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From the Los Angeles Times

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Report faults Army in 2001 anthrax mailings

Officials missed signs of alarming mental problems in Dr. Bruce Ivins, the scientist suspected in the deadly bioterrorism attacks.

by David Willman, Special to The Times

March 22, 2011

Reporting from Bethesda, Md.

The Army scientist believed responsible for the 2001 anthrax letter attacks that killed five people and crippled mail delivery in parts of the country had exhibited alarming mental problems that military officials should have noticed and acted on long before he had a chance to strike, a panel of behavioral analysts has found.

The anthrax attacks, the nation's worst bioterrorism event, "could have been anticipated — and prevented," the panel said.

The analysts also concluded that confidential records documenting Bruce E. Ivins' psychiatric history offered "considerable additional circumstantial evidence" that he was indeed the anthrax killer. A copy of the panel's 285-page report was obtained by The Times.

Ivins "was psychologically disposed to undertake the mailings; his behavioral history demonstrated his potential for carrying them out; and he had the motivation and means," the Expert Behavioral Analysis Panel said.

The anonymous, anthrax-laced letters, sent to news organizations and two U.S. senators in October and November 2001, raised fears of a second wave of terrorism after the Sept. 11 hijackings. Anthrax that leaked from one of the letters forced the closure of a Senate office building for three months. Fear of further contamination prompted a six-day shutdown of the House of Representatives and disrupted operations of the Supreme Court.

Ivins, 62, a microbiologist with expertise in cultivating anthrax, died July 29, 2008. He had taken an overdose of Tylenol PM as federal prosecutors prepared to seek his indictment for murder.

Ivins was a civilian employee at Ft. Detrick, Md., working in the Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, known as USAMRIID, one of the nation's premier biowarfare research facilities.

If Army officials had investigated signs of Ivins' instability, the panel said, he would have been denied a security clearance, which he needed to handle anthrax or other potential biowarfare agents.

The panel faulted Army officials for making no effort to debrief any of the psychiatrists or counselors who met with Ivins before the fall of 2001 or thereafter. Nor did the Army pursue questions raised by Ivins' annual disclosures of aspects of his medical treatment.

For instance, on a government form he completed in 1987, he placed question marks next to these items regarding his psychiatric history: "Memory Change," "Trouble With Decisions," "Hallucinations," "Improbable Beliefs" and "Anxiety."

"Information regarding his disqualifying behaviors was readily available in the medical record and accessible to personnel had it been pursued under mechanisms that existed prior to and after 2001," according to the nine-member panel, headed by Dr. Gregory Saathoff, a University of Virginia psychiatrist who served as an FBI consultant during the anthrax investigation.

The report is sure to stoke the debate over whether Ivins was, as the FBI has concluded, the sole perpetrator of the letter attacks. Investigators determined that Ivins spent a string of late nights in his specially equipped lab at USAMRIID preceding the attacks, and that he created and controlled a highly purified batch of anthrax that was matched through DNA tests to the material in the letters.

Among the circumstantial evidence against Ivins was his eagerness to bring to market a new anthrax vaccine, of which he was a co-inventor, and his decades-long fixation with the college sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, whose office in Princeton, N.J., was adjacent to a mailbox where Ivins is believed to have deposited anthrax-laced letters. The mailbox was the only one where investigators found anthrax spores that matched the attack material.

Some critics, including Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who was an intended recipient of one of the letters, have said they do not accept the FBI's version of events. As an example of the FBI's fallibility, Ivins' defenders point to the government's $5.82-million legal settlement in 2008 with Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a virologist who had worked at USAMRIID and was the investigation's main suspect before the focus shifted to Ivins.

Last month, a committee appointed by the National Academy of Sciences at the FBI's request concluded that the scientific evidence implicating Ivins was not definitive but "is consistent with and supports" the bureau's finding of a genetic match between his batch of anthrax and the material in the letters.

A spokeswoman for USAMRIID, Caree Vander Linden, said the institute, for privacy law reasons, would not comment on its hiring or supervision of Ivins.

The behavioral panel was formed in late 2009 at the suggestion of Saathoff, people familiar with the matter said. Saathoff appointed the remaining panelists: five other psychiatrists, two officials from the American Red Cross and a physician-toxicologist.

