Federal officials open inquiry of slain immigrant

The Justice Department said Wednesday it had opened an investigation into the fatal beating of a Mexican immigrant in a small northeastern Pennsylvania town.

The federal involvement comes less than a week after local officials in Schuylkill County charged three white teens in this month’s attack in Shenandoah on Luis Ramirez, a 25-year-old father of two.

The case has been assigned to FBI agents in Allentown and the criminal section of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, the department and the FBI confirmed Wednesday. Justice Department spokeswoman Jamie Hais would not say what prompted their involvement.

Schuylkill County Dist. Atty. James Goodman said he did not oppose the federal participation.

A Mexican American advocacy group applauded the decision.

“It legitimizes our concerns that Shenandoah -- while it might be a small, little town in Pennsylvania -- the significance [of the slaying] really rises to the national stage,” said lawyer John Amaya of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which held a vigil Tuesday in Ramirez’s memory.

Ramirez was attacked July 12 when he crossed paths with a group of teens who had been out drinking in Shenandoah, about 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia. He died two days later.

On Friday, county officials filed homicide charges against two teens and ethnic intimidation charges against them and a third person.

Amaya blamed the violence on anti-immigrant sentiment broadcast over the nation’s airwaves.

“When we hear it spewed every night on CNN or radio talk shows, real people hear it and they take matters into their own hands,” he said. “These children, they turn into monsters.”

Shenandoah is less than 20 miles from Hazleton, which drew national headlines after it passed a law in 2006 cracking down on landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and companies that employ them.

Hazleton is appealing a court ruling overturning the law, and Mayor Lou Barletta has made illegal immigration his signature issue as he runs for Congress.

The killing of Ramirez exposed long-simmering tensions in Shenandoah, a blue-collar town of 5,000 with a growing number of Latino residents drawn by factory and farm jobs.

Brandon J. Piekarsky, 16, and Colin J. Walsh, 17, were charged as adults last week with homicide and ethnic intimidation. Derrick M. Donchak, 18, was charged with aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation.