INS Officer Sentenced to Prison for Beating Escapee

A federal judge in Los Angeles sentenced a suspended Immigration and Naturalization Service officer to nearly two years in prison Monday for beating an escapee from the INS detention center in San Pedro.

Such abuse “calls into question the whole system of justice,” said U.S. District Judge George H. King, who sentenced Paina Moeai, 39, to 21 months in prison and three years of supervised release for violating the civil rights of the prisoner.

The prison sentence was the maximum allowable under federal sentencing guidelines, said Michael Gennaco, the assistant U.S. attorney who handled the prosecution.

The sentence, said U.S. Atty. Nora M. Manella, sends a strong message that abuse of people’s civil rights will not be tolerated.

“The federal government stands ready to vindicate federally protected civil rights, no matter who the victim and who the perpetrator,” said Manella, whose office has pursued a number of civil rights prosecutions in the past 18 months and is conducting several other investigations.

Moeai, a five-year INS veteran who was a detention officer at San Pedro, has been suspended without pay.

Further administrative action, including firing, could be taken against Moeai based on the conviction, an INS spokesman said.

Many of Moeai’s relatives attended the court hearing.

In his defense, Moeai contended that he was a law-abiding person singled out for an incident that involved several other officers.

But Gennaco said that investigators had determined that Moeai was the sole guilty party in the assault against Enrique Pereira-Grau, a Cuban national who faced deportation at the time of his beating. Pereira-Grau testified earlier this year at Moeai’s trial.

The case stemmed from an Oct. 30, 1994, incident in which Pereira-Grau escaped from the San Pedro facility and was later discovered several miles away. Moeai was among the agents who found him.

Federal authorities alleged that the agent assaulted the victim at two locations: in a van returning to the federal lockup and upon returning to the San Pedro facility. Officials charged that Moeai picked up a semiconscious Pereira-Grau and threw him against a wall several times, even though the Cuban did not provoke the officer and showed no signs of resistance.

The victim suffered a concussion and was treated at an area hospital, authorities said.

A jury this spring convicted Moeai of beating Pereira-Grau at the San Pedro facility. The officer was not convicted of the beatings allegedly administered in the van.