652: ICE Capades

Ira Glass

I had a weird conversation with a congressman this week. This is Mark Pocan, Democrat out of Wisconsin. The main sponsor of a bill to do this thing that protesters have been calling for the last few months, abolish ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. His bill would terminate the agency. Immigration enforcement would continue, but a bipartisan commission would hand off the stuff that ICE does to other federal agencies, and eliminate anything it deems inhumane or cruel, or a violation of international agreements. After one year, the agency would not exist. It would be abolished. But the politics of this are so peculiar that in our half hour conversation, the congressman could not bring himself to say the actual words that he would abolish ICE.

Ira Glass

But just yes or no. Do you want to abolish the agency?

Ira Glass

To understand why he was talking this way, let me tell you the story of his last two weeks in Congress. It began when he proposed this bill to abolish ICE. Mainly, he and his co-sponsors were objecting to the way that President Trump has the agency going after undocumented immigrants these days. One of his co-sponsors, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal told me they had no illusions about this ever making it to the floor of the House.

Ira Glass

So they introduced their bill, and it got some Democratic support. But you know who really loved it? Republicans.

Ira Glass

This is the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

Ira Glass

For months now, actually, conservative media have loved any hint that the Democrats want to abolish ICE. Fits into their whole narrative that the Democrats are soft on immigration, and adds a kind of wingnut extremist edge to it, like people who call for the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service. In that way, abolish ICE is the build the wall of the left, blunt like a punch to the jaw, exciting for those who believe in it, whackadoodle for those who don't. And if you get right down to it, maybe not the very best way to fix the problem that it is supposed to fix, but that is not what we're here talking about today.

Here are Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham, gleeful on Fox.

Ira Glass

President Trump tweeted, "The two biggest opponents of ICE in America today are the Democratic Party and MS-13!"

Ira Glass

It didn't take long, just one day. The Republican leadership in the House was like, you want to abolish ICE? Great. Here's House Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy.

Ira Glass

So Mark Pocan and a few of his co-sponsors did something you do not see very often. They told everybody, we have this bill, don't vote for it. Basically, it's a trap.

Ira Glass

Apparently, the Republicans saw this, that all the Democrats were ready to go on record and vote, all of them together, and say they do not want to abolish ICE, which is exactly the opposite message that the Republicans want them to be carrying into midterms. So they ditched that plan. The bill didn't come to the fore. Instead, this week, Republicans in the House took a different tack.

Ira Glass

Behold, a House resolution in support of ICE and also incidentally officially denouncing anybody who calls for the agency's abolishment. Calls to abolish ICE, it says, are an insult to these heroic law enforcement officers who make sacrifices every day to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and protect our safety and security. No surprise it passed easily, 244 to 35. Most Democrats, 133 of them, simply voted present, and thus avoided being on the record either for or against the agency. That is just how radioactive, how politically dangerous this whole idea of abolishing ICE is. The phrase, abolish ICE, does not even appear in the Democrats' bill to abolish ICE.

And I suppose that's why Congressman Pocan did not want to say the phrase out loud with me. Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, we have two stories from this hot potato of a federal agency, one that does so many things I bet you know nothing about, one that has expanded its powers rapidly. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, We'll Talk About It in the Car.

So in this show about ICE, before we get started, it seems like it might be a good idea to do a very quick primer on what exactly ICE is. The agency has only been around for 15 years. It was created after September 11th. The idea was, Customs and Border Protection would be the agency at the actual border stopping people there. ICE would deal with the interior of the country, and a lot of its mission at the beginning was very post-9/11. It was all about catching terrorists, arms traffickers, cyber crimes, transnational gangs, child predators, catching criminals of various sorts.

One department of ICE went after undocumented immigrants. But it was not nearly as robust. It did not do as much until after immigration reform failed in 2007. Since then, that part of the agency has stepped up its game under rules set by each new administration. President Obama still has the record for the most people deported, but President Trump, of course, has unleashed agents like they have never been unleashed before. Today, they can question pretty much anybody they meet and put them into deportation proceedings, even if they have no criminal record, even if they have lived here productively and peacefully for decades.

ICE has brought back worksite raids. They're involved with the family separations, along with Customs and Border Protection. This week, there were, and of course it's a unique week, because every day, families that the Trump administration separated at the border are being reunited. The administration has a court imposed deadline to get everybody back together by Thursday, July 26. That's why they acknowledged that they are not going to make it, or maybe even come close, which brings us to our first story today. And OK, I realize there is a lot of coverage out there of parents being reunited with children.

But we came across this audio that we thought was unusual, and took us inside the world of that in this way that we had not heard elsewhere. A reporter named Jeremy Raff, who's with The Atlantic, has been following this one lawyer in Texas for this documentary he's making. And he's friends with one of the producers of our show, Nadia Reiman and shared with her this material that he's been videotaping of this lawyer trying to reunite one mom and her son. Quick warning that we've unbeeped the curse words here in the podcast. If you prefer a beeped version of our show, maybe you're listening with kids, it's at our website. Here's Nadia and you will hear from Jeremy, the reporter, later in the story.

Nadia Reiman

Jodi Goodwin, the immigration lawyer, speaks pretty good Spanish for a white girl. She's effortless in it, moves through her words in neatly accented Norteno tones, dropping perfectly placed Spanish f-bombs.

Nadia Reiman

That's her on the phone with an ICE officer. She's in Harlingen, Texas, way down in the southern tip, where she's been practicing immigration law for more than 20 years. So she knows these guys. She's grown up with them.

Nadia Reiman

She's on the phone trying to get a Honduran woman named Anita out of detention and reunited with her son, Jenri. They have been separated for about a month. An ICE agent told her that Anita should be out on bond, but she's not.

Nadia Reiman

Even the ICE agents that Jodi's known for over two decades have conflicting info. One says, yeah, she should be out soon on bond. The other is like, no, we're not giving bonds anymore. But Jodi talks to a manager, and she gets them to release Anita. Anita's kid, Jenri, though, he's at a shelter nearby. It's called BCFS. To get him out, Jodi has his birth certificate and Anita's ID. She's emailed all the necessary paperwork, but she's still not sure how it will play out.

She's seen other parents do this, and be told, you can visit for an hour, but you can't have your child back. Come back again tomorrow. One parent had been told this four times. Four days in a row, they showed up, hung out with their kid for an hour, and still, no reunification. So recently, some parents have been buying tents and threatening to set up a camp right outside the shelters, refusing to leave until they get their kids back. So Jodi tells Anita about this and says, do you want to sleep outside if that's what it takes to get Jenri back?

Nadia Reiman

Anita's like, yes. While Jodi is explaining all of this to Anita, she's going through this huge stack of papers. She turns one page, and there is a black and white photo of Anita and her son. It was taken just a few moments before border patrol separated them. Anita sees this picture, and starts to tear up. Jodi notices.

Nadia Reiman

And she's like, hey, we're in this fight together.

Nadia Reiman

Those tears, we're going to save those tears for when you get your kid back.

Nadia Reiman

The mama bear is going to come out. We're going to be a mama bear tomorrow. So the next morning, they drive to the shelter armed with paperwork. It looks like a church. There are basketball courts outside, there's classrooms. Jodi and Anita knock on the door, and they go inside. And then, some BCFS employees take them to this room, and there's Jenri. No need for tents or mama bears or anything. They're ready to release them. Anita's thrilled, but her five year old, who hasn't seen her in a month--

Nadia Reiman

It's not clear why it was so quick to get him out. Jodi's best guess is that it's some combination of all the media attention plus the upcoming deadline for reunifying parents and kids. On top of that, if Anita had set up a tent outside, which she was totally ready to do, it wouldn't have been great press.

So all this audio was gathered by my friend, Jeremy Raff, from The Atlantic, and I'm just going to let him mostly take it from here. When Jodi and Anita went to pick up Jenri, he was there, but he wasn't allowed in the shelter. So he waited outside. It was like 100 degrees out, so he was under a tree.

Nadia Reiman

I've seen a bunch of videos and photos online of parents being reunited with their kids, grabbing them like a life raft while the kid looks confused and far away. But they usually stop here. I'd never really heard what happens next, once the parents and kids are left trying to figure out how to be with each other again after weeks of not knowing where the other slept or ate, or when they were coming back. Jeremy is with Anita and Jenri while all of this is happening.

Nadia Reiman

He's saying, toys, toys.

Nadia Reiman

He's telling her that he brought her water. He's saying, mommy, I brought you water for you to drink too.

