SKOWHEGAN — Slow, erratic driving reported by a concerned citizen prompted a July 27 traffic stop that led to the detention of more than a dozen Romanians who federal authorities said were in the United States illegally, according to recently released police reports.
The reports from two Skowhegan police officers, obtained under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act, provide other new details about the incident, which U.S. Border Patrol’s Houlton Sector announced in a brief Facebook post about a week after the arrests.
Those include that two vehicles involved had out-of-state license plates and appeared to lack proper registrations and that in addition to those who were arrested, several young children were detained.
What the group was doing in Skowhegan and for how long they were in the United States remains unclear.
But the case adds to what appears to have become a common tactic across Maine for federal immigration authorities: using local law enforcement’s traffic stops to make arrests.
The Houlton Sector, which covers all of Maine’s international border, said in its social media post that those “encountered” during the traffic stop were facing deportation. The agency did not release their names.
Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known commonly as ICE, have not responded to several inquiries in the last month. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of Border Patrol, also declined a request for reports and other records from the traffic stop and subsequent arrests.
Around 9:45 p.m. July 27, a 38-year-old Skowhegan man called the Somerset County dispatch center to report a vehicle driving 25 mph below the speed limit and “driving all over the road,” Officer Damian Romo of the Skowhegan Police Department wrote in his report.
The caller later told Romo there were two vehicles that were both driving slowly and erratically, and he suspected the drivers were operating under the influence.
After Romo was diverted to another call in town, he and another Skowhegan officer, Tyler Dodge, located both vehicles in the parking lot outside Walmart, off Madison Avenue, the report says. Dodge wrote in his separate report that the caller had followed the vehicles there.
Romo wrote that when he arrived, he saw a group of people loading groceries into the cars, and he decided to follow them out of the parking lot as he “believed the vehicles to be a close match” based on the descriptions and plate numbers the concerned caller provided.
The two officers then followed one of the vehicles, a Land Rover, into the parking lot for the McDonald’s across the street from the Walmart. There, Romo tried to run the California license plate on the SUV through a database, and the dispatch center advised it was “not on file.”
Romo and Dodge then followed the SUV north on Madison Avenue, the reports say. Romo wrote that he pulled the car over “out of concern for public safety and for a possibly stolen vehicle,” citing its speed, its operation and its lack of registration. His report does not list the exact location of the stop, although other details indicate it was somewhere on Madison Avenue in Skowhegan, north of Walmart.
The driver, Cristinel Alecu, 51, provided a California driver’s license, but had no registration and provided a vehicle title with someone else’s name on it, according to the officers’ reports.
Inside the vehicle, the officers saw a total of 10 people, including several children, who either were not in appropriate booster seats or child safety seats or had no seatbelts, the reports say. Alecu reportedly told the officers the children were his grandchildren.
At least one occupant, Silvia Alecu, 49, identified herself with a Romanian passport, according to Romo’s report.
Romo contacted his supervisor, Cpl. Benaiah Willhoite, who told him to gather all of the passengers’ information and contact Border Patrol. A Border Patrol agent advised Romo to hold the vehicle on scene until agents could respond.
Cristinel Alecu’s daughter, Georgiana Ioan, 26, arrived on scene about 20 minutes later to help transport the children safely, according to the report.
Her vehicle’s registration plate, from Vermont, was canceled and had been under another name, the dispatch center told Romo. Ioan, who had a Romanian driver’s license, said her father bought the vehicle recently off Facebook Marketplace.
Around 12:30 a.m., the first Border Patrol agent arrived on scene, and more arrived shortly after, Romo’s report says. They determined all 11 people — the 10 in the vehicle, and Ioan — were in the country illegally and said their agency would transport them.
Meanwhile, Willhoite, the Skowhegan police corporal, reported Cristinel Alecu and Ioan told him that three people they knew were also in the area, apparently staying at a motel.
Dodge located them walking on Madison Avenue and drove them back in his cruiser to where Border Patrol was investigating, outside Ken’s Restaurant, according to his report.
They had Romanian passports as identification; Border Patrol detained those three as well, the police reports say.
In total, the 14 detained by Border Patrol, according to the Skowhegan police reports, were Cristinel Alecu, Silvia Alecu and Ioan; as well as Cristinel Florin Alecu, 22; Arimana Alecu, 31; Antonio Alecu, 21; Antonio Banderas Alecu, 25; a 9-year-old girl; a 9-year-old boy; a 6-year-old boy; a 5-year-old boy; two 4-year-old boys; and a 1-year-old boy. The children’s names were redacted from the reports the Skowhegan Police Department released.
Border Patrol’s Houlton Sector said in its Aug. 4 Facebook post 13 people were arrested. The discrepancy in number is unclear.
It also remains unclear where Border Patrol took the 14 people to be held in custody.
Somerset County Sheriff Dale Lancaster said the county jail in Madison had no contact with Border Patrol following the traffic stop arrests.
Lancaster, who has been outspoken against pending legislation that would prohibit some cooperation between Maine law enforcement agencies and federal immigration authorities, has said previously that the jail regularly holds inmates for Border Patrol, usually for just a day or two. The Somerset County Sheriff’s Office also has a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service to hold federal inmates, which lists ICE as an authorized user.
ICE’s Online Detainee Locator System only shows records for four of the seven adults arrested. Of those four, three were listed in ICE custody, while one was listed in Customs and Border Protection custody.
The facilities where they were being held were not listed in the database as of Thursday. ICE did not respond to a request for that information.
A search of the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s case database, using identification numbers for the four adults listed in the ICE database, shows cases for only two of them.
An immigration judge in Texas ordered the removal of Antonio Banderas Alecu in November 2023, the court database shows. No recent cases appear under his identification number.
The other who appears in the database, Cristinel Alecu, the driver of the Land Rover initially stopped, shows an immigration judge in Texas granted voluntary departure on Aug. 18.
Romo, the Skowhegan police officer, also issued a summons to Cristinel Alecu for one Class D count of endangering the welfare of the child, stemming from the two children who did not have seat belts available in the car. His initial court appearance was scheduled for Oct. 15 in Skowhegan, police records show.
Maeghan Maloney, district attorney for Kennebec and Somerset counties, said in a message Thursday her office has not yet received the case from the police department.
The Bangor Daily News reported in February that there was a “mysterious uptick” in Romanians attempting to illegally cross the U.S.-Canada border in Maine, citing data from the Houlton Sector.
A variety of factors may explain the trend, the Bangor newspaper reported, including political and economic conditions in the Eastern European country and possible links to human trafficking.
Juan Bernal, then the chief patrol agent of the Houlton Sector, told the newspaper in March that Romanians coming across the border were linked to “fraudulent activity” in the Northeast region.
