The family of Aubrey Sosebee, whom Celso Campo-Duartes was convicted of running over in 2005, wonders why the Mexican plumber is still in the United States.
“He shouldn’t have even been on the road, let alone this country,” said Gary Sosebee, one of the man’s sons.
Sosebee’s family believed Campo-Duartes would be sent back to Mexico after serving time on the hit-and-run charge.
The Sosebees received a letter from the Gwinnett County district attorney’s office informing them that Campo-Duartes was due back in court for a probation violation hearing.
“What’s he still doing in this country?” asked Sosebee, 55. “That’s what we want to know.”
Sosebee said his father, who had gone to retrieve the mail when he was run over, spent his last few months in a hospital bed, being fed by a tube. He was 83 when he died.
Gwinnett County Assistant District Attorney Rich Vandever said he routinely sees illegal immigrants pass through the system and back again.
“We deal with it every day,” Vandever told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It really shows how the state’s hands are tied.”
Campo-Duartes served a little more than two years in the Gwinnett County Detention Center after he was arrested in October 2005 for serious injury by vehicle, driving without a license, driving without insurance, and having a tag from another vehicle on his car in the Sosebee case. He was not able to afford bond, according to court records, and spent the next 26 months behind bars.
Campo-Duartes initially rejected entering a guilty plea because the judge told him he risked deportation. According to the court transcript, the magistrate judge asked him if he understood the ramifications of pleading guilty, and Campo-Duartes said he did not. The case was set for trial at an undetermined date.
In the meantime, Campo-Duartes wrote Superior Court Judge Timothy Hamill, explaining that he has a wife, three children and a 60-year-old mother for whom he is the primary provider.The letter did not specify if the family was in Georgia or in Mexico. In his absence, he said, the family had lost their house and car and was in dire need of food.
In January 2008, he entered a negotiated plea to a charge of failure to stop at or return to the scene of an accident and was sentenced to two years in prison and three years of probation. Campo-Duartes was released for time served. It wouldn’t be long before he was back in police custody.
One year ago Saturday, he was arrested for driving without a license and released the same day on $760 bond. In October, he was arrested on the same charge. This time, an immigration hold was placed on him, meaning no bond could be issued. Nonetheless, according to jail records, Campo-Duartes was released eight days later.
Those arrests came before the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Department began participating in the 287(g) program — a partnership with the federal government that trains deputies to identify illegal immigrants in the county jail, then hand them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)for possible deportation.
Cobb, Gwinnett, Hall and Whitfield counties and the Georgia State Patrol participate in the program.
Before 287(g), “our hands were pretty much tied,” said Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway. He said it is likely someone like Campo-Duartes jailed on a traffic-related offense was not checked.
“This just reinforces the need for that program in Gwinnett County,” Conway said. “I’ve said before that it was a revolving door in the past where an illegal immigrant could be arrested eight or 10 times and released even on bond or after 48 hours. It’s just more work on Gwinnett County government to process people that shouldn’t be here.”
Campo-Duartes was arrested again on May 28, charged with disorderly conduct and unlicensed driving. He would have been eligible for a $1,983 bond, but since the arrest is a violation of his probation, he is being held without bond. His hearing was continued until September because he didn’t have a lawyer yet.
.Now that Gwinnett has adopted 287g, Campo-Duartes will be handed over to federal immigration officials once this case is resolved.
In court Thursday, Campo-Duartes claimed he had already been deported, but there’s no record of it. If he was in fact deported and returned to the U.S. illegally, “that action constitutes a crime and the alien can be charged with illegal entry and, if convicted, can be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison,” said Ivan L. Ortiz-Delgado, a spokesman with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said he could not speak about Campo-Duartes’ case without the defendant’s permission.
“From what we’ve gleaned, he probably was deported,” Vandever said. “But re-entry is another problem we have. We see people back in the country time and again even after they’ve been deported.”
Conway said he hopes to have definitive answers on Campo-Duartes’ fate by today.
“I want to know how it happened,” the sheriff told the AJC. “That’s just a failure of the system.”
Campos-Duartes is being held in the Gwinnett County Detention Center, and does not have legal representation at this time.
Share on Facebook
