Favoritism Charged in Visa Case : Magistrate Says U.S. Attorney Went Easy on Offender

A federal magistrate has accused the U.S. attorney’s office of giving favored treatment to a young Irish woman charged in an immigration case, saying prosecutors would have asked for a stiffer sentence if she had been Mexican.

Bridgit O’Grady, 22, who was charged with altering her visa so that she could remain in the United States, is expected to be released from federal custody today on a $2,000 bond after spending more than a week in jail.

She pleaded guilty to the charge last Wednesday, and a prosecutor recommended that she be placed on probation. But U.S. Magistrate Joseph Schmitt sentenced her to 45 days in jail.

Schmitt imposed the sentence late Wednesday afternoon, after he had spent the day hearing dozens of cases in San Diego federal court involving mostly Mexican defendants charged with immigration-related offenses. Schmitt, a part-time magistrate, usually hears cases in El Centro, but was filling in for San Diego magistrates who were attending a conference.

A Case of Nationality

“Now, really,” Schmitt said after listening to arguments for leniency by the prosecutor and O’Grady’s attorney. “The only reason we’re all getting perturbed about this is because this is not a Mexican national. This is a lady from Ireland.

“If a Mexican had done this, we’d all put him in jail for 60 days and not think twice about it. . . . If a Mexican had done the same thing, I suspect the government would have recommended jail time.”

Schmitt also criticized an immigration officer who appeared in court to recommend probation, saying the officer wouldn’t have bothered if O’Grady were Mexican.

O’Grady entered the United States in October, 1985, on a visa she was granted as the fiancee of an American citizen. The relationship ended several months after she arrived, she testified last week, but she remained in San Diego even though her visa expired on March 12, 1986.

She admitted in court that she altered the visa, changing “1986” to “1988,” so that she could stay in the United States and work. She lives in Cardiff and works at La Costa Resort Hotel and Spa, where she earns $6 an hour, according to John Lanahan, the lawyer from the Federal Defenders Office who represented O’Grady in court.

U.S. Atty. Peter K. Nunez said Monday that Schmitt’s criticism was unfounded and may have resulted from a misunderstanding of the types of cases usually heard in San Diego federal courts.

Nunez said prosecution guidelines used in El Centro, where Schmitt normally sits, are different from the ones used downtown. Most immigration-related cases heard in the San Diego courtrooms involve alien smuggling and transportation charges, he said.

Prosecuting Smugglers

“We have a program here where generally we’re prosecuting smugglers and people who were caught committing a felony-type offense,” Nunez said. “Because we can’t handle all the cases as felonies, some of them are charged as misdemeanors.” Prosecutors recommend sentences based on the conduct of the defendant, he said.

By contrast, Nunez said, the El Centro federal courtrooms handle many cases involving aliens who are merely in the country illegally--charges that are only infrequently brought in San Diego.

“It’s unfair for the magistrate to compare that case,” he said of the O’Grady affair, “to someone who has just illegally entered the country.” O’Grady “was not involved in any kind of transportation or smuggling of aliens,” he said.

“I think he was confusing apples and oranges, not Irish and Hispanic. . . . The nationality of the defendants before the court has nothing to do with the decisions we make.”

Schmitt said Monday it would be “inappropriate” for him to comment on the matter.

O’Grady was arrested last week at La Costa after Immigration and Naturalization Service investigators doing a routine check of La Costa employee records discovered that her visa had expired.

She admitted to the investigators, and later to Schmitt, that she had altered documents because she wanted to stay in the United States.

“I was going out with a guy in Ireland, an American citizen, for a year and a half, and he came over here six months before I did,” O’Grady testified last week. “He asked me to get engaged and get married. . . . . We broke up shortly after I came here. Things weren’t working out.”

O’Grady said she changed her visa at first because she did not have the money to return to Ireland. Later, she decided she wanted to stay. “I enjoyed my job. I enjoyed working here,” she said.

In sentencing her, Schmitt said she is “obviously an intelligent young lady” who altered documents “deliberately and with the intention to deceive and defraud the United States government.”

Both Lanahan and Assistant U.S. Atty. John Pierce objected to the sentence.

“My recommendations for these types of cases are no different depending on which country they’re from,” Pierce said. “Either a very minimal amount of time or a probationary term.”

Schmitt then questioned Pierce about a case earlier in the afternoon in which Pierce had recommended 15 days in prison for a Mexican father of five who was caught with a falsified green card. Pierce responded that the Mexican man had lied to authorities, whereas O’Grady had cooperated fully with the immigration agent once she was caught.

“The agent was the one who asked me to not recommend jail time,” Pierce said, adding that the agent was in the courtroom and available to testify.

Schmitt responded, “No. My observation still holds. If this were a Mexican before the court, you wouldn’t have an agent in here making this sort of a recommendation.”

Clifton Rogers, deputy district director of the INS office in San Diego, said Monday that Schmitt drew a mistaken conclusion about the agent’s presence in the courtroom. It is standard practice for officers to appear in court for cases resulting from investigations such as the one conducted at La Costa, he said. Officers do not normally appear in court for cases involving routine border-crossing arrests, he said.

“The basic policy is that the Immigration Service does not differentiate between nationality, race, color or creed,” he said.

Lanahan said Monday that O’Grady’s sentence will be appealed, but she also faces the possibility of deportation in an administrative proceeding brought by INS.