Nadia Reiman

So Anita's asking him if there were lots of kids with him, and he says that he was cold, and so he turns and he says to someone, teacher, I'm cold, can I have a blanket. And that person, who I'm guessing is probably like an ICE officer or something, or a--

Nadia Reiman

Someone there tells them, no, not yet. And then when they finally give him a blanket, Jenri's saying that he shared it with another kid. And his mom is like you shared it with another child. And he says, yep. And she says, that's really good, sweetie.

Nadia Reiman

Anita's struggling, But Jenri seemed like he was doing just fine. He had chocolate. He was surrounded by toys. The next step was for them to get on a plane to go stay with a relative in another part of the US, while their asylum case was being processed. But it's a small town. There aren't a lot of flights. So they go to a shelter run by Catholic charity, where they can spend the night. When they get there, Jenri is taking in every bit of his mom's attention like a sponge.

Nadia Reiman

So there's this thing that happens. In Spanish, there's two ways of saying, I love you. There's te quiero, which means, I little love you. Like, I love you, but it's for things that are not necessarily permanent. And then there's te amo, which is like, I love you, love you, for like, I love you with a capital L, and that's for things that don't ever go away. And you do not throw a te amo around, but you can say like, te quiero, like a little bit is here.

Nadia Reiman

And so Anita is telling Jenri, she's like, guess what. And he's like, te quiero. And she's like, no, te amo. So she's like no, I really love you.

Nadia Reiman

And he kind of giggles and he's like, te queiro, like, I little love you.

Nadia Reiman

At the shelter, it was actually sisters, not nuns.

Nadia Reiman

We don't actually know a lot of details about what happened to Jenri at BCFS, but that's one of the rules some of the shelters have. You can't touch other kids. The sister told Jeremy she thought Jenri was afraid he was going to be taken away from his mom again.

Nadia Reiman

Anita says, Jenri told her, I am not your son anymore. He said that he didn't want to sleep there. He said the lady, the sister, was a bad lady too.

Ira Glass

Jeremy Raft with The Atlantic. He's making a documentary about this story. You can watch the trailer at theatlantic.com. Nadia Reiman is a producer for our show.

You may remember a few weeks ago, we did a story about another lawyer in Texas, Rochelle Garza, who's trying to get her client out of detention and reunite him with his 12-year-old daughter. Just the other day, we heard from them. She was finally able to get the dad out of custody, and he went out to pick up his daughter at the shelter she was at. They're together now and still in this country.

Coming up, a whole part of ICE that does not want to be part of ICE, and what in the world do they do. That's in a minute on Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Today's show, ICE Capades We have two stories today about the agency, US immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE is such a big agency and does so many things, prosecutes criminals, goes after terrorists, detains tens of thousands of immigrants. Sometimes, one part of the agency is actually at odds with the other parts. You see that in this next act of our program.

Ira Glass

Act Two, The Iceman Cometh. Miki Meek has this story of two brothers who tried to turn the tables on somebody who was doing some pretty bad stuff to them. The way that ICE is involved will become clear as this unfolds. Here's Miki.

Miki Meek

Back in 2012, Christina Corbaci had this meeting that was totally standard, something she'd done hundreds of times, that turned into something she'd never experienced. She's an immigration lawyer in Boston. Two brothers came in, Brigido and Walter, originally from Guatemala. They were living in the US without papers.

Miki Meek

It didn't look good. He and his wife both had deportation orders. Christina told them.

Miki Meek

It was a test, and she passed. The brothers wanted to see if Christina would be honest about their chances. There's a whole world of people who prey on undocumented immigrants, tell them they can get them legal status when their cases are impossible. It's just a way to take their money. Because Christina passed the test, they spilled out the real reason why they were there. It was about an immigration official named Patria Zuniga. She worked for US citizenship and Immigration Services out of their Miami office. They met her through a friend, who said great things about Patria.

Patria got her legal documents to travel out of the country in return. Patria was helping her whole family get green cards. So they called, and from that first conversation on the phone, Walter said she seemed super competent.

Miki Meek

TPS stands for temporary protected status. It's a humanitarian program.

Miki Meek

Patria told them their families were eligible for a particular category of green cards, and that she could help fast track their paperwork. But there'd be a cost, $7,000 for the children, and between $10,000 and $11,000 for each adult. The numbers didn't seem crazy to Brigido. They had lots of fines and violations to clear. But it'd be hard for them to pay all that money upfront. Brigido was a truck driver, and Walter worked construction and ran a small computer repair business. So Patria agreed to let them pay in installments. They used all their savings and started borrowing from family and friends.

