Mexican Consulate official accused of selling work permits
Employee allegedly received $10,000 to provide the promised services
Officials at the Mexican Consulate General in Houston are named as defendants in a lawsuit where one of them is accused of offering U.S. work permits for $5,000.
The lawsuit, filed in a Harris County court on July 17, alleges that consulate employee Fidencio Navarrete Peralta received $10,000 to provide two U.S. work permits but that the plaintiff and her family never received the promised service nor got their money back.
The plaintiff, Xochitl Leticia Aguilar, includes Consul General Oscar Rodríguez Cabrera as a defendant. He is mentioned because he was Navarrete’s boss and “knew about the corruption of the personnel under his charge and ignored the alarms,” according to the suit.
Sebastián Saucedo, a spokesperson of the Mexican Consulate in Houston, had no comment about the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, Navarrete initially said that the work permits were being handled by the consulate.
As evidence in the case, Aguilar submitted copies of text messages allegedly communicating with Navarrete and other current and former staff members of the consulate, though not Rodríguez.
Aguilar is requesting that Rodríguez repay the $10,000, as well as legal, health and compensation costs in the amount of $200,000.
Leslie Robles, Aguilar’s daughter, is an American citizen who was hoping to obtain a work permit for her husband, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico.
Robles, in an inter-
view at the family’s house north of Houston, said her husband was in the process of winning legal status through his marriage, but then that stalled. So they agreed to the service offered by Navarrete, she said.
“He made it look like it was all legal,” Robles said. She explained that he said it was “part of a program made available to the consulate to legalize really good working people.”
According to Aguilar, Navarrete offered “the program” to at least four people in a meeting at her house on Dec. 17, 2016.
Aguilar and Robles say they paid for a work permit for Robles’ husband and a plumber friend also paid Navarrete, both in February 2017 at Aguilar’s residence in Houston.
Aguilar and Robles said they never received the promised work permits nor social security numbers, but Navarrete delivered one consular identification card, known as “Matrícula Consular.” They said they paid him $100, instead of the official $27 fee, to get the document without having to wait in line at the consulate.
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