The court order authorizing the panel's work charged it with examining "the mental health issues of Dr. Bruce Ivins and what lessons can be learned … that may be useful in preventing future bioterrorism attacks." Though the panel's expenses were paid by the Justice Department, its findings were not reviewed in advance by the government, those familiar with the matter said.

Ivins' psychiatric records were made available to the panel by order of Royce C. Lamberth, the chief U.S. District Court judge in Washington, and it was with Lamberth that the panel filed its report on Aug. 23, 2010. The document remained under seal until this month, when the Justice Department obtained Lamberth's permission to eventually allow distribution of an abridged version. None of the contents have heretofore been made public.

Some of the "disqualifying" behaviors that the panel said should have prompted Army officials to reconsider Ivins' fitness to work in a secure biodefense facility were redacted from the report by Justice Department lawyers because of privacy concerns. However, based on investigative documents made public more than a year ago by the FBI and on remarks by Ivins' acquaintances, this much is known:

Ivins became obsessed with Kappa Kappa Gamma in the 1960s, when a member of the sorority turned him down for a date. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ivins twice burglarized houses affiliated with the sorority.

Over the same period, he tormented a former member of the sorority, Nancy Haigwood, by stealing her laboratory notebook, which was integral to her pursuit of a doctoral degree, and by vandalizing her residence. Ivins was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of North Carolina in the 1970s when Haigwood was a graduate student there.

"Despite criminal behavior and sabotage of his colleague's research," the panel said, "Dr. Ivins was hired by USAMRIID and received a security clearance, allowing him to work with potential weapons of mass destruction."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-anthrax-ivins-20110323,0,4096716,print.story

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Erotic massage parlors proliferate in L.A. communities

Eagle Rock, Glassell Park and other areas have seen an explosion of massage parlors after a new state law on therapist certification. Fifteen have popped up on one two-mile stretch of Eagle Rock Boulevard.

by Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times

March 23, 2011

First it was pot shops. Now it's erotic massage parlors.

In the last two years, they've proliferated in the city — just as dispensaries did, and for a familiar reason.

In both cases, Los Angeles failed to quickly assess and act upon the ramifications of a new state law.

Police say they've seen numerous illicit massage parlors open in Hollywood, Koreatown and the San Fernando Valley. But the biggest explosion has been in Eagle Rock, which is a community that was also inundated with medical marijuana dispensaries.

An online directory of erotic massage establishments lists nearly 30 in Eagle Rock and Glassell Park, including 15 on a two-mile stretch of Eagle Rock Boulevard. One of them, Surprise Massage, advertises "Fairytale Oriental Massage" with "Sexy Pretty Asian Girls NOW."

"You can drive down the street and see one on every block," said Michael Larsen, the president of the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council. "Our community is being inundated with prostitution."

The problem is connected to a 2009 state law that created voluntary state certification for massage therapists. The intent was to make it easier for legitimate massage therapists to work anywhere in the state.

The law said therapists with state certification could no longer be subjected to stringent local vetting. In Los Angeles, for instance, where city code classifies all parlors as "adult entertainment," licensed therapists would no longer have to apply for police permits, which require fingerprinting and background checks.

Many cities — including Culver City, West Hollywood and Glendale — promptly began requiring those applying to open massage parlors to show their state certification.

But Los Angeles failed to do so, instead asking applicants only to state if they were certified, not to show proof, according to Officer William Jones, who is in charge of the Los Angeles Police Commission's permit processing section.

As a result, it became an easy place for erotic massage parlors to set up shop.

Ahmos Netanel, who heads the California Massage Therapy Council, a nonprofit set up by the state in the massage certification bill, said L.A. should rewrite its code.

"My understanding is that the city has basically stopped regulating," Netanel said. "We have shared with them that this is unusual."

In Eagle Rock, patience is wearing thin.

Businessman Rudy Martinez said the proliferation of massage parlors was one of the reasons he ran for City Council against Councilman Jose Huizar.

Martinez owns a restaurant, Mia Sushi, on Eagle Rock Boulevard. The street is lined with banks and grocery stores, karate studios and churches.

