of Iowa, said he planned to introduce a similar bill in the Senate. The American Farm Bureau , the nation's largest farm lobbying organization, has opposed it, saying it could imperil the tradition of children working in farm communities.

This spring's restrictions on teenagers in North Carolina were unsettling for some parents who said they counted on their earnings, and for teenage migrants, some traveling on their own.

“I need to help pay our own way,” said Edgar, 15, who has helped support two younger siblings since his mother rushed back to Mexico in 2009 for a family emergency. Last spring, he often skipped school to spend 10-hour days picking blueberries, he said. He was disappointed to be turned away by a farm on a recent Saturday and hoped that growers would let him work after the school year ended.

Migrant farm workers, many of them Mexicans who are in the country illegally, remain desperately poor, traveling across the country for sporadic stretches of backbreaking work, vulnerable to gouging by contractors and afraid to complain. Although a federal program tries to aid migrant children with their education, few finish high school.

The Migrant Head Start program aims to give parents an alternative to taking infants and toddlers into the fields. Here in Bladen County, a new Head Start center opened in 2008. It provides free day care to 138 children but still falls short of the need.

In nearby Wayne County, Celidania Diaz, who has worked there for nine years, planned to start picking when Head Start's free bus service began in her area the following week.

“With the kids, the farms are very strict now,” she said. “It was better before, because if you didn't have someone to take care of the kids, you could take them along.”

Her family's situation is typical: they and a second family share an aging trailer, paying $50 a week each. The workers also pay $6 a day to a van owner to transport them to farms nearly two hours away. On good days, in fields where plump berries are still plentiful, they may earn $80 to $100, filling four buckets an hour at $2.50 a bucket to surpass the minimum wage. But when it rains, the berries are too fragile to pick and they cannot work.

Blueberry farmers here, like George Mote Jr., insist that they have never wanted children in their fields but that parents would sneak them in; rights groups say the farmers often looked the other way.

Shaken by fines imposed last August on 9 blueberry farms and 17 labor contractors in North Carolina, owners this spring played it safe by going beyond the law to bar anyone under 16 from the fields. But some farmers said that when school ended this month, they would allow younger teenagers to work, as the law allows.

Rafaela, 35, who lives in a three-bedroom trailer with her two children and six men placed there temporarily by a labor contractor, said not all parents supported strong controls on work by teenagers. “In the summertime when there's no school, I think it's O.K.,” said Rafaela, who did not provide her last name because she feared scrutiny by immigration officials. “But to take them out of school, that's not right.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/us/19migrant.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Plea to Obama Led to an Immigrant's Arrest

The letter appealing to President Obama was written in frustration in January, by a woman who saw her family reflected in his. She was a white United States citizen married to an African man, and the couple — college-educated professionals in Manhattan — were stymied in their long legal battle to keep him in the country.

Could the president help, asked the woman, Caroline Jamieson, a marketing executive. She described the impasse that confronted her husband, Hervé Fonkou Takoulo, a citizen of Cameroon with an outstanding deportation order from a failed bid for asylum.

The response came on June 3, when two immigration agents stopped Mr. Takoulo, 34, in front of the couple's East Village apartment building. He says one agent asked him, “Did you write a letter to President Obama?”

When he acknowledged that his wife had, he was handcuffed and sent to an immigration jail in New Jersey for deportation.

But on Thursday night, Mr. Takoulo was just as suddenly released, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had been questioned about the case by The New York Times. Officials said they were investigating how the letter — one of thousands routinely referred to the agency by the White House to gather information for a reply — had been improperly used by the agency's “ fugitive operations” unit to find and arrest Mr. Takoulo, who has an engineering degree and no criminal record.

While Mr. Takoulo is still subject to the deportation order, immigration officials acknowledged that their actions in the case seemed to violate their standard practice of not using letters seeking help from elected officials as investigative leads. The handling of the case also conflicted with the Obama administration's stated policy of arresting deportable immigrants only if they have criminal records.

The agency is investigating how it happened, a spokesman said, and has released Mr. Takoulo on an electronic ankle monitor while his case is reviewed.

“ICE has a zero tolerance policy for violations of civil rights,” the spokesman, Brian P. Hale, said in a statement.

Though the case is being treated as an anomaly that breached accepted procedures, a senior agency official acknowledged that there were no written guidelines on the handling of such letters, and that there was no way to know whether similar correspondence had prompted arrests and deportations. If the investigation bears out what officials have learned so far, “it also flies in the face of our stated priorities to target criminal fugitives,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the agency had not authorized further discussion of the case.

