documents illegally shredded at service center

[dave w]

JURY FINDS FORMER FEDERAL CONTRACTOR GUILTY
ON TWO COUNTS OF SHREDDING
IMMIGRANTS’ DOCUMENTS

A man who deliberately shredded a massive
backlog of federal documents at an Immigration and Naturalization
Service facilility in Laguna Niguel has been convicted on two counts of
wilfully destroying government documents.

Leonel Salazar, 35, of
Laguna Niguel, was found guilty late Wednesday by a federal jury in
Santa Ana. The jury deliberated for one day after hearing evidence for
two weeks.

Salazar was employed by a contractor that performed
several functions for the federal agency formerly known as the
Immigration and Naturalization Service at the California Service Center
(INS formerly was an agency in the Department of Justice; it has since
become part of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which
is a component of the Department of Homeland Security). The California
Service Center is the central repository for documents submitted to the
INS by immigrants seeking benefits or citizenship in California,
Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and the territory of Guam. Over the course of
several years, a backlog consisting of an estimated 90,000 documents
built up in the main file room of the California Service Center.
According to INS regulations, such documents are to be placed in the
applicants’ files, many of which must be maintained for 75 years.

In
early 2002, Salazar was the senior supervisor of the main file room at
the California Service Center. In February 2002, Salazar, at the
direction of his supervisor, Dawn Randall, ordered clerks under his
supervision to shred the backlog of documents that were to be placed in
the files. Among the documents destroyed were passports, birth
certificates, approval notices, change of address forms, diplomas and
money orders. By late March 2002, the backlog of unprocessed documents
in the file room was reported to be zero. At that point, Randall
instructed Salazar and others to continue shredding incoming
unprocessed documents to keep the backlog at zero.

In January, a
federal grand jury indicted Randall and Salazar on one count of
conspiracy and five counts of destruction of documents filed with a
public office. The defendants’ cases were severed for trial.

The jury
that convicted Salazar on the two counts found him not guilty of the
conspiracy count and three additional counts of destruction of
documents.

Salazar is scheduled to be sentenced by United States
District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler on April 12. At sentencing,
Salazar faces a maximum possible sentence of six years in federal
prison.

Randall’s trial is scheduled to begin before Judge Stotler on
March 16.

This case was investigated by agents of the Department of
Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Investigations Section and
the INS Office of Internal Audit, Internal Investigations Branch.


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