But in the last year and a half, he said, one massage parlor opened up next to his restaurant and another popped up across the street. Both establishments advertise with blinking neon lights and are listed on adult websites, where clients post reviews of sexual services.

"If you sit on our patio, you can see about 30 to 40 men coming in and out of there," Martinez said. "They stay for 15 to 20 minutes. I've never seen one woman walk in."

Once, he said, he saw a man run out of one of the parlors barefoot, wearing no pants.

"It's sickening. It's ridiculous," Martinez said. "It takes away from that community environment that you want where you live."

Martinez said he's frustrated by how massage businesses are developing "the same way as the dispensaries."

One reason may be the strictness of nearby cities.

Pasadena Police Cmdr. John Perez said it had been at least a year and a half since his city had to bust an illicit massage parlor.

Not only does Pasadena require massage therapists to show city officials their certification, it frequently does spot checks to make sure the parlors are in compliance. "We have a proactive approach to it," Perez said.

The Los Angeles Police Department says it also does spot checks. On Tuesday, a sting by vice officers on massage parlors in the Eagle Rock area netted six arrests. Those arrested were not state licensed and were operating without city permits.

In previous raids, police have discovered that some of the women working in the parlors are illegal immigrants working to pay off debts, according to Lt. Andre Dawson of the LAPD's detective support and vice division.

But some enforcement has dropped off.

In the past, attorneys for the city often used nuisance-abatement provisions to shut down parlors that had been cited for prostitution or operating without required permits, said Carlos De La Guerra, who heads the city attorney's public safety division. But the city attorney's office has seen its budget cut 30% in the last two years, and such work has become a luxury, he said.

"The regulation takes a lot of resources, a lot of bodies," De La Guerra said.

Staff members for Huizar, whose 14th district includes Eagle Rock, said they were in talks with city officials to decide what to do next.

In January, Huizar introduced a City Council resolution that would direct the city's lobbyists in Sacramento to seek an amendment to the state law "to provide municipalities with greater flexibility and authority in dealing with the establishment of massage therapy facilities."

A spokesman for Huizar, Rick Coca, said the amendment would also address a provision in the law that restricts cities' ability to place special zoning requirements on state-licensed massage therapists. He said city officials are also considering changing city code to require therapists to show their licenses.

Sgt. Lisa Phillips, who heads the LAPD's northeast vice division, likes both ideas.

"A lot of the citizens are fed up with having their neighborhood look like a red-light district," she said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-massage-parlors-20110323,0,3789745,print.story

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Parents in Japan comb through school that's now a graveyard

Students and teachers at Ookawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki, Japan, knew just what to do in an earthquake. Yet nearly 100 of them died as the tsunami swept in.

by John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times

March 22, 2011

Reporting from Ishinomaki, Japan

Tatsuhiro Karino paused at the top of the muddy hill, took his wife, Masako, by the hand and led her slowly down to the ruins of the elementary school that entombed the body of their daughter, Misaki.

Dwarfed by four mammoth cranes digging into the wreckage, the 40ish construction worker gently pulled a veil over his wife's face to shield her from the dust and whiff of death.

But he couldn't protect her from this: the grim task of locating the body of their 8-year-old child, among the 94 students and teachers killed when their school was leveled March 11 in nature's twin strike of shaking ground and torrential wave.

The couple, who also lost their 11-year-old son, Tetsuya, in the devastation, Tuesday joined a clutch of fellow parents asking the same maddening question: How could so many children among the 108 at the school have perished when they followed all the safety rules for a natural disaster?

Authorities in this coastal town attribute the deaths to a turn of events no one had anticipated. With its first violent jolt, the magnitude 9 earthquake killed 10 teachers at Ookawa Elementary School, plunging the students into chaos.

Survivors say the children were urged by three remaining instructors to follow a long-practiced drill: Don't panic, just walk single file to the safety zone of the school's outdoor playground, an area free of falling objects.

For nearly 45 minutes, the students stood outside and waited for help. Then, without warning, the monstrous wave swept in, demolishing what was left of the school and carrying most of the students to their deaths. Twenty-four survived.