So far, it appears that Ms. Jamieson's Jan. 10 letter to the president reached the executive secretariat of the immigration enforcement agency on March 8. The secretariat, which handles all official correspondence, sent it to the New York field office the next day, asking for help in drafting a response.

The letter explained that Ms. Jamieson, 42, had filed a petition seeking a green card for her husband on the basis of their 2005 marriage. But before they met, Mr. Takoulo, who first arrived in the country on a temporary business visa, had applied for political asylum and had been denied it by an immigration judge in Baltimore, who ordered him deported. Only if the agency's chief counsel in Baltimore agreed to reopen the case, the letter said, could that order be suspended long enough for the couple to safely go to federal immigration headquarters in Manhattan for an interview to prove that their marriage was not a sham.

Mr. Takoulo said he had hoped the president would intervene. “He's even said on TV that he needs engineers,” said Mr. Takoulo, who worked his way through the Stony Brook University and says he now spends his days trading stocks from the couple's apartment because he lacks papers to accept the engineering jobs he was offered when he graduated in 2008.

Typically, officials said, the New York field office would have sent a letter like Ms. Jamieson's back to the secretariat in Washington with a summary of the case, or would perhaps have referred the matter to Baltimore, where the old deportation case was based. Instead, someone promptly sent it to the district's fugitive operations unit. Two agents were dispatched to the East Village to wait for Mr. Takoulo, who was stopped about 9:30 a.m. as he left home.

He said they told him, “We're ICE and we're here to arrest you because President Obama sent the letter for a review, and we reviewed it and we denied it.”

He was soon in shackles, on his way to the Hudson County Correctional Center in New Jersey, where he spent two weeks in a dormitory with 47 other men, mostly criminal offenders.

Ms. Jamieson campaigned for his release with help from colleagues at Digitas, a new-media advertising company. When the latest legal motion to reopen his case was denied last week, she turned to the news media. Friends and family had filled a dossier with affidavits testifying to the couple's loving relationship, which began seven years ago at an East Village cafe where Mr. Takoulo worked.

On Thursday night, she sobbed with relief as she embraced her newly released husband outside an immigration processing jail on Varick Street. Later, they celebrated with his two nieces who are studying at New York colleges on student visas. But Ms. Jamieson veered between joy and distress.

“I've been feeling very confused and ashamed as an American citizen,” she said, evoking her family's eclectic immigrant origins. Her father, an emeritus professor of East Asian languages and cultures at the University of California, Berkeley , is the son of Scottish immigrants; her mother's family were refugees from North Korea; her stepmother is Chinese; and her sister's husband is Egyptian.

All experienced some immigration problems, she said, but “the idea that in the year 2010 I and my family are having the worst and the most barbaric experience — it's just shameful to me.”

Ms. Jamieson recalled that she cried when Mr. Obama said during a 2008 campaign speech, “With a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya — ”

“I said, ‘Oh, Hervé, even the alliteration is right — with a mother from California and a father from Cameroon, our child could do the same!' ”

But they have postponed having the baby they both want, she said, because of his precarious immigration status. One step forward: officials told him he will be granted a work permit after he reports to immigration headquarters on July 1.

“I won't stop fighting,” Ms. Jamieson said. “He's the love of my life.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/nyregion/19immig.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Terror Suspect Wanted in U.S. Released in Kosovo

On Friday in Kosovo, a European Union judge ordered the release of an ethnic Albanian man arrested just one day earlier at the request of the Unites States government, which has accused him of “plotting to harm America and Americans.”

On Thursday, the federal prosecutors in North Carolina unsealed an indictment charging Barjam Asllani, a 29-year-old from the divided town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, with “providing material support to terrorists and conspiring to murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons abroad.”

According to a statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation , Mr. Asllani conspired with seven men who were arrested in North Carolina last July and charged with planning to commit “violent jihad.”

On Thursday, The News & Observer reported from North Carolina:

Asllani apparently lived in the Raleigh area for some time, but a background check found no local address. It was unclear whether he had local legal representation. Khalilah Sabra, who worships at the Raleigh mosque, recalled Asllani as part of a group of Muslims from the Balkans.

Federal prosecutors have reached an agreement with Kosovar authorities to extradite Asllani to the United States to face charges.

