People Are Calling Us Greedy Investors And Saying We Deserve To Suffer Like This

‘We had 13 feet of water in the house…And we never flooded’

If you say so Earl.

‘We didn’t do too well in court. We did an arbitration. We got less than half of what our actual benefit was,’ Dauterive said. ‘And then the attorney got a third of it’

Shack insurance is a scam.

Federal workers: Fired by Trump, frozen out by Moore

After the Trump administration fired her from a federal government job she loved, Caitlin Adams thought she might land on her feet working for the state of Maryland.

She’d had a promising interview in June with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, answering Gov. Wes Moore’s call to fired federal workers to apply for open state jobs.

But a week later came a painful setback: Moore imposed a hiring freeze, and Adams learned the position she’d wanted was no longer available.

“This was the first hiring process that I’d actually made it anywhere,” said Adams, a Prince George’s County resident and former employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As the Trump administration’s mass layoffs struck Maryland’s large federal workforce earlier this year, Moore publicly pressed state agencies to recruit displaced civil servants and fast-track their hiring. The federal government’s loss would be Maryland’s gain.

But Moore’s aggressive hiring efforts soon collided with the state’s harsh budget realities. The freeze, expected to last a year, is part of a plan to trim more than $100 million in salary costs. Lawmakers and Moore had settled on cuts during the legislative session, but Moore later decided how they would be carried out.

One current federal employee said that while her job is safe, for now, she applied for lower-paying positions at the state comptroller’s office, hoping for a way out of an increasingly stressful work environment. She earned two interviews before Maryland’s hiring pause dashed her hopes.

“I was bummed out,” said the Frederick County resident, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. “The governor had made a big deal about hiring feds that were being displaced.”

The employee said that she has applied for around 200 public and private sector jobs but often receives no response. Now, the state’s hiring freeze has left her feeling like she has even fewer options.

Employees who remain in the federal government “feel kind of captive,” she said. “They feel like they can’t really leave because the outside job market also just sucks.”

Meanwhile, a former NASA engineer who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, was contacted in mid-May to schedule an interview with the Department of the Environment. From there, the process stalled until Moore announced the freeze. The interview never happened.

The Montgomery County resident said he hoped to work for the state even though it meant a 20% pay cut. “I took a job that was in the federal service to serve my country, and I would have rather done that for the state than go work for a private company,” he said.

Many of the federal workers described themselves as Moore supporters and said they understood his need to act in response to a budget crunch. Still, the freeze was yet another blow in a demoralizing year, they said.

Days after Gov. Wes Moore announced a hiring freeze, a federal worker received a letter rescinding his invitation to interview for a job with the state Department of the Environment.

After losing his job with the Department of Health and Human Services, one fired federal employee, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, said he applied to state jobs for their stability, benefits and option to telework.

He completed second interviews for two jobs at the state health department and was told he was a top candidate. Then the freeze brought all his applications to a halt.

The man said months of unemployment has forced him to live with his parents, sell his car and cope with anxiety and depression. His experience with the state was the latest in a string of disappointments.

“I can’t f– win,” he said.

Meanwhile, the job applications flowed in. As of April 17, the state received 20,000 applications from more than 6,800 separated federal workers, and in the last seven months hired 349 of them, according to the Moore administration.

Lauren Molineaux was one of the lucky ones. The Howard County resident’s skill set from working in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services translated over to what she considers her “next dream job” at Maryland’s Department of Human Services.

Like many other former federal employees, however, Adams is still looking for work.

In the environmental field, federal layoffs have flooded the market with qualified, experienced candidates, while funding cuts have made job opportunities increasingly scarce. The uncertainty has forced Adams to consider leaving her career behind.

“I’ve kind of thought, well, if nothing happens by September, then I’ll start applying to truly anything that will pay the bills,” she said.

https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/economy/ripple-effects/trump-wes-moore-federal-workers-hiring-freeze-HFYUDL7IPZDKDKL7ZZ72IHQNLE/

Immigrant Sent Cash To Family In Mexico; ICE Used That To Nab Him On Oʻahu

He lived quietly with his fiancée, tended to his tile and counter business, coached an adult soccer team until he suffered a leg injury. And when Gregorio Cordova Murrieta went to a MoneyGram in Pearl City to send cash to his family in Mexico — one of millions of people across the United States who regularly make similar transactions — he never imagined it would one day upend the life he’d built in Hawaiʻi.

But federal immigration agents have access, in part through an obscure database run by an Arizona nonprofit, to records of millions upon millions of money transfers made in the U.S., including names, addresses and other details identifying the senders.

And in what several experts said is the first such instance they know of that data being used to investigate a solely immigration-related offense, Homeland Security Investigations used it to track down Cordova, 48, a Mexican citizen, on Oʻahu.

Sending cash abroad through money transfers is perfectly legal, and the basis for a multibillion-dollar industry. But Cordova was being sought for illegally reentering the country after being stopped at the border for a third time — 17 years ago.

The tools that trapped him were originally intended to stop crimes such as money laundering and drug trafficking.

On June 15, immigration agents staked out the duplex on a dead-end street in ʻAiea where Cordova lived with his fiancée. They photographed him — in the criminal complaint, he was described as a “middle-aged male, tan skin, approximately 5-foot-4-inches to 5-foot-6-inches” — then used an anonymous source to confirm his identity.