"Those children did everything that was asked of them, that's what's so tragic," said Haruo Suzuki, a former teacher here. "For years, we drilled earthquake safety. They knew an event like this wasn't child's play. But no one ever expected a killer tsunami."

Photos: Parents search rubble of school for their children

Across Japan's northeastern coast, at least 125 students from kindergarten to college have been confirmed dead, with about 1,600 still missing, authorities say.

Most of those deaths occurred here, at a school that sat in a scenic glen shaded by towering pine trees. But on Tuesday, the Karinos could see none of the beauty of their surroundings as they picked through the piles of debris in search of their daughter.

Earlier in the day, while walking amid a small cadre of soldiers under gray skies, Tatsuhiro Karino had spotted something he both did and didn't want to see: the body of his son.

"I saw his face and I knew it was him right away," he said. "I knelt down next to him and I told him that I already missed him."

Workers carried the boy's small frame up a muddy rise from the school, laying it beside several other covered bodies. Masako Karino calmly lifted the brown shroud from her child's face, and she and her husband moved their hands along the body, a silent gesture of reassurance, as if to say, "Everything is going to be OK, son." Then, slowly, they carried his body to a waiting truck.

"He was so clever," Tatsuhiro said later as he sat on a curb consoling his wife. "He wanted to one day design computer games. He loved the cookies his mother made. I'll always remember that."

Nearby, workers opened the shroud of each arriving corpse, wiping down the faces with water to help in the identification process, as hovering parents picked through recovered personal effects: a basketball, sports team photos, a row of prim red backpacks.

Suddenly, one man dropped to his knees and wailed at the sight of a body being loaded into a truck.

There was anger mixed with the grief. Some parents refused to attribute the deaths to a cruel twist of fate.

"The teacher should have gotten those children to a higher place," said Yukiyo Takeyama, who lost two daughters, aged 9 and 11.

Speaking as though in a trance, she explained that she initially wasn't worried the day the earthquake struck because her daughters had always talked of the disaster drill they knew by heart. But hours afterward, there was still no word from the school.

At dawn the following day, her husband, Takeshi, drove out toward the school until the road buckled and disappeared underwater. He walked the rest of the way, reaching the clearing near the river where he had delivered his children countless times.

"He said he just looked at that school and he knew they were dead," Takeyama said. "He said no one could have survived such a thing." She paused and sobbed. "It's tragic."

Soon after bidding farewell to their son, the Karinos were once again holding hands, back amid the mountains of wreckage, looking for their second child. At one point, Tatsuhiro broke free and rushed to pull a twisted gray bicycle from the rubble, then turned away in silence. It wasn't Misaki's.

"I travel in my job and I would call home every night and talk to her," he recalled. "She would say, 'Dad, I miss you. Come home.' "

As the heavy machinery rumbled past, the couple continued their search, passing a broken wall bearing the inscription by Japanese writer Kenji Miyazawa that had been hand-painted by students long before the tsunami.

"We will not be beaten by the rain or the wind or the storms," it read.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-school-20110323,0,6068610,print.story

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Illegal immigrants disguised as U.S. Marines fail to get through border checkpoint

Thirteen illegal immigrants disguised themselves as U.S. Marines –- donning battle dress uniforms and caps -- in a failed attempt to get through a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint last week east of San Diego, authorities said.

The driver of the white van carrying the immigrants and another man, both U.S. citizens, were arrested March 14 at the I-8 checkpoint near Campo and charged with alien smuggling, according to U.S. Border Patrol officials.

Three of the illegal immigrants were detained as witnesses, while the rest were returned to Mexico, officials said.

The van drew suspicion in part because it had an altered U.S. Government license plate, authorities said. The investigation is being conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

The immigrants all had Marine-style haircuts and the name tag "Perez" on the their camouflage uniforms, U.S. Marine Corps officials said.

Such ploys have a long history along the border. Over the years, immigrants have disguised themselves as hard-hatted contractors and utility repairmen, and smugglers have painted and placed decals on cars to look like Border Patrol or other government vehicles.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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From the New York Times

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Race Issues Rise for Miami Police

MIAMI — The video, shot with a hand-held camera, shows brawny Miami police officers breaking down doors and hauling handcuffed African-American suspects off some of the city's toughest streets. “We hunt,” one officer says in the five-and-a-half-minute clip. “I like to hunt.”

