53 year Deysi Reyes Avila, a mathematics teacher from Cuba, is at the Belize Central Prison tonight after she flew into Belize along with her son using fake passports.
Avila and her 15 year-old son arrived at the PGIA yesterday at 5 p.m. from San Salvador, El Salvador. They produced Panamanian passports to the Immigration officers at the arrival section of the airport.
With just a cursory inspection, you wouldn't not know that these passports are fake. The Cubans almost did pass through Belize Immigration, but they made a huge mess while trying to fill out the forms which every passenger has to fill out and hand in to Immigration. On the fake Panamanian passport, Reyes Avila had her name as Nairoby Aleyda Gonzalez, but when she signed the form she placed D. Reyes as her name. On the fake passport for her son, he was listed as being Ricardo Daniel Hernandez, but when she signed on the bottom, she slipped up once more, and signed her actual name on the document.
One final but major slip up that they made was that in the permanent address section, they both placed on the document that they lived in Havana, Cuba. That's a completely different country than what was listed on the Panamanian passports.
With these irregularities, the immigration department did a background check, and searched their luggage. Inside they found their actual Cuban passports with their photos, with different names, and they also found their Cuban identification cards. Those discoveries sealed their fate because the immigration officers immediately figured out that they were trying to sneak into the country undetected. Had they used their Cuban passports, they would have needed to get a Belizean visa. On the other hand, with the fake Panamanian passports, they could enter the country, bypassing that visa restriction, since Panamanian citizens can travel here without it. The background check from the Immigration department revealed that the passports were authentic documents but instead of the names and photos of the persons who they actually belonged to, their pictures were superimposed onto the documents, looking identical to a passport properly issued from that country. It was a perfect forgery, but they couldn't get their stories straight. Under questioning, Reyes Avila revealed to the Immigration officers that she paid a total $3,000 US to get the fake passports prepared for her and her son.
Reyes Avila was charged with assisting a person to use a passport she wasn't entitled to, and using a passport that she wasn't entitled to. She was arraigned today before Magistrate Dale Cayetano, where she pleaded guilty to both charges. Before being sentenced, she explained to the court that she has children living in the US, and they can't return to Cuba. She claims she wasn't trying to quote, ‘live the American Dream'; end quote. She was only trying to get to the US to spend at least a month vacation with them.
Magistrate Cayetano sentenced her to pay a fine to a total amount of $2,000 forthwith, or in default, she has to spend a total of a year in prison. A removal order granted for her immediate expulsion from the country after she either pays the fine or serves the time. She couldn't pay the fine, and so she was taken to prison this evening.
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