And Patria actually drove out to pick up the payments in person. They liked her. She moved here from the Dominican Republic, and became a citizen herself. She came across as smart and confident, but also warm and down to earth, a real family person. She was in her late 40s, and sometimes she brought her two older daughters and grandkid. Patria told Brigido and Walter their green cards should be ready within three to six months, but then she said they hit some delays and extra fees. Patria would tell them, I'm going to need another $200 for mailing. Oh no, this fine came up on your file. That'll be another $1500.

They asked for receipts. She said she'd send them and never did. Then she started disappearing for weeks at a time before suddenly popping back up. Once, she told Walter that she'd had a heart attack.

Miki Meek

They start to wonder if she's ever going to deliver, if they've been scammed. Months drag on. It was hard to talk about this with anyone. They felt ashamed for dragging their families into this. Walter had even referred one of his friends to Patria.

Miki Meek

Patria's phone calls became more aggressive and threatening. She tells them, if they don't turn in all the money fast, she'll cancel their applications. She'll tell ICE agents where they live. Walter refuses to give her money. Brigido still holds out hope that she'll deliver. Going to the police didn't feel like an option, because they were undocumented. Here's Walter.

Miki Meek

He and his wife both started to crack from stress. One day, driving on the highway, he blacked out, barely pulled over in time. All along, they were paying Patria in mostly cash. Walter said she told them straight out that the money was for bribes. She said she and her bosses in Miami had been helping people out like this for 15 years.

Walter says this would be totally normal back home in Guatemala, but his brother Brigido, he understood the payments differently. He thought these were real government fees, though after more than a year, he was fed up. He was out nearly $34,000. Walter was out $28,000. The two of them, they're very different personalities. Walter's talkative, wears his long hair in a ponytail. He used to teach at a university in Guatemala, and uses lots of big words when he speaks. Instead of saying, we had to clear our heads, he'll say we were oxygenating our minds.

Brigido's more reserved, quieter, but more of a leader. He's the older brother, and it's Brigido who decided to start an investigation. He found a guy named Rolando, who was sure Patria was about to deliver his papers. He just had to make one last payment.

Miki Meek

He had Rolando go to the post office and purchase seven separate money orders, each for $1,000. He then sent them to Patria.

Miki Meek

Next, Brigido called a meeting in Worcester, where he lives. It's about an hour west of Boston, and has a big Central American community. He put out word through other undocumented immigrants in town that anyone who'd been in touch with Patria should meet him at a public park.

Miki Meek

This was the moment he realized her scam was much bigger than just him and his brother.

Miki Meek

One woman said she lost $80,000. Other people had taken out high interest loans, second mortgages, or drained their kids' college funds to pay Patria. Lots of them met her the same way the brothers had, through one of their good friends in Worcester, a woman named Nubi Melendez, who was really close to Patria. People dropped off envelopes of cash for Patria at Nubi's house. Brigido purposely kept her in the dark about the meeting. He figured she was in on the scam.

Miki Meek

When you say final consequences, what did that mean?

Miki Meek

Sure, it was dangerous to go after a corrupt immigration official. But by that point, the feeling was, so what. Patria had all their information. She was probably going to get them deported anyway. Again, here's Walter.

Miki Meek

And so this is how days later, Brigido and Walter landed in Christina Corbachi's office. At that meeting at the park, everyone decided Brigido should find a lawyer to talk to. People started calling him Don Brigido as a sign of their respect. So he and Walter went online to research law firms. They chose Christina's because they saw that her boss was a retired immigration judge, they trusted that someone like him would know how to report Patria. His name is William Joyce, and he did have a thought for Christina.

Miki Meek

ICE is in a federal building right across the street from the firm in downtown Boston.

Miki Meek

It just didn't seem that there was any possible way that going directly to ICE, the agency best known for arresting, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants, would end well for Brigido and Walter. Even if they got Patria fired and all their money back, wouldn't ICE have to deport them? But then Christina's boss told her about a separate division within ICE that most people have never heard of, Homeland Security investigations, or HSI. ICE has two big branches. There's the side that does deportations, and then there's this other branch, HSI, which does other kinds of criminal investigations broadly having to do with national security.

