President Donald Trump recently indicated that he may pardon 250 people on our country’s 250th anniversary this Independence Day. One of the most deserving recipients should be former Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen, who has been in prison for almost five and a half years with significant health problems, including Stage 3(b) kidney disease.
Petersen was targeted by leftist prosecutors because he was a vocal Trump supporter who was assisted in his campaigns by the Republican Party. He merely helped expectant mothers in the Marshall Islands adopt out their babies to Americans. The work came naturally to him, since he served on a mission when he was younger to the Marshall Islands and had learned the language and culture. He believed what he was doing was legal, since the Arizona Court of Appeals considered a challenge to one of his adoptions in 2007 on similar grounds and dismissed it, allowing Paul’s adoption to go through.
However, the Marshallese government didn’t like the competition — they had their own competing adoption business, which charged far more — so federal prosecutors in Arkansas and state prosecutors in Arizona and Utah came after Paul in 2019. Unable to afford lawyers to fully defend himself in three criminal cases, he was forced to accept plea deals.
Obama-appointed Judge Timothy L. Brooks sentenced Paul to 74 months in prison for smuggling illegal aliens when the actual sentence guideline range was 36-47 months, despite Paul having no previous criminal history! In comparison, the defendant in United States v. Ortiz smuggled 23 illegal aliens in a van that had only 14 seatbelts, crashed the van, and injured most of the occupants, including a child. Ortiz was sentenced to 41 months in prison. In United States v. Moe, the defendants were responsible for smuggling hundreds of people from Thailand under inhumane conditions in the hold of a boat without sufficient food or toilets. They were sentenced to 48 and 54 months, respectively.
Paul’s fellow inmates, who were sentenced for actually smuggling illegal aliens, expressed their shock to him that what he did was considered human smuggling. Under the Compact of Free Association between the U.S. and the Marshall Islands, Marshallese citizens are free to travel to the U.S. without visas; they simply need passports (the government knows when they’re in the country, unlike illegal immigrants). They are considered lawful nonimmigrants or habitual residents who can live and work in the U.S. indefinitely without a visa.
But clever prosecutors decided to interpret the Compact to prohibit Paul’s adoption services. Other adoption attorneys were conducting the exact same adoption business with the Marshall Islands and were never prosecuted. Paul was singled out in selective prosecution.
Tellingly, prosecutors only cited four mothers, four who decided to return to the Marshall Islands after giving birth, instead of remaining in the U.S. If Paul was smuggling individuals, why did prosecutors only cite the four who returned?
Brooks has a lengthy history as an activist leftist judge. He permanently blocked Arkansas Act 573, which required the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom and library. He blocked Arkansas’ law requiring parental consent for minors to access most social media platforms. He struck down key portions of a law that would have made librarians criminally liable for distributing “obscene” or “harmful to minors” materials.
Paul’s state sentence from Arizona was cruelly consecutive, not concurrent, so even though he has fully served his 74-month federal sentence (Utah’s state sentence was ordered concurrent), he is now serving the five-year Arizona sentence in state prison. While a pardon from Trump won’t eliminate the Arizona sentence and get him out of prison, it would remove the three years of probation and the $100,000 fine, which Paul is incapable of paying. It would also send a signal to Arizona to consider a pardon or commutation.
Unfortunately, Brooks and the mainstream media hyped it up as “baby smuggling,” and with the current crackdown on illegal immigration, Paul never had a chance.
Paul conducted adoptions for over 20 years, creating over 500 happy families. Many of them have issued statements praising his services, with some calling out the injustice against him. Paul paid for the expectant mothers’ housing and gave them each $10,000. Many of the adoptive parents and their children kept in touch afterwards with the birth mothers through video calls. These weren’t “illegal aliens” he was helping.
In fact, due to the unclearness in the law regarding whether the Marshallese qualify for Medicaid due to their unusual status, Congress passed a law in 2020 clarifying that they are eligible. Arizona prosecuted Paul for Medicaid fraud, since in a few cases, the adoptive parents’ insurance did not pick up the costs of the births — in one case, the baby died during birth — so the hospitals had Medicaid pick up the cost of the birth, which is a routine, standard procedure. Notably, Arizona prosecutors never went after the hospitals.
Paul immediately paid off the $679,000 restitution ordered by Arizona for the Medicaid, and has been a model prisoner, teaching other inmates how to get their GEDs and helping those on suicide watch.
Meanwhile, his four children have sadly grown up without him, and his long marriage ended due to the prosecution. Paul is submitting a request for a pardon to Trump this week.
There are very few more deserving of a pardon. Why should Paul be sentenced to long prison sentences — over 10 years total — longer than actual human smugglers, for something the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled was fine? This is one of the worst cases of lawfare against a conservative political official. All he did was create happy families.