As Reuters explains , “Two years after declaring independence, Kosovo's fragile peace is still maintained by some 10,000 NATO troops and 2,000 police, judges and prosecutors from the E.U.”

Mr. Asllani was arrested on Thursday by police officers from Kosovo and the European Union. B92, a Serbian radio station, reported that “five agents of the U.S. Federal Investigation Bureau” were also involved in the arrest.

A spokesperson for the E.U. police and justice mission said on Friday that although Mr. Mr. Asllani was released by a European judge, it remains up to the government of Kosovo to decide whether or not to extradite him to the United States.

According to Reuters, Mr. Asllani told local media in Mitrovica after he was released: “I personally have asked to be extradited to the United States because I am not afraid of U.S. justice. I believe in justice because I am innocent.”

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/terror-suspect-wanted-in-u-s-released-in-kosovo/?ref=us

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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World Refugee Day

This Sunday, June 20 is World Refugee Day, an annual event that honors refugees across the globe. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the Refugee Act of 1980, the landmark legislation that reinforced the United States' long-standing humanitarian commitment to refugees and asylum seekers.

Throughout our history, we have welcomed more refugees and asylum seekers than any other nation in the world. Since the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980, approximately 2.5 million refugees have been resettled in the U.S. and approximately 500,000 asylees have been granted protection by our government. Almost 1.3 million of these refugees and over 165,000 asylees have gone on to become American citizens.

Last fiscal year, DHS's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) granted protection to over 11,933 asylum seekers and to more than 74,000 refugees from 79 countries. To safeguard the integrity of our refugee and asylum processes, USCIS engages in robust security screening, training, and quality assurance mechanisms – executed in close collaboration with other DHS components.

These efforts sometimes involve significant danger for USCIS personnel, who have traveled to war zones across the globe to conduct refugee status interviews to identify those who qualify – many of whom have assisted U.S. military efforts abroad – and ensure they can find protection and build new lives in the United States.

This World Refugee Day, I want to take a moment to commend these DHS employees, at home and abroad, for their dedicated service on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers. Thanks to their work, we are fulfilling an important humanitarian mission.

Janet Napolitano

http://journal.dhs.gov/2010/06/secretary-janet-napolitano-in.html

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From the Department of Justice

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Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force Announces Results of Broadest Mortgage Fraud Sweep in History

Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller, Housing and Urban Development Inspector General (HUD-OIG) Kenneth M. Donohue, and other members of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force today announced the results of a nationwide takedown, Operation Stolen Dreams, which targeted mortgage fraudsters throughout the country and is the largest collective enforcement effort ever brought to bear in confronting mortgage fraud.

The sweep was organized by President Obama's interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, which was established to lead an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. Starting on March 1, to date Operation Stolen Dreams has involved 1,215 criminal defendants nationwide, including 485 arrests, who are allegedly responsible for more than $2.3 billion in losses. Additionally, to date the operation has resulted in 191 civil enforcement actions which have resulted in the recovery of more than $147 million.

"Mortgage fraud ruins lives, destroys families and devastates whole communities, so attacking the problem from every possible direction is vital," said Attorney General Holder. "We will use every tool available to investigate, prosecute and prevent mortgage fraud, and we will not rest until anyone preying on vulnerable American homeowners is brought to justice."

"From home buyers to lenders, mortgage fraud has had a resounding impact on the nation's economy," said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. "Those who prey on the housing market should know that hundreds of FBI agents on task forces and their law enforcement partners are tracking down your schemes and you will be brought to justice."

"The last several years have seen enormous and damaging developments in the mortgage and housing markets, and the government has stepped in to bolster unstable marketplaces and devastated communities," said Inspector General Donohue. "The HUD-OIG, in partnership with other agencies, is deeply committed to ensuring that scarce resources are not diverted to those who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of those who so desperately need assistance today."

Unlike previous mortgage fraud sweeps, Operation Stolen Dreams focused not only on federal criminal cases, but also on civil enforcement, recovering money for victims and increasing cooperation with state and local partners. The operation was conducted in conjunction with the Department of Justice – including the FBI, U.S. Attorneys Offices, the U.S. Trustee Program and other components – as well as the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Trade Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Secret Service, the National Association of Attorneys General and the National District Attorneys Association.