They go after human trafficking, money laundering, MS-13, child pornography, and anyone messing with the immigration system. Last year, they were in the news for helping capture the drug lord, El Chapo. HSI is actually the second largest investigative agency after the FBI, with more than 6,000 special agents. Anyway, Christina's boss knew some people at HSI and told her, we don't need to give them any personal details now. Let me just reach out. And HSI, they got back to them, said sure, we'll send an agent over. Remember, they're right across the street.

Miki Meek

The agency promised that they didn't care about anyone's immigration status. They just wanted to get more information about Patria's crime. Still, the very idea of meeting with ICE scared off most people from the park. Out of that group of 40, only five or six other people said they'd show up with Walter and Brigido. The brothers were terrified too. Walter had overstayed his visa, and Brigido had a deportation order. Their wives decide to skip it. So Brigido, Walter and the others showed up early for the meeting.

They sat waiting around a giant conference room table, swiveling nervously in leather chairs on wheels. And then an agent from HSI walked in and introduced himself, a scruffy guy in t-shirt and jeans.

Miki Meek

Agent Rice told me he agreed to the meeting with the lowest possible expectations. Normally, he did a lot of financial crimes and identity fraud, complex schemes where people were forging documents and lying to the government. He had never done a case like this, and when he strolled in, he didn't actually expect to find people there.

Miki Meek

So in some pretty bad Spanish, he attempted to make a joke about ICE, although he couldn't remember the Spanish for me.

Miki Meek

Again, here is Brigido.

Miki Meek

Agent Rice's job is to enforce the laws on the books. A crime is a crime, no matter the legal status of the victims. He told them--

Miki Meek

He says he still has this discretion today, even though so much has changed in the agency under President Trump and so many more people are being deported. That first meeting at the law firm was short, less than an hour, and Rice says he purposely kept it informal. He didn't even write down names, in case it spooked anyone. But he did want Brigido, Walter and the others to know they could trust him. So he took out his HSI badge and passed it around the table. Walter remembers holding it and and Rice telling them--

Miki Meek

Brigido and Rolando showed Rice the money order receipts. Rice was impressed, but it wasn't enough for a federal case. He needed way more evidence. And he needed to understand the extent of the crime. Fairly quickly, he was able to verify that Patria did not work for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, in Miami or anywhere else. She was an imposter. All that paperwork she was supposed to be filing for them, none of it existed in the system. Walter and Brigido were outraged and embarrassed that they'd been tricked so badly.

Agent Rice visited Patria, who denied knowing any of the victims, said she didn't know what they were talking about. Next, Rice needed to track down as many victims as he could. The fact that most people paid in cash was a huge hurdle for the case. He hoped he'd find someone who saved some kind of corroborating documentation, contracts, receipts, bank deposit slips, tax, e-mails, audio recordings, and that they'd talk to him.

Miki Meek

This is why it's so hard to crack down on scammers who victimize undocumented immigrants. They're the perfect victims, desperate for help and not likely to go to law enforcement, much less stick around for years to testify at a trial. So these scams are pervasive. Rice held two more meetings at the law office, and more people from the park showed up. And Rice asked Brigido and Walter to reach out to the other people they knew, and call them right before he did.

Miki Meek

This was the beginning of an unlikely partnership, a partnership that was improbable then and even more improbable now. ICE, the agency that in the last months has been part of the zero tolerance policy, the agency that immigration activists are now calling to be abolished completely, they were going to team up with a group of undocumented immigrants. Brigido told me there were lots of people who didn't want an ICE agent to stop by their house and sit in their living room, who didn't want to set foot in ICE's office in Boston. So Brigido organized a workaround. It was a hair salon in Worcester. The owner was also a victim, and said sure. You can use my place. Rice met with people there.

Miki Meek

For 2 and 1/2 years, he met people at construction sites and fast food joints when they were on breaks from their jobs, other times in random parking lots. Walter and Brigido didn't know lots of the victims, so Rice had to cold call them.

Miki Meek

Still, he wasn't getting much hard documentary evidence. If Patria had filed fraudulent green card applications with the government, they could charge her with immigration fraud, but her scheme never went that far. So he had to look for a financial crime. But this was tough, because Patria had no bank account. Her two daughters did, and Rice did see a lot of cash deposits, but he couldn't trace them back to specific payments that immigrants made to Patria.

Miki Meek

They had nothing, they didn't have a receipt for you. They didn't have any documentation.

Miki Meek

There was one person in particular Rice wanted to get to, the woman who people saw as Patria's co-conspirator, Nubi Melendez. Her house was like a base for Patria in Worcester. Patria met with people there. She told people to leave their money with Nubi when she couldn't come to town. When it came time to confront Nubi, Agent Rice went to her house and sat in the driveway and waited.

Miki Meek

This is Nubi.

Miki Meek

I got to admit, I was amused when Nubi told me that his guy on the street strategy backfired with her at first.

Miki Meek

Turns out, Nubi was not Patria's partner in crime. She, like all the others, was being ripped off.

Miki Meek

Patria had used Nubi as a launch pad to get to all her family and friends in Worcester. They had met through a coworker at McDonald's, and they got really close, or Nubi thought so, anyway. Patria came to her family parties, called all the time just to check in, and visited Nubi in the hospital when she was sick. Nubi had even started thinking about making her the godmother of her son, which is why she felt comfortable introducing her to so many people in Worcester. And the reason Nubi was collecting envelopes of cash for Patria, she told Rice it was because Patria had asked her to. Said, if you do me this favor, I'll give your family a good discount on her fees.

So Nubi did it. But like the others, Nubi's family never got the green cards from Patria they were promised. One time, they seemed really close. Patria told her, the one for your little sister Alba is ready. Just come up to the immigration office in Boston and pick it up. Nubi and the whole family got dressed up, drove up to the office and waited outside like Patria had instructed them. Someone was supposed to come get them. Here's Nubi's little sister Alba. She was in high school at the time.

Miki Meek

Patria did this to other people too. One guy actually flew all the way out to the immigration office in Chicago, and the same thing. No one showed up. As always, Patria had an excuse. But Alba, the teenager, was done. Obama had just signed the executive order that created DACA, and because Alba had been brought into the country when she was just a kid, she was eligible. Patria told her not to apply.

Miki Meek

She says the guilt was intense. People were shunning her in town, and calling her all the time to yell at her. She switched to English here.

Miki Meek

Nubi became a central witness, and she gave Rice some important leads. One time when Rice was at her house, Nubi's phone rang, and it was Patria. Rice had a recording device with him, and so they taped the call. Brigido also started taping calls and giving them to Rice. In this call, Patria is pushing Brigido's wife for more money. Patria talks to her, though, like she's her friend, just trying to help her out.

Miki Meek

She's saying, I know how much this means to you, and it would hurt me to see you throw it all away now after you've come so far.

Miki Meek

Patria insinuates that Nubi is the one taking everyone's payments for herself. She says in a confidential tone, I don't trust Nubi.

Miki Meek

Nubi, Brigido and Walter all said one of the scariest parts of the investigation was having to keep up a front so long with Patria. They were told not to confirm her suspicions that she was the target of a federal investigation, not while Agent Rice was still gathering evidence. And so when Patria harassed them and threatened them, they had to just play along, telling her, we just need a little more time to get the money. No, we're not helping law enforcement. To finally indict Patria, Rice and government prosecutors needed to present their evidence to multiple grand juries.

He delivered subpoenas to Brigido, Nubi, and Walter, who was in the middle of working a job at a construction site when he pulled up. They all knew this was coming. Rice reminded them, this wasn't a suggestion. This was a court order. This was real. Rice said some of the government attorneys he was working with at the time thought this might be the moment when their case would fall apart.

Miki Meek

Brigido had to trust him too. When he got the subpoena, he had a talk with his wife and kids about what might happen.

Miki Meek

Over there meeting in Guatemala.

Miki Meek

It's hard to overstate how weird this whole thing was for them. They trusted Agent Rice. They knew he'd wait outside the courthouse and walk them in. But Brigido told me they still had this fear that Patria might actually have some connections in immigration. Maybe it was a trap.

Miki Meek

The grand jury voted yes for federal prosecutors to move forward with investigating fraud charges against Patria Zuniga. And Rice had other breakthroughs. He subpoenaed a ton of financial records, and found the names of new victims, people who paid through Western Union or bank deposits rather than cash like so many others, and who actually saved their receipts. Rice finally had what he needed to make a proper paper trail.

Miki Meek

The total amount Patria stole was startling, more than $700,000. And that was just from the victims who were willing to come forward. Even more surprising is where the money went. Patria, it turns out, was a huge gambler. There were records of her losing over $175,000 on slot machines at a Rhode Island casino. The rest of it was spent by her daughters on vacations, cell phone bills, Dunkin' Donuts. Nobody was getting their money back. In fact, lots of them are still paying off bank loans and relatives they'd borrowed from.