But it was not a source of embarrassment for Miami's police chief, Miguel A. Exposito. The video was part of a reality television pilot, “Miami's Finest SOS,” a project with the enthusiastic backing of Chief Exposito. “Our guys were proactively going out there, like predators,” he says during his cameo in the video, which surfaced online in January.

A few weeks later, a Miami police officer shot and killed a black man during a traffic stop at North Miami Avenue and 75th Street in the Little Haiti neighborhood. The man, Travis McNeil, 28, was unarmed and never left the driver's seat of his rental car when he was shot once in the chest, members of his family said.

Mr. McNeil was the seventh African-American man to be shot and killed by Miami police officers in eight months. The shootings in this racially polarized city have led to marches on the Police Department's headquarters and calls for a Justice Department investigation, and the city manager has initiated an investigation into the chief's record.

After pushing for action for weeks, the families of the seven shooting victims will speak at a City Commission meeting on Thursday. Some families are demanding that Chief Exposito be dismissed.

“I don't understand how the powers that be can allow these things to keep happening,” Sheila McNeil, the mother of Mr. McNeil, said of the Feb. 10 shooting death of her son. “Something is drastically wrong.”

Chief Exposito, a burly 37-year veteran who became chief in November 2009, defended his leadership. “We don't have a violent police department,” he said in an interview last week. “You'll find our officers are very compassionate with the people they deal with. They will try to de-escalate situations rather than resorting to deadly force.”

The officer who shot Mr. McNeil is Reinaldo Goyo, a member of the city's elite gang unit who appeared in the “Miami's Finest SOS” video. (The TV show has since been shelved.)

Saying on the video: “I've got some style. I've got some flavor” while wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the words “The Punisher,” Detective Goyo says he and his partner inherited the nicknames Crockett and Tubbs after the lead characters in the 1980s TV show “Miami Vice.” “It's got a nice little ring to it,” he says.

Detective Goyo would not comment, a police spokesman said. A lawyer for Detective Goyo did not respond to phone messages.

Chief Exposito said he thought the video was “excellent,” although in an e-mail to the production company in December, he acknowledged that he regretted using the word “predator” and asked that his quotation be changed. In another e-mail to one of his assistants, he wrote: “This statement would add fuel to the fire. They need to soften it!”

In an interview last week, Chief Exposito said the video was not supposed to be for public consumption. “I had a problem with the production company — it was not supposed to be on YouTube or anywhere else.”

The chief also defended the officer who said, “I like to hunt.”

“Hunting doesn't mean you go kill people,” the chief said. “Hunting means you go out there and capture people.”

Miami has a long history of racially charged police shootings, some of which combusted into deadly riots and Justice Department inquiries that ended with police officers in prison. The pattern this time is familiar: All seven men who were fatally shot by the police were African-American; the police officers who shot them are all Hispanic.

“There is a wide range of growing concern in the community regarding the apparent lack of communication and response to these incidents by the City of Miami Police Department,” Representative Frederica S. Wilson, a Democrat from Miami, wrote in a recent letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., asking the Justice Department to investigate.

Questions about Chief Exposito's leadership have galvanized some leaders of the African-American community, who say that two of the men shot by the police were unarmed. Police officials would not describe details, but they have said that during both shootings, the officers had reason to believe their lives were in danger.

Community leaders also expressed outrage that a 12-year veteran of the city's gang unit, Ricardo Martinez, shot and killed two men within nine days last August. Officer Martinez returned to his job six days after fatally shooting one man, then shot and killed another three days later. Before the shootings, he was under investigation for allegedly selling seized phones.

One officer being responsible for two fatal shootings in such a short period of time is highly unusual, national experts on police forces say. Typically, officers are assigned to desk duty after a shooting pending an inquiry.

“What does that tell you about the chief's judgment?” said the Rev. Anthony Tate, president of the civil rights organization Pulse and pastor of New Resurrection Community Church in the Liberty City neighborhood.