The President's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force includes representatives from a broad range of federal agencies, regulatory authorities, inspectors general, and state and local law enforcement who, working together, bring to bear a powerful array of criminal and civil enforcement resources. The task force is working to improve efforts across the federal executive branch, and with state and local partners, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes, ensure just and effective punishment for those who perpetrate financial crimes, combat discrimination in the lending and financial markets, and recover proceeds for victims of financial crimes. For more information on the task force, visit StopFraud.gov.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/June/10-opa-708.html

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Steven Walter Cooke, 47, a reputed high ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT) prison/street gang and a previously convicted felon, has been sentenced to prison for possessing firearms, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer for the Department of Justice Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas José Angel Moreno announced today.

U.S. District Judge Gray H. Miller sentenced Cooke to 96 months in federal prison without parole and a three-year-term of supervised release following his prison term. Cooke, identified in previous court proceedings as a "general" of the ABT, pleaded guilty on Feb. 16, 2010, to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Convicted felons are prohibited from possessing firearms under federal law.

At the time of his guilty plea, Cooke, who has multiple prior convictions dating back to 1987 for aggravated robbery, robbery, possession of crack cocaine and theft of firearms, admitted to having possessed 13 firearms at his Tomball, Texas, area residence between April 2007 and Oct. 23, 2008. The firearms, including seven rifles - two of which were ROMARM/CUGIR 7.62 caliber from Romania, five shotguns and one Sterling .380 caliber pistol, were seized following the execution of a state search warrant. In addition to the firearms, more than 300 rounds of ammunition and body armor were also seized from Cooke's residence.

The search warrant was obtained as a result of an investigation conducted by special agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives with the assistance of the Tomball Police Department, Texas Rangers, Texas Department of Public Safety, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, Houston Police Department Gang Unit, Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Department of Justice's Gang Targeting, Enforcement and Coordinating Center. A camera containing photographs of Cooke carrying one of the Romanian rifles was seized from Cooke's vehicle in mid-October 2008 by the Polk County Sheriff's Office prompting the investigation leading to these federal charges. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hileman and Trial Attorney David N. Karpel of the Criminal Division's Gang Unit prosecuted the case.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/June/10-crm-716.html

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From ICE

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26 arrested in Chicago area during ICE operation targeting gang members

CHICAGO - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, in close partnership with local law enforcement officers, made 26 arrests during a three-day operation this week targeting illegal aliens with ties to violent street gangs. This is the latest local effort in an ongoing national ICE initiative to target foreign-born gang members.

The arrests were made as part of Operation Community Shield, under ICE's National Gang Unit. As part of this national initiative, ICE partners with other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to target the significant public safety threat posed by transnational street gangs. Partnerships with local law enforcement agencies are essential to the success of Operation Community Shield.

The multi-agency operation began June 14 and targeted foreign-born gang members and gang associates. Of the 26 arrested, 22 are documented members of the following gangs: Latin Kings, Sureño 13s, and Imperial Gangsters.

One Latin King gang member, 38-year-old Rudolfo Lira, was arrested by Palatine police with the assistance of ICE special agents. Lira has an outstanding warrant out of Cook County. He will be turned over to ICE for deportation once the criminal proceedings against him are completed. The remaining 21 gang members, all Mexican nationals, face administrative immigration charges and are pending removal.

In addition to the gang members arrested, ICE agents assisted the Palatine police in the criminal arrest of a U.S. citizen. Norma Parada-Lopez, 22, of Palatine, was arrested June 14 for battery and resisting a peace officer, which occurred while ICE agents were arresting another target.

During the operation, ICE agents arrested three illegal aliens from Mexico who are not gang members. ICE does not release the names of those arrested on administrative immigration violations.

Arrests were made in the following communities: Chicago, Elgin, Hanover Park, Palatine, Rolling Meadows, Streamwood and Wheeling.

"Street gangs are responsible for committing a significant amount of crime in our neighborhoods and communities," said Gary Hartwig, ICE special agent in charge in Chicago. "ICE works closely with our local law enforcement partners to identify, locate and arrest these gang members in the name of public safety. Ultimately, we remove those who are deportable from the United States."

ICE was assisted in the operation by the police departments of the following cities: Palatine, Rolling Meadows, Mount Prospect, Streamwood, Hanover Park and Elgin.

Since Operation Community Shield began in February 2005, ICE agents nationwide have arrested more than 17,500 gang members and associates linked to more than 900 different gangs. More than 200 of those arrested were gang leaders.

