Worker in shredding case
to do jail time at his home

SANTA ANA, Calif. >> A former Immigration and Naturalization Service contract worker who shredded tens of thousands of documents from Hawaii and other states to eliminate a backlog of paperwork was sentenced yesterday to six months of home confinement.

Leonel Salazar, 36, of Laguna Niguel, was convicted in December of two counts of destroying government documents.

U.S. District Judge Alicemarie Stotler also sentenced Salazar to three years of probation but found he did not have the resources to pay a fine, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Staples. Salazar was acquitted of four other charges by a jury in December.

Salazar and Dawn Randall, 24, were both accused of shredding applications for asylum, citizenship, visas and work permits in 2002 while working at the INS Service Center in Laguna Niguel.

The data processing center handles paperwork received from people in Arizona, California, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam.

The indictment said Randall, a file room manager, ordered Salazar, a supervisor, and others to shred unprocessed documents in February 2002 after the backlog reached about 90,000 documents.

Randall's trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 1, Staples said.