As a newly hired employee for a Miami social service agency, Leslie Rubero Padilla's job was to reunite unaccompanied refugee children with their parents or legal guardians in the United States. She was supposed to charge the families only for transportation, such as airfare. But authorities say Rubero shook down more than a dozen of them by insisting they had to send her additional money or the reunification with their children would be delayed — or, worse, they would be deported back to their native country in Central America. “The defendant's behavior sometimes went beyond the mere telling of lies and morphed into making threats to the victims,” federal...
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