The National Gang Unit at ICE identifies violent street gangs and develops intelligence on their membership, associates, criminal activities and international movements to deter, disrupt and dismantle gang operations by tracing and seizing cash, weapons and other assets derived from criminal activities.

Through Operation Community Shield, the federal government uses its powerful immigration and customs authorities in a coordinated, national campaign against criminal street gangs in the United States. Transnational street gangs have significant numbers of foreign-born members and are frequently involved in human and contraband smuggling, immigration violations and other crimes with a connection to the border.

For more information, visit www.ice.gov .

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1006/100618chicago.htm

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ICE takes down billion-dollar Colombian drug trafficking organization
DTO finances its illicit empire by sending cocaine all over the globe

In Operation Pacific Rim, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), working closely with the Colombian National Police and Mexican authorities, took down a major drug trafficking organization -- an industrial and transportation empire with a profit margin in the billions. The drug kingpins operating out of Colombia wrestled with a vexing problem -- they made so much money from illegal narcotics trafficking that they couldn't launder it all.

In fact, tracking the cold hard cash is one of the specialties of ICE's investigative directorate, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). HSI is the largest investigative agency within the Department of Homeland Security. HSI agents working with ICE Attaché offices in Bogota and elsewhere brought this giant among drug organizations to its knees. HSI began Operation Pacific Rim in September 2009 after scoring a previous victory in an investigation where they seized $41 million in Colombia and Mexico. This is often the case in federal law enforcement, with one case that tips investigators off to an even bigger fish to fry.

The case began when HSI and Colombian police intercepted a suspicious shipment of what was supposed to be fertilizer, but what in actuality turned out to be bundles of shrink-wrapped cash.

As investigators delved deeper into the case, even experienced agents marveled at the enormity and sophistication of this criminal enterprise.

"This drug trafficking organization (DTO) was a far cry from a few small-time hoodlums," said James Dinkins, HSI Executive Associate Director. "These corrupt people were involved in murder, kidnapping and other forms of violence and lawlessness, but posed as legitimate business owners. They invested in apartment complexes and office buildings, yet they still had money to hide."

Luis Agustin Caicedo Velandia, also known as "Don Lucho," led this international enterprise of money launderers and drug traffickers who sent cocaine all over the globe.

Lucho earned the dubious distinction as a Consolidated Priority Organization Target (CPOT), a title law enforcement authorities use to signify narcotics traffickers who are believed to be the leaders of DTOs responsible for importing large quantities of narcotics into the United States.

"This case sends a warning to drug kingpins all over the world -- they are never too big to fail," said ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton. "In fact, this case proves that the drug trafficking organizations put themselves in a double bind. The larger their network of operations and the more illegal narcotics and cash that flow from their base of operations, the more clues are out there for ICE to trace back to them."

The El Dorado Task Force of ICE's HSI Directorate coordinated this investigation. This task force consists of 260 members from local, state and federal law enforcement, intelligence analysts and federal prosecutors. They target financial crime at all levels. Since its inception, the El Dorado Task Force has made more than 2,200 arrests and seized more than $600 million in illegal proceeds.

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1006/100618eldorado.htm

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Member of child exploitation ring pleads guilty
ICE-led Operation Goodbye focused on predators sharing images via social networking site

PITTSBURGH - A member of an international group of child pornography collectors has pleaded guilty in federal court in Pittsburgh to a charge of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. Dave Dean, 42, used a social networking site to distribute thousands of sexually explicit images to other collectors. Dean previously resided in Texas and Arizona.

The court record established that from Jan. 1, 2007, to Sept. 22, 2009, Dean engaged in a child exploitation enterprise through a series of felony child pornography violations. Specifically, Dean and others distributed images and videos of children being sexually abused to other members of a closed international group that had formed on a social networking website. Members of the group distributed thousands of sexually explicit images and videos of children to each other, many of which were of prepubescent, male children, some as young as infants, being graphically sexually abused and sometimes sodomized or subjected to bondage.

The law provides for a total sentence of not less than 20 years and up to life in prison, a fine of $250,000, or both. Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the actual sentence imposed is based upon the seriousness of the offense and the criminal history, if any, of the defendant.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the High Tech Investigative Unit of the Department of Justice's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section conducted the investigation that led to the prosecution of Dean. Trial attorney Barak Cohen of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig W. Haller prosecuted the case.