Chief Exposito said that the inquiry had been initiated by his department, and that it would have been inappropriate to keep Officer Martinez off the street because of an allegation of wrongdoing. In December, Officer Martinez was charged with selling stolen Bluetooth phone headsets. He has been dismissed.

Mr. Tate, two Miami city commissioners and other community leaders have repeatedly called for the chief's dismissal. Chief Exposito was a major in the property room and in charge of a compliance task force before being elevated two years ago to police chief by Mayor Tomas P. Regalado. Since then, the chief and the mayor have feuded bitterly over a variety of issues.

City Commissioner Richard P. Dunn II was the first on the commission to call for the chief's dismissal. “It's not personal. He's just not competent to be a chief, that's all,” said Mr. Dunn, whose district includes the neighborhoods where all seven fatal shootings occurred.

“These shootings have us sitting on a time bomb,” he said. “Everyone wonders: When is the next one going to happen? And the fact the chief is still here just makes Miami look like a banana republic.”

Chief Exposito said that after the first of the fatal shootings, last July, he invited the F.B.I. to attend the department's internal inquiry, a gesture his predecessors had not offered, he said. “This is not something I was forced to do,” he said.

The chief's critics say his leadership is markedly different from that of his predecessor, John F. Timoney, a deputy police commissioner in New York in the Giuliani administration.

During Mr. Timoney's seven-year tenure, the department once went 22 months without having a police officer fire a weapon. When Mr. Exposito succeeded Mr. Timoney in November 2009, he assigned more than 100 officers to “tactical units” to try to curb violent crime.

The tactical units, including the gang unit whose officers have been responsible for the majority of the most recent shootings, have arrested hundreds of suspects and removed 400 more guns from the street in 2010 than in 2009, the chief said.

During those sweeps, “seven people decided they were not going to obey the law and not adhere to the police orders,” said Armando Aguilar, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the police union, “and they ended up getting shot.”

The chief's fate is in the hands of the city manager, Tony E. Crapp Jr. In late February, Mr. Crapp hired a former senior F.B.I. agent, Paul R. Philip, to assess the department's record.

Mr. Philip, who headed the F.B.I.'s Miami field office, said in an interview that he compared the number of police shootings in 2009, the last year of Mr. Timoney's leadership, with the first 15 months of Chief Exposito's tenure. During Mr. Timoney's final year as chief, seven officers shot at suspects, killing four and missing three others. Under Chief Exposito, there have been 10 shootings, with seven fatalities.

“It seemed to be a concern that the department was engaged in an accelerated rate of shootings, but there doesn't appear to be,” Mr. Philip said. “The data seems to support the chief.”

Mr. Philip said his review did not include interviewing police officers who fired their weapons, witnesses or the family members of victims. Determining whether each of the shootings was justified is the state attorney's job.

The chief said he was gratified that “someone with the stature of Paul Philip is agreeing with me.” He added: “I've been saying all along, we're trying to get violent crime under control in that community. Unfortunately when you do that, you will be confronted by people who are armed and dangerous.”

Community leaders said they were upset about the pace of the Police Department's own inquiries. They complained that police investigators had not taken a statement from Kareem Williams, 31, who is Mr. McNeil's cousin and was shot three times as he sat with Mr. McNeil in the rental car last month. Mr. Williams, who left the hospital two days later, told his family that the officer began shooting without saying a single word, Mrs. McNeil said.

Not long ago, Mrs. McNeil met with Chief Exposito, who spoke about police procedures on the use of deadly force, she said. She added that the “impersonal” nature of the discussion had left her frustrated and sad.

“When your son has been shot,” she said, “you don't want to hear about policies.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/us/23miami.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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U.S. Returns Young Girl, a Citizen, to Guatemala

Leonel Ruiz, a landscaper in Brentwood, N.Y., was waiting at Kennedy International Airport on the early morning of March 11 for his 4-year-old daughter, Emily, to arrive home from a trip to Guatemala. The plane arrived hours late, but Emily was not on it, and neither was her grandfather, who was supposed to be escorting her back.