On Thursday, June 26, at 6:30 a.m., agents banged on Cordova’s door, in a scene replayed countless times nationwide as President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign continues to gain force.

Grace Perez Parra, Cordova’s fiancée, recalled the events in an interview with Civil Beat: “He said, ‘Mama, that’s ICE.’ He knew already because he saw them in the security camera.” Then, she said, agents taped over the cameras.

Parra opened the door and asked to see a warrant. The agents showed her one, entered and handcuffed Cordova. “He said ‘Mama, no worry,’” Parra said. “Then he kissed me, and they took him away.”

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s most likely access to Cordova’s money transfer information came through a database maintained by the nonprofit Transaction Record Analysis Center, to which companies such as Western Union and MoneyGram have submitted transaction data.

TRAC was set up in 2014 following a 2010 settlement between the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and Western Union, which was required to send information about transfers over $500 — including details that identify the sender — to TRAC. That settlement came after the office investigated the company for facilitating money laundering and it covered transfers to and from Mexico. In the U.S., they were limited to the border states: Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

Since October 2021, Cordova had sent cash to people in Mexico 11 times in a practice known as making a remittance, according to the criminal complaint an HSI agent filed in support of the arrest warrant. He used his Mexican passport for identification and gave his ʻAiea address.

Globally, migrants send an average of 15% of their income home to their country of origin, said Cassie Zimmer-Wong, a Niskanen Center immigration policy analyst. “That money is funding education, putting a roof on a house, making sure a family is fed, helping them invest in a small business. So this is really important on the individual level.”

For many years, Cordova’s money went to his five children in the Mexican state of Puebla, Parra said. Now that most of them are grown, she said he supports his elderly parents and youngest daughter, helping with rent and tuition at the cosmetology school she attends.

Parra, originally from Mākaha, met Cordova 15 years ago during a Cinco de Mayo event at Aloha Tower. He is from Teziutlan, a city in Puebla in central-east Mexico. While he calls her Mama, she usually calls him Pa. Parra and Cordova never had children themselves, she said, but he was always generous to hers from a previous marriage.

While she knew he was undocumented, it was not something they generally talked about. And though they meant to marry and sort out his residency status, life and all the things it requires interfered. “We got caught up in how years go by so fast,” she said.

He paid his taxes every year, she said; ICE seized those tax returns when they arrested him. Never, Parra added, had he been in trouble with the law. Cordova’s federal public defender, Jacquelyn Esser, confirmed that he has no criminal record other than the illegal reentry charge.

The criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu described how after being detained at the border and sent back in 2004, Cordova was discovered trying to enter the country with fake documents on April 1, 2008, and banned from reentry for five years.

According to a copy of the interview conducted with him at the time by a Customs and Border Patrol agent, Cordova said he had left home to find work and was headed for Atlanta, where he had friends.

Cordova didn’t give up. Two days later, he was caught and banned from reentering for 20 years. The complaint includes no details about when Cordova managed to successfully make it to the U.S., and when he came to Hawaiʻi. Parra said she doesn’t know for sure either.

Parra said that on many occasions, she would send money to Cordova’s daughter on his behalf, using the Western Union phone app. But when Cordova went to the store himself to send cash — usually between $1,700 and $2,200 — he never thought twice.

“He wasn’t scared, because people do it all the time,” said Parra, a franchise restaurant manager. “He wasn’t walking on eggshells. ‘No, Mama, they’re gonna get criminals.’”

The records offer a massive potential resource for immigration agents. As of summer 2024, TRAC contained records of 337 million transactions, according to an October 2024 Homeland Security Investigations bulletin.

On Aug. 6, Cordova was scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court on Ala Moana Boulevard. A sign outside the courtroom’s door said it was named Aha Kaulike, or Place of Equity. He was there to change his plea — from not guilty to guilty. Judge Micah Smith asked Cordova a series of questions, which he answered through an interpreter.

The indictment stated that after being removed from the U.S. in 2008, he was found in Honolulu this summer. It had been read to him in Spanish, he said. He understood that he faced a penalty of up to two years in prison, a fine of as much as $250,000 and almost certain deportation.

He knew that by pleading guilty, he was waiving his right to a trial by jury that would have had to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He knew, he told the judge, that despite pleading guilty he was still eligible for any or all of the potential penalties.

Smith asked Cordova to explain “in your own words what makes you guilty.”

“I returned to the United States knowing I wasn’t supposed to enter the United States again,” Cordova said.

Moments later, he pleaded guilty. As he left the courtroom, Cordova turned to Parra and mouthed some words. They were imperceptible to most observers, but Parra understood.

“He was saying, ‘No worry, Mama. No cry. I love you. Be strong,’” she explained.

She said he changed his plea for simple reasons: His parents are sick and he wants to see them before they die. “And he just wants to go home.”

She will visit him there, of course, she said. Perhaps she will move there one day, too, who knows. “It’s very overwhelming for me,” she said. “It just makes me so angry.”

https://www.civilbeat.org/2025/08/immigrant-sent-cash-to-family-in-mexico-ice-used-that-to-nab-him/

‘he has no criminal record other than the illegal reentry charge’

Oh yeah, those two felonies!

‘It just makes me so angry’

He’ll get used to the outhouse and banana leaves again Mama.