Guatemalan National Charged with Immigration Offense

Donald Samuel Cruz Lopez

Twenty-two year old Guatemalan national is in serious trouble tonight. Donald Samuel Cruz Lopez was detained during a bus search when he showed police his passport and they could not locate an entry stamp. Cruz Lopez was travelling along with a thirteen-year-old minor who was placed in the care of the Human Services Department. But what started as an immigration offense got a lot more serious when the minor reported that Cruz Lopez sexually assaulted her. According to Cruz Lopez, he met with the child’s mother in Benque. As a favor to the mother, his friend, he was accompanying the child to Orange walk. This morning Cruz Lopez appeared unrepresented in magistrate court, where he was read a single charge of deemed a prohibited immigrant. He pled guilty and was fined one thousand dollars. The Belize Immigration Department also applied for his removal from the country. And while the Magistrate granted the removal order, the execution cannot take effect until sixty days or depending on how the criminal investigation goes into the sexual assault report. The Magistrate informed the Immigration Department that if Cruz-Lopez is detained beyond the removal warrant time frame, then the Department must come back to the court for an extension, especially if he had already paid his fine owed to the court.