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Unlawfully entering the United States does not enable a conviction for visiting a miltary base.

By Marks & Katz, LLC

 Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Why do good deeds so often go punished? Eliazer Madrigal-Valdez probably thought he was doing a soldier a favor by dropping him off at his military base in Fort Lee, Virginia.  Instead, when Mr. Madrigal was unable to produce a government-issued identification at the military base's checkpoint, he was detained, interrogated, deemed to have been a Mexican citizen, found not to have a record of being lawfully in the United States, arrested, and prosecuted. As the Fourth Circuit tells it, Madrigal was convicted by bench trial on an indicted count alleging that "he 'did knowingly and unlawfully attempt to enter upon the property of Fort Lee, Virginia, a military installation, for a purpose prohibited by law, to wit: entering onto the base as an illegal alien...continue to full post

Full post as published by Underdog on April 02, 2009 (boomark / email).