Illegal Aliens Los Angeles

Eighty poor immigrants are living in their own apartments instead of on the streets this Christmas because a priest and his parish decided that it takes more than charitable donations to conquer homelessness. Exactly one year ago, Dolores Mission and La Placita churches, the two traditional and overburdened refuges for Los Angeles' homeless Latino immigrants, issued a call to other churches in the city's crowded core to open their doors to those with no place else to go. At St.

"Good luck to you," a Los Angeles federal judge told Tony Alvarado on Monday as he sentenced the gang member turned model citizen to two years probation for illegally reentering the United States. U.S. District Judge George H. King's award of straight probation came as something of a surprise.

An illegal immigrant from Mexico has told federal authorities he was forced to watch as up to 20 men raped and sodomized his aunt and girlfriend last week while the three were held hostage by smugglers in a Canoga Park apartment. Between the sexual assaults, Angel Garcia said, the smugglers beat him and another man with wrenches. Both men were driven from the Roscoe Boulevard apartment to a remote area near Moorpark, in Ventura County, and dumped in a field.

A Mexican man was sentenced to 21 years and eight months in federal prison Monday for his role in a smuggling ring that brutalized and raped illegal immigrants being held for ransom in a Canoga Park safe house. Carlos Garcia Serrano, 36, was found guilty last year, along with five other members of the ring, on charges ranging from hostage-taking to conspiracy to harboring and transporting illegal aliens.

Illegal immigrants and refugees are handicapped in deportation hearings by "incompetent" interpreters and by an Immigration Court practice of translating only parts of proceedings, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles federal court.

Saying he was troubled generally by "a lack of concern" for the rights of immigrants who face deportation, a federal district judge on Monday ruled that all portions of proceedings in U.S. immigration courts should be translated into the language of the defendants. Sandra Pettit, an attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, called the decision significant.

The disheveled teen-agers, who moments earlier had been slouching on sofas, talking loudly over the blaring television set, suddenly shot up, as if electricity had coursed through the room. "Shhhhhh! She's coming," someone yelled in Spanish. "Turn off the TV!" another shouted. "The flowers!" said another. "Where are the flowers?"

The nation's top immigration court appellate official participated three years ago on a then-secret government committee that shaped plans to apprehend and deport alien terrorists, according to recently declassified government documents. The lawyer for a group of Los Angeles-area immigrants fighting deportation, Marc Van Der Hout, charged Wednesday that it was "a clear conflict of interest" for the official to serve on a policy-making panel while supervising the immigration courts.

A rookie Los Angeles policewoman was shot to death in Sun Valley early Monday morning by an assailant who in turn was fatally wounded during a brief gun battle with the officer's partner. Tina Kerbrat, 34, was the department's first female officer killed in the line of duty. Kerbrat, who stepped out of her black-and-white cruiser shortly after midnight to question two men drinking beer in public, had no time to speak or draw her gun, according to police accounts.

He didn't want a trip to Disneyland, a horseback ride or a visit from his favorite celebrity. Arturo Medina's final wish was to become legal. The 10-year-old leukemia-stricken Mexican boy was granted his last wish Friday morning, just hours before his death. Ernest Gustafson, the Immigration and Naturalization Service's Los Angeles district director, personally handed Arturo his very own temporary residence card earlier in the day. "He was afraid to go back, because he didn't know Mexico.

The leader of a group of immigrant smugglers who held people for ransom in San Fernando Valley houses while brutalizing and raping some of them was sentenced Monday to life in federal prison. According to trial testimony, Mario Arenas-Morales, 34, ordered his men, five of whom have been convicted so far, to rape two female immigrants, beat and torture two men and abandon them without shoes in deserted areas in 1999. U.S. District Judge George H.

More than 40 illegal immigrants from Mexico were in Immigration and Naturalization Service custody Friday after being found in a Los Angeles apartment, authorities said. Federal officials were interviewing the immigrants to determine whether they were being held against their will and whether smugglers were extorting money from their families, said Sharon Gavin, an INS spokeswoman.

The police chief of San Salvador on Wednesday joined local politicians and activists in fighting the deportation of Alex Sanchez, a reformed gang member and car thief who was turned over to federal immigration officials by the Los Angeles Police Department.

An exuberant, overflow crowd of 20,000 clamored for a new amnesty for undocumented workers Saturday at a labor-sponsored forum that showcased a new and formidable alliance among unions and religious and community groups. "This is going to affect policy and politics in Los Angeles for years to come," said Miguel Contreras, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

Tapping into a cherished immigrant dream, labor unions and scores of community and religious groups expect to draw more than 10,000 workers and their families to the Los Angeles Sports Arena today to demonstrate support for a new general amnesty. The gathering is the last in a series of immigration forums sponsored by the AFL-CIO in recent months, but will be far larger and more diverse than those held in Atlanta, New York and Chicago.

A former gang member facing possible deportation was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor Thursday and apparently will be permitted to stay in this country. Tony Alvarado, 28, an illegal immigrant who was convicted in 1990 of illegal possession of PCP for sale, has been deported twice, returning both times. But Alvarado says his gang affiliations are a thing of the past. He has a letter from Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City) praising his efforts to shield children from gangs and drugs.

MacDonald Caballero, 12 years old and handcuffed to chains, seemed a bit bewildered as he shuffled into a crowded immigration courtroom Tuesday to plead that his $25,000 bail be reduced. Caballero, who said he is from Nicaragua and entered this country alone and illegally 2 1/2 months ago, was arrested by Los Angeles police officers in March and is being held in a county juvenile detention facility while he awaits a deportation hearing.

"100 Beautiful Girls!" beckoned the blinking marquee at the downtown dance hall. Inside, however, as Latin rhythms blared from the dance floor, only a smattering of hostesses could be seen entertaining their customers at the soft-drink bar. Dating back decades to the dime-a-dance era, clubs like this one have come to cater to a primarily Latino clientele and to depend on the illegal immigrant work force for their hostesses.

Tony Alvarado's past cuts through his life like a razor. Had he been born in the United States, he might have shed his rap as a juvenile gang punk in the course of his 10-year struggle to redeem himself. Alvarado, 28, has a letter from Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) praising him for shielding kids from the siren call of gangs and drugs. He was honored by the Los Angeles Police Department for helping wrestle a suspect into handcuffs. He married a U.S.

An illegal immigrant from Mexico has told federal authorities he was forced to watch as up to 20 men raped and sodomized his aunt and girlfriend last week while the three were held hostage by smugglers in a Canoga Park apartment. Between the sexual assaults, Angel Garcia said, the smugglers beat him and another man with wrenches. Both men were driven from the Roscoe Boulevard apartment to a remote area near Moorpark, in Ventura County, and dumped in a field.