Text size:

Laborer faces deportation

BY JOHN MORENO GONZALES | Newsday Staff Writer

May 18, 2006

After taking a picket sign from a man protesting illegal immigration, a 19-year-old day laborer was charged with felony grand larceny by Southampton Village police and now faces deportation because a fingerprint check revealed he entered the country illegally.

The May 11 arrest of the day laborer, identified by federal authorities as Joel Martinez-Pizzati, drew criticism yesterday from East End Latino advocates.

They said the worker was wrong to remove the sign from the hands of someone expressing free speech, but didn't deserve to be charged with a felony.

"The guy did something he shouldn't have done," said Isabel Sepulveda-de Scanlon, the president of Organizacion Latino Americana of Eastern Long Island.

"But this makes me sick ... and I think it sends a message of unfairness."

Southampton Police Det. Sgt. Herman Laminson said Martinez-Pizzati snatched the sign from protester George Overbeck at a morning rally outside the 7-Eleven on County Road 39.

Overbeck could not be reached for comment.

Laminson said Martinez-Pizzati ran away with the sign and Overbeck, one of about 10 regular protesters at the corner where day laborers gather, contacted an officer and filed a police report.

"We're not taking sides," Laminson said. "We acted within the scope of the New York State penal law."

The detective was quoted in another newspaper as saying of Martinez-Pizzati: "I guess he's got a free ticket home." But he told Newsday he did not make the comment, because "it's insensitive and opinionated."

Though there was no physical contact in the incident, Martinez-Pizzati was charged with fourth-degree grand larceny, defined as taking "property, regardless of its nature and value."

Laminson said police ran the fingerprints of Martinez-Pizzati as they do routinely with suspects and discovered he had given them a false name and had an outstanding federal warrant for entering the country illegally in February 2005.

The department, which in a news release identified him as Joel Martines, then charged him with false personation and contacted the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

It was unclear which name the day laborer gave police.

Mark Thorn, a spokesman for the federal agency, said yesterday that Martinez-Pizzati, a Honduran national, has had a hearing before an immigration judge and was ordered removed from the United States imminently. Thorn said no other information was available.

Some police departments, including Suffolk County's, leave immigration checks to specialized units and do not routinely run them out of concern that immigrants will grow to mistrust police and be reluctant to report crimes.

"Now, if they see a crime," Sepulveda-de Scanlon said of immigrants in Southampton, "they are not going to go to the police because they will be a target."