Mother will be deported in Expeditors International case
Hilda Hernandez, charged last year with using fraudulent documents to work at a logistics company, stood in front of a federal judge Thursday and agreed to a plea deal that will lead to her deportation.
Her husband already agreed to deportation earlier this year, and it’s unclear what will happen to their children, still in foster care in Mississippi.
The mother’s voice broke as she admitted she had entered the country illegally from Mexico — but she said she had a reason.
“Well, it is true, I entered through a place where I should not have entered,” she said though a Spanish interpreter.
“But it was to give a better life to my son ... And he two weeks ago graduated from high school. He is a very good person, a very good student. And I also have a daughter who put forth a very good effort in school.”
“Unfortunately, through this situation my children are in the custody of the state of Mississippi,” she said.
The 38-year-old mother was one of 20 immigrants from Mexico and Central America arrested Nov. 28.
All faced federal criminal charges for allegedly using fraudulent documents to get jobs at Provide Staffing Services, a local staffing agency that placed them at a Memphis-area unit of Seattlebased logistics company Expeditors International.
At a Thursday appearance before U.S. District Court Judge Sheryl H. Lipman, Hernandez pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of entering the country illegally. The felony fraud case will be dropped, and she’ll likely receive a sentence of time served at a July 13 hearing. Deportation will follow at some point after that.
Both Hernandez and her common-law husband, Edgar Lopez-Marin, spent months in immigration detention and were later released. They wore street clothes to the Thursday court appearance rather than the jail clothes they’d worn to previous court dates.
The husband accepted the same plea deal in April, as have many of the other defendants.
It’s not clear what will happen to the couple’s 18year-old son and 11-yearold daughter. They are still in a foster home in north Mississippi, where the family was living at the time of arrest.
The timing of the deportation isn’t certain, and the mother expressed concern to the judge that it could stop her from attending an October court date related to a custody case.
Lipman replied she didn’t know how the immigration system would address the issue: “Immigration is a different judge, a different court.”
The case against the mother reflects increased immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump’s administration.
Under previous administrations, businesses seeking low-cost, reliable labor successfully lobbied the government against strict immigration enforcement in nonborder areas like Tennessee.
When the government did enforce immigration law, it usually targeted immigrants who had committed serious crimes.
Today the government is pursuing more cases against immigrants who lack serious criminal records. Hernandez’s only prior case in Shelby County was a 2011 charge for driving without a license, according to court records.
So far, the people who hired her and the other unauthorized immigrants haven’t been prosecuted.
“No officials from Expeditors International or Provide Staffing Services have been charged to date,” Cherri Green, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor’s office, wrote in a statement. “However, this is an ongoing investigation. No further comments will be provided.”
Reach reporter Daniel Connolly at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.