THE US REPORT

(Columbia, SC)—Jesus Perez-Laguna, a citizen of Mexico, was sentenced today in federal court in Columbia, SC, on charges stemming from a sex trafficking ring involving at least one teenage girl. Perez-Laguna was sentenced to more than 14 years imprisonment and ordered to pay $52,500 in restitution to his victims. After his release from prison, Perez-Laguna will be on federal supervised release for the rest of his life. As a condition of supervised release, U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Anderson ordered that Perez-Laguna be surrendered to immigration officials for deportation proceedings and further ordered that Perez-Laguna not return to the United States while on supervised release.

In April, Perez-Laguna’s co-defendant, Ciro Bustos-Rosales, was sentenced to 70 months in prison, ordered to pay restitution, and ordered to comply with similar terms and conditions of release as those included in Perez-Laguna’s sentence.

During their guilty plea hearings in September 2007, both men admitted that they were involved with transporting a 14-year-old girl across the border between the United States and Mexico and the border between North Carolina and South Carolina in order for the minor to engage in prostitution. Additionally, both men admitted that they harbored illegal aliens for the purpose of prostitution.

"Perez-Laguna and Bustos Rosales ruthlessly stole the innocence of young girls and profited from their exploitation," said Kenneth Smith, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Investigations in Atlanta. "Bringing these criminals to justice would not have been possible without cooperation among international, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies."

Many Americans express concern not over immigration, but over those who come to the US illegally, possibly with intent to commit crime. Gary Bauer, in the essay, ‘Will Obama’s ‘hateful rhetoric’ draw Hispanic voters?’  for Human Events, noted, “During the first half of 2008, ICE deported 5,889 illegal immigrants in Florida, including 1,251 criminal aliens with criminal records that included everything from murder and sex offenses to drug crimes.  ICE also has played a key role in arresting persons involved in child pornography.” Bauer further notes, “In the first nine months of fiscal year 2008, ICE returned 7,345 illegal aliens to their home countries who had been living in Washington, Oregon and Alaska, a 39 percent increase in the volume of deportations from the three states since 2007.  Of the more than 7,300 deportations, over 2,000 had prior criminal convictions in addition to being in the country illegally.”

Perez-Laguna and Bustos-Rosales are two of three defendants indicted in August, 2007 by a federal grand jury in Columbia following a federal sex trafficking investigation. The third co-defendant, Guadalupe Reyes-Rivera, also known as "Mama Martina," is a fugitive.

[Source: Dept. of Justice Release, Jul, 18, 2008; no photo of the fugitive was posted with the release. Photo by Kay B. Day: Traffic heading north on I-95.)

Sen. John McCain did a solid job of connecting with the American people last night at Federal Hall, in the townhall meeting broadcast on Fox News. Neither mainstream media nor GOP pundits are giving this candidate credit due. Shepard Smith, easily the best looking and most liberal of Fox anchors, disclosed with characteristic angst at the end of the event that while he’d been under the impression the audience would be mixed politically, tickets were distributed to supporters, to Mayor Bloomberg and to independent groups. What the brilliant minds in politics and media are overlooking: Sen. Barack Obama was invited. He could’ve brought Democrats into the mix but declined.

Maybe the audience was friendly, but it’s my opinion you can never be sure what you’re going to get in any mix, even if you think it’s a friendly mix. Just ask Sen. George Allen whose career was derailed when the media assailed him for the use of a word, macaque which most of the media, including large media outlets, didn’t even spell properly. Talk about a character assassination based completely on politics rather than truth. Are you tired of showbiz journalists?

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I keep hearing presidential candidates talk about change. I have to say it's high time the federal government changes. Gov. Mitt Romney's 'Washington is broken' tagline is an ever-present echo.

I ask myself if there's a candidate who can bring about change. So far, the Democrats have promised to raise taxes. No change there. The Republicans have promised to do something about securing the border, but declare (as do the Dems) something must be done about the millions already here illegally. No change there except for the millions in healthcare expenditures. 

In my opinion, the parties are  missing the boat. Candidates have promised change since the country was founded. What we need to do is go back to basics and do the job of running this country efficiently, eliminating fraud, waste and earmarks. Instead of change, I'd like to hear the word, 'Shrink.' We've built a monstrosity of government with structures canny administrators have grown into power blocs. Consider the relatively young US Dept. of Education. Consider the tons of money spent on nonessentials.

Our children cannot possibly fund the government we are building at present. Meanwhile, every time an American walks into a meeting at the UN, it costs the American taxpayer.

Change. That's the oldest pickup line in politics.

(filed by Kay B. Day)

Come see me today at the Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., library, where I'll talk about writing during the panel sessions for the annual book fair. Full details are at Covering Florida.

I covered a story about refugees for The Florida Times-Union. I met this toddler from Kenya and it was pretty much love at first sight. He liked me too—I helped him with his lemonade. He did fine with the hot dog on his own. When I drove home, I put my hand to my hair and it smelled like lemons because he gave me a hug as I was leaving. I was very glad to have the assignment.

You have to hear stories from people who have suffered and endured hardships we can only imagine. Each person I talked to that day, from Somalia, Kenya, Afghanistan and other countries, was overjoyed at coming to our country. It took some of them years to complete the paperwork and requirements. I thought of my own ancestors who crossed an ocean in a rickety boat, landing in Charleston, South Carolina. It was hard for them to come to America too. They had to seek permission and that could take some time.

Refugees like the people I interviewed don’t come here for financial reasons. They come here because their lives are in danger, because they have no freedom as a result of their religion, skin color or for other reasons. The best thing about my country—I’ve written this many times—is that all these different cultures and faiths come together and we make something greater than ourselves out of all those disparate parts.

Welcome to my United States. I hope you’ll visit The US Report and I hope when you do, you’ll express your own thoughts in the comments section. And I hope you’ll come to understand that what you see in the media is often not the way things really are here. I suspect the same is true of many other countries as well. (Filed by Kay B. Day)