BY ADAM WALLWORTH
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
FAYETTEVILLE - The first Northwest Arkansas case to involve members of a local immigration enforcement program ended with one maximum sentence and almost $300,000 in fines Monday.
Acambaro Mexican Restaurants, Garcia's Distributors Inc. and Garibaldi Restaurant were sentenced to probation and nearly $300,000 in fines for harboring and shielding illegal aliens for commercial gain.
Unlike the corporations, the four people who ran the businesses saw their charges reduced to misdemeanors. Charges of money laundering had been previously dropped.
Of the four operators, Arturo Reyes Jr., 35, was judged the most culpable and sentenced to six months in federal prison and ordered to pay $5,000 in fines.
His brother Armando Reyes, 33, was sentenced to five months in prison and ordered to pay $5,000 in fines.
The brothers pleaded guilty to knowingly hiring illegal aliens. They will be given credit for three months served in the Benton County jail.
Arturo Reyes' wife, Silvia Reyes, 36, was sentenced to three years' probation and ordered to pay $3,000 in fines.
Lucila Huaracha, 33, a bookkeeper, got three years' probation and $2,500 in fines.
Silvia Reyes and Huaracha pleaded guilty to entering the country illegally.
The four were among 19 arrested in morning raids conducted December 10, 2007. The raids sparked debate over the role of the Immigration Criminal Apprehension task force, which had just been created to allow local officers to enforce federal immigration laws.
The raid was dubbed the first major action taken by the task force, which seized more than $3 million in property and froze bank accounts. Police affidavits cited movements of large sums of cash that were termed unusual and a "flagrant disregard" for immigration and employment laws.
The plea agreement included misdemeanor sentences for the four defendants and a chance to pay $400,000 to avoid forfeiting property. U.S. District Judge Jimm L. Hendren questioned how people would perceive the case.
Hendren raised that question again before sentencing the corporations, which are solely owned by Arturo Reyes Sr., the patriarch of the Reyes family, several of whom filled the courtroom.
Hendren said he labored over the sentence, which he said could be seen as a payoff. A person arrested for transporting drugs wouldn't be allowed to pay the government to keep the car they were driving after it was seized, he said.
Milton DeJesus, attorney for the corporations, unsuccessfully argued that the corporations didn't have the money to pay fines and against looking to Arturo Reyes Jr. for the cash.
Hendren opted for fines less than the maximum, which could have topped out at $1.5 million in total for the three corporations. The largest fine was to Acambaro with multiple restuarant locations in Northwest Arkansas, at $250,000; Garcia's was fined $25,000 and Garibaldi's $20,000.
Acambaro was also given five years' probation; the other two were each given two years' probation.
Assistant U.S. attorney Chris Plumlee said he was satisfied with the outcome of the trial, which he said had always been against the corporations.
Plumlee said that managers of the various restaurants were hiring illegal aliens under the direction of the corporation's officers. He said that tying the crimes to the four was more difficult than proving the corporations were guilty.
"Our case against them was never as strong as it was against the corporations," Plumlee said.
Managers of the individual businesses were knowingly hiring illegal aliens, Plumlee said. Had there been more documentation, the government could have sought more serious charges against the brothers.
Plumlee said it wasn't very likely the Reyes brothers would have seen the 10 years in prison that the original charges brought. He said that even if they had been convicted of the nexthighest charge - knowingly hiring 10 or more illegal aliens in a year - that would have had a maximum sentence of only 12-18 months.
The case was a difficult one to build, Plumlee said. It was also not a task force case, he said, having begun in 2006, before the group was even formed. The Reyes brothers are to report to federal prison June 12. All four face deportation proceedings.
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/258329/