This investigation is part of Operation Predator, a nationwide ICE initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who travel overseas for sex with minors, Internet child pornographers, criminal alien sex offenders, and child sex traffickers. Since Operation Predator was launched in July 2003, ICE agents have arrested more than 12,800 individuals.

ICE encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE. This hotline is staffed around the clock by investigators.

Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an Operation Predator partner, at 1-800-843-5678 or http://www.cybertipline.com .

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1006/100618pittsburgh.htm

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From the FBI

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Grand Jury Indicts Six Alleged “Dump Squad” Gang Members
Indictment Builds on Charges Against 11 Dump Squad Members in March 2009

NEWPORT NEWS, VA—Six alleged members of the “Dump Squad” street gang have been indicted on a total of 29 charges, including multiple murders, attempted murders, robberies, assaults, arson, narcotics distribution, and weapons violations. A federal grand jury indicted the individuals on June 16, 2010, and the indictment was unsealed this morning.

Neil H. MacBride, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Alex J. Turner, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Norfolk Division; James D. Fox, Chief of Newport News Police; and Howard E. Gwynn, Newport News Commonwealth Attorney, made the announcement after the defendants were placed in custody and the indictment became public. If convicted, the defendants face a penalty of 20 years and up to life in prison, depending on the criminal activity. The murder charge is potentially death eligible.

“This is the second phase in the ongoing effort to aggressively pursue members of the Dump Squad,” said U.S. Attorney MacBride. “We saw crime drop by 44 percent in 2009 when we took 11 violent gangsters off the streets. We continue to work with the FBI, Newport News law enforcement and others to lock up gang members who are terrorizing our communities.”

“This indictment reflects the continued commitment of the U.S. Attorney's Office, FBI, and Newport News Police Department to thoroughly eliminate the criminal threat posed by members of the Dump Squad,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Turner. “We will continue to relentlessly pursue this effort until this violent criminal enterprise has been fully dismantled."

“The Newport News Police Department is committed to making our community safe and will continue to work with federal, state, and local agencies to make it happen,” said Chief James Fox. “Clearing our streets of gang activity is a priority of our department and these indictments should send the message to the gang members that we are not finished and are still coming after you.”

“I want to thank the U.S. Attorney's Office for its tireless efforts to help us make Newport News a safer place,” said Newport News Commonwealth Attorney Gwynn. “This case is yet another example of the effectiveness of the strong partnership between our two offices, as well as other state, federal, and local law enforcement agencies.”

According to the indictment, the six men were members of the “Dump Squad,” a criminal organization that operates in the Ridley Circle, Harbor Homes, and Dickerson Court areas of Newport News, Va. The defendants established the power and prestige of the gang through violence, including the murders of Rashed Caudle on Aug. 9, 2003 and Lorenzo Thomas on Sept. 12, 2005.

The indictment also alleges the gang members attempted to murder at least three individuals and robbed others at gunpoint. The defendants are charged with financially supporting the enterprise by trafficking illegal drugs, including crack cocaine and marijuana.

In addition, the indictment connects defendants to some alleged acts in a March 2009 indictment of 11 Dump Squad gang members, all of whom pled guilty. These acts include the conspiracy to murder Tony Vaughan on Dec. 24, 2007, and the attempt to burn and set fire to the Newport News Police Department's High Impact Patrol Station located in the Harbor Homes apartment complex in Newport News, Va.

All residents of Newport News, Va., the defendants charged in the indictment are the following:

• Perry Cousins, a/k/a “Pzo,” 25
• Darryl Vaughn, a/k/a “T-Tot” and “Toni Roni,” 22
• Kevin Vaughn, a/k/a “Hawk,” 23
• Jayson Bryan, a/k/a “J-Money,” 20
• Monquay Williams, a/k/a “Quay,” 20
• Haywood Lockhart, 22

This case was investigated by the Safe Streets Peninsula Task Force operating out of the FBI's Newport News Resident Agency, with assistance from the Newport News Police Department and the Virginia State Police. Assistant United States Attorneys Howard Zlotnick and Robert Bradenham, II and Special Assistant United States Attorney Valerie Muth from the Newport News Commonwealth Attorney's Office are prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.

Criminal indictments are only charges and not evidence of guilt. A defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty.

A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/vae . Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov or on http://pacer.uspci.uscourts.gov .

http://norfolk.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel10/nf061810.htm

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