Word: heredia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...laborer and two dozen other guys in work shirts and battered jeans are gathered in the basement of Eagle County's government building, hard by the vacation resorts of Vail, Beaver Creek and Copper Mountain. They're listening to instructor Gustavo Heredia explain bail bonds, warrants and plea bargains. Many in the crowd are recent arrivals from Mexico. None can speak English. And all are in trouble for such offenses as drunk driving, driving without insurance, spousal abuse and fighting. Four-fifths of them are in the U.S. illegally, but deportation is no big worry in the Colorado resort country...
...anyone tell me the phone number for 911 in Mexico?" Heredia asks. The question draws chuckles. "We don't have a 911 there," a beefy youth in a Raiders cap shoots back. "In the U.S.," Heredia says, "you don't have to break up a fight. The police will do it for you." He explains that "the system here is like a card game. You've got to know the rules to win." Javier, 26, a laborer at Copper Mountain Resort, learned the hard way. He paid a $450 fine--about a week's wages--after he was pulled over...
...compared to $5 a day back in Mexico. He paid a $700 fine after he ignored an earlier warrant and was picked up again for driving without a license or insurance. "Back home," he says, "I would have settled with the police on the street for $10." Says Heredia, a onetime Aspen dishwasher who now works as a court interpreter: "It's a shock to come from the worst poverty into the richest country with no guidance." His two-year-old How to Live in America program is a formal part of the courts' sentencing process in nine Colorado counties...