ID: more justice from Judge Beebe

From Tidings Online; if you thought sending a 7-year-old to the lock-up wasn't enough to put Power County on the map:

Awaiting hearings, immigrant's goal is to avoid being seen

Terry Lopez is a U.S. citizen... Her husband, Juan Solis, arrived from Mexico illegally in 2002...

One cold December day, he and his brother drove to work for a change. They were stopped by police because the car's windows weren't properly cleared of ice. Solis was cited for not having an Idaho driver's license, a misdemeanor. Idaho law requires proof of legal residency to get a driver's license.

He went to court expecting to simply pay a small fine. Instead, Solis was fined $500 and given a six-month jail sentence that was suspended on the condition that he waive his right to a hearing on his immigration status. Then he was told by the judge that he was barred from being in the state for two years as a condition of probation for the suspended jail sentence.

Jason Brown, a caseworker for the citizenship and legal services program of Catholic Charities of Idaho, said that in the courtroom that day information about the procedures and what would happen if someone entered a guilty plea was not translated well into Spanish because a substitute interpreter was used. Solis is not fluent in English and he never understood that he faced possible jail time and that he could ask for a public defender...

An immigration judge quickly released him on his own recognizance because of his pending green-card application. But Lopez said when she and Solis returned to American Falls from Denver and went to the courthouse to ask questions at the magistrate's office, they were bluntly informed by the judge's secretary: "You can't be here. Judge (Mark A.) Beebe barred you from being in Idaho for two years. He sentences all the Mexicans to that..."

Beebe, magistrate for Power County... told CNS he commonly bars people from being in Idaho as a condition of probation. "The court deems that, as a condition of probation, ordering someone not to return to the state to be a reasonable condition under state law," he said...

Beebe said he commonly includes that condition in perhaps 50 misdemeanor cases in Power County during the peak season for migrant workers, roughly April through November. "I think it works," he said. "A lot of illegal aliens end up going back home."

I just couldn't be prouder to be an Idahoan...