Agent Rice and his team went in for the arrest. Rice says if she was surprised, she didn't show it.

Miki Meek

She pled guilty to eight counts of federal wire fraud. That's eventually what they got her on. Her daughters were arrested too. Probably the most moving day of this whole story came on June 28, 2016, the day that Patria Zuniga was finally sentenced, about four years after Brigido and the others met up in the park and decided to take her down. It happened in the federal courthouse in Worcester, the epicenter for the whole thing.

The assistant US attorney who prosecuted the case, Jordi de Llano, encouraged them to come to the sentencing. If they wanted, they could stand up in court and read a statement to the judge, explaining how much Patria had harmed them. The judge is allowed to take that into consideration when deciding the sentence.

Miki Meek

In total, 57 people, almost all undocumented or with temporary status, agreed to have their names listed as victims for the government. I wasn't allowed to record in the courthouse, but I was there for this, and the scene was powerful. Families streamed in dressed up in pressed white shirts, slacks and skirts, carrying with them statements that they'd prepared in advance. Teenagers came to speak on behalf of their parents in English.

Miki Meek

There were people in the courtroom that Brigido had never met before. He told me that seeing so many people who'd fallen for Patria's scheme in one place, it helped take away some of the shame and embarrassment about what had happened. Patria sat at a table in front of them wearing a blue jumpsuit and looking down at the ground. The judge asked her if she wanted to give a statement. She stood up. She asked for forgiveness from the court and her family.

But when it became clear that she wasn't going to ask forgiveness from all the victims sitting right behind her, her lawyer jumped in and cut her off. The judge sentenced Patria to six and a half years. The daughters were later sentenced to almost three years. Brigido and Walter wished they'd all gotten more.

I asked the brothers and Nubi, if Patria's crime had happened to them today, would they still work with ICE. They said they'd think twice about it, but yeah, they'd do it again. They're not so sure how many others would come forward, though. Here's Brigido.

Miki Meek

This is a point top agents in Rice's division, Homeland Security Investigations, is making today, too. Last month, around the same time protests over the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy at the border erupted around the country, the head of 19 different regional offices from HSI sent a letter to Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. They basically asked for a divorce from ICE. They don't want to be associated with deportations anymore. It's making it too hard for them to do their jobs.

They wrote, quote, "the perception of HSI's investigative independence is unnecessarily impacted by the political nature of ERO's civil immigration enforcement." ERO is enforcement and removal operations. Many jurisdictions continue to refuse to work with HSI because of a perceived linkage to the politics of civil immigration.

When this case ended, everyone had to revert back to their original roles. Rice, after all, was an ICE agent. He says it's not really appropriate for him to socialize with anyone who's undocumented outside of an investigation.

Miki Meek

Again, here's Walter. He and most of the others went back to living under the radar. He got choked up talking about Rice.

Miki Meek

He means the result of a special visa he's applying for. Walter and Brigido and their wives, and Nubi also, they may actually get the thing they were hoping for when they first met Patria. They've applied for a U visa. It's for people who help law enforcement investigate certain qualifying crimes. If they get it, it could lead to a green card. But there's no guarantees. There's a huge backlog of people trying to get U visas. The process takes years, and things feel pretty precarious these days. In fact, at the end of last month, a policy memo was issued saying that if the government decides to turn down their applications, or even find things it considers mistakes, it can start deportation proceedings against them.

Ira Glass

Miki Meek is one of the producers of our show.

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Diane Wu. People who helped make our show today, Elna Baker, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Neil Drumming, Damien Grave, Michelle Harris, David Kestenbaum, Adam Martin, Miki Meek, Catherine Rae Mondo, Stowe Nelson, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Louis Sullivan, Chritopher Swetala, and Matt Tierney. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton. Editing help from Julia Preston. Special thanks to our interpreters, Daniel Scherr and Catalina Maria Johnson.

To Cheryl David, Vice News Tonight, Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg, Ashley Kenney, Jeff Goldberg, Jennifer Cameron, Matthew Blaisdell, Annie Schaufele, Ayuda, and Virginia Lora. This is the last week that we're working with Alvin Melathe. He has done such a great job here at so many things. Alvin, I will say, we will always have Lancaster. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia You know, whenever he and I get Chinese food, when it arrives at the table, he gets so excited, and always says the same thing.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.