It took several hours for Mr. Ruiz to learn what had happened. Emily, a United States citizen, and her grandfather, a Guatemalan traveling with a valid work visa, had been detained by immigration authorities at Dulles International Airport near Washington, where the plane had been diverted because of bad weather. The officials had told Emily's grandfather that because of an immigration infraction two decades ago, he would not be allowed to stay in the country.

That has left Emily, a pigtailed native of Long Island, in an unusual limbo. As a citizen, she has the right to re-enter her country. But her parents are illegal immigrants, which has complicated the prospect of a reunion.

Today, Emily is in Guatemala, her parents are struggling to bring her home, and lawyers and federal officials are arguing over parental responsibility and citizenship rights. The Ruizes find themselves on the front lines of a heated immigration debate: how to treat families in which the parents are here illegally, while their children, born in the United States, are citizens.

The case comes as elected officials across the country have pushed for bills to end automatic citizenship for children, born here, who are sometimes referred to pejoratively as anchor babies. Immigrant advocates say the proposals are antithetical to American ideals.

There are two conflicting versions of the Ruiz story. Officials at Customs and Border Protection say they offered Mr. Ruiz the chance to pick up Emily at the airport, but he “elected to have her return to Guatemala with her grandfather.” The customs agency “strives to reunite U.S. citizen children with their parents,” Lloyd M. Easterling, a spokesman, said Tuesday.

But such a meeting could have put Mr. Ruiz at risk of detention, and he said he was never offered that option. In an interview conducted in Spanish, Mr. Ruiz, who speaks little English, said that an agent spoke to him over the telephone in English and laid out two choices: Emily could enter the custody of the State of Virginia, or she could return to Guatemala with her grandfather.

Terrified that she would be given up for adoption if she entered state custody, Mr. Ruiz said, he agreed to put her on a plane back to Guatemala. “We were very worried, and my wife was crying and crying at what was happening,” Mr. Ruiz said.

He said he would have gone to pick up Emily, and was in fact preparing to do so, but was not given the chance. “If we had to go there, we would have gone there,” he said.

The family's lawyer, David M. Sperling, is planning to travel to Guatemala next week to escort Emily back to Long Island.

“She was treated like a second-class citizen or worse,” Mr. Sperling said. “She's a U.S. citizen, and she's entitled to the same rights as any other U.S. citizen.”

Immigrant advocates have seized on the Ruiz case as a sign of what may come if new legislation curtails the citizenship rights of illegal immigrants' children.

“The case is alarming because it shows what can happen once you start treating kids who are born here whose parents are undocumented with less rights than a full-blown citizen,” said Jeanne A. Butterfield, a former executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association who has been acting as an informal adviser to Mr. Ruiz's lawyers.

Last week, Arizona, which has become a national flash point in the immigration debate, rejected a measure aimed at pushing the Supreme Court to rule against automatic citizenship for American-born children of illegal immigrants. But elected officials in other states, like Kansas and California, have also signaled a desire to change the law to make it harder for such children to stay in the country.

The Ruizes embody the difficulties of a family divided by citizenship. Mr. Ruiz, 32, was born and raised in a small village outside Guatemala City. He came to the United States illegally in 1996 because, he said, “we were in a very poor situation in my country.”

He settled on Long Island, finding work tending lawns. He eventually married another Guatemalan, Brenda Dubon, and they had two children: Emily and Christopher, 3.

Mr. Ruiz said he and his wife sent Emily to Guatemala for the winter because they worried that the cold weather in New York would aggravate her asthma. They are distraught, he said, that the family has been kept apart.

“This is very unfair because she is a citizen,” he said, “and she is a very little girl.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/nyregion/23citizen.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Holder Meets With Police Chiefs

Police chiefs from around the country, meeting Tuesday with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., supported longer prison terms for gun-carrying felons as a way to combat a rise in police deaths in the line of duty.

Mr. Holder directed the 93 United States attorneys nationwide to identify repeat offenders for possible prosecution under federal law that would make them eligible for stiffer sentences. Last year, 162 officers died in the line of duty, up from 117 in 2009.

This year, 49 have lost their lives, a 20 percent rise from the same time last year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/us/23brfs-HOLDERMEETSW_BRF.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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