Update August 6th: The African woman in this story gets off easier, here.
Update August 3rd: New strain of HIV found in woman (in Paris) from Cameroon, here.
What the heck is going on in Maine? Here is yet another story of an African immigrant getting into legal trouble in Maine! (Hat tip: Susan) What! Is the word out on the street and across the whole continent of Africa—go to Maine! Additionally, I found it interesting to note this woman went first to Maryland then Maine, just as the Nigerian woman who bilked the UN did, here.
Check out our recent posts on Lewiston, ME Somali health care fraud, the Nigerian woman in Portland who embezzled UN money (link in previous paragraph), Sudanese riots also in Portland and the Nigerian identity fraud med student scammer. Now we have a woman from Cameroon who is pregnant and has HIV-Aids.
BANGOR — A pregnant, HIV-positive African woman convicted of having false documents will be resentenced on Aug. 5 in U.S. District Court after winning her appeal of a sentence that would have forced her to give birth behind bars.
Quinta Layin Tuleh, 28, of Cameroon has been free on bail since June 15 pending the outcome of her appeal to the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. Tuleh, whose due date is Aug. 29, agreed last month to live in Portland and receive treatment at the Frannie Peabody Center.
Tuleh was released on bail a few days before she was scheduled to be transferred to Carswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, according to the U.S. Marshals Service in Bangor.
U.S. District Judge John Woodcock in May sentenced Tuleh to 236 days in prison — more than twice as long as the recommended sentence of 114 days — for having false Social Security and employment authorization cards. The federal prosecutor and Tuleh’s court-appointed defense attorney both urged the judge to sentence her to time served, or 114 days.
Woodcock said that to ensure Tuleh received proper medical care through the birth of her child and to increase its chances of being born free of the HIV virus, he was sentencing her to federal prison until two weeks past her due date.
Nice of the judge, huh, concerned about the baby’s health. Now she can have her anchor baby. Fat chance she will be deported once the ‘healthy’ baby arrives!
Tuleh still faces deportation because of her conviction. Once she is resentenced, removal proceedings against her are expected to begin.
Now this makes no sense, you can’t just ask for asylum because you were the victim of a crime. If that were the case, everyone in the world could be here tomorrow. This is very confusing—I’d like to know who abused her, was it her US employer, the one who hired her as a nanny? Read carefully, there is something missing in this account.
She is in the process of applying for asylum in the U.S., according to court documents, on the basis that she has been the victim of a crime. She may have suffered abuse while working for her former employer, who has not been named, in Aroostook County, according to an affidavit filed by her immigration attorney with the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project in Portland.
Tuleh arrived in September 2008 in New York City and lived in Maryland until early January, when she went to Presque Isle to work as a nanny for a family, according to court documents. She was arrested Jan. 21 at the Presque Isle Airport after false documents were discovered in her luggage.
She became pregnant before she came to Maine, according to her previous attorney, but did not confirm the pregnancy until after her arrest. Her HIV status was not known until a few days before her sentencing in May.
Portland Press Herald reader Chris had this to say:
I can’t belive it! We in Maine DESERVE to be in the condition we are in! We voted in a bunch of idiots running our state. WHY wasn’t she just deported before the birth? I’m sick of paying for illegals kids!
And Bangor News SHE ISN”T an immigrant!!! She’s an illegal immigrant! Why drag good immigrants names thru the mud.
You in the useless biased media disgust me….. you’re all jerks! Hows the newspaper business going? What’s the matter can’t you sell enough of your Liberal dribble. Americans are waking up and you all are going down. Let someone unbiased run your rag!!!
Now for this Maryland connection, Cameroon, Cameroon, Cameroon. Oh, yes, where have I heard that before? Maybe, just maybe, this woman got into the US with the help of the now CONVICTED MARYLAND ASYLUM LAWYER FROM CAMAROON, Patrick Tzeuton, here.