HOULTON, Maine — A Romanian foreign national who was arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol agents in Hodgdon on March 30 pleaded guilty Tuesday to illegally entering the country.
Novac Ciurar, 30, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Bangor to one count of misdemeanor improper entry by an alien and was sentenced to the four days that he spent in the Penobscot County Jail in Bangor, his defense attorney, Jon Haddow of Bangor, said Tuesday.
According to court documents, Border Patrol agents responded to a possible illegal crossing into the country on the Lincoln Road at about 8:30 a.m. on March 31.
When Agent John Gaddis found Ciurar on the road, Ciurar presented him with a photocopy of his Romanian passport and a Refugee Protection Claimant Document issued by the Canadian government.
“Ciurar did not have any immigration documents that would allow him to enter or remain in the United States,” Gaddis wrote in the report filed with the court.
Ciurar, who was applying for refugee status in Canada, according to his attorney, speaks Romanian and French, but only broken English. Gaddis wrote that he was wearing hiking boots that appeared to be brand new, yet they were covered with fresh mud.
Agents investigated and observed footprint impressions in the snow crossing into Canada, and later matched them to the hiking boots that Ciurar was wearing. The evidence indicated Ciurar had walked around a gate and fence with a sign warning in both English and French that it was an international boundary marker.
According to an affidavit, Ciurar said at first that a friend had dropped him off and told him there was a job for him paying $1,200 a month plus room and board at a horse farm in Hodgdon.
When questioned further, Ciurar changed his story to say his friend had given him $40, told him to cross into Maine near Hodgdon to buy four liters of alcohol, and then bring the liquor back to him in Canada.
Haddow said that this client pleaded guilty to the crime “to get home and avoid a lengthy jail period that customarily comes with pleading not guilty” to such crimes and going through the criminal process.
Haddow said that he has represented several clients accused of such crimes before and if they had pleaded not guilty and gone through the criminal process, they had customarily waited “two or three months in jail” before the case was resolved.
“There is no evidence that my client had tried to enter the country before,” said Gaddis. “He will now be held for the time it takes to process him back to Romanian or Canada.”
