15-Year-Old San Ysidro Girl Says Border Patrol Illegally Deported Her

Betty Romo, 15, a survivor of last year’s McDonald’s restaurant massacre, saw the two youths running toward her last month and froze in her tracks. But when she saw a pursuing Border Patrol agent move his hand toward a holstered gun, the girl ran in terror and hid in a nearby yard.

The sight of the gun brought back painful memories of that summer day when James Oliver Huberty mowed down 21 victims at the crowded restaurant where she and a younger sister were eating, said Betty. The girl said that she ran because she was afraid.

That reaction aroused the suspicions of the two agents who on Oct. 7 were chasing two alien youths down a sloping street in this border community. According to Betty, one of the agents said the fact that she ran upon seeing the immigration officers proved that she was an illegal alien.

Thirty minutes later, instead of sitting in class at Montgomery High School--her destination after a visit to the doctor that morning--Betty, a U.S. citizen, found herself deported to Tijuana along with the Mexican boys the agents were chasing.

“I tried telling the Border Patrol that I live here, and that I was born in Los Angeles. But one of the agents said I was lying. He said that I lived in Tijuana. Then they started calling me names. First, they called me a Mexican jumping bean and then they called me a hooker . . . a prostitute,” she said softly, her dark eyes brimming with tears.

The girl says she was humiliated by the incident. “I told them, in English and Spanish, that I was 15. That I was on my way to school, but they did not believe me,” she said.

Speaking in a voice at times barely audible, Betty said the two agents put her and the two boys in a four-wheel-drive vehicle and drove them to a canyon east of San Ysidro, where they parked for about 10 minutes. Then the three youths were driven to the Border Patrol station at the San Ysidro port of entry and forced to walk to Tijuana. According to Betty, the agents deported her without advising her of her rights or asking her to sign a form acknowledging that she was being sent to Mexico.

That triggered a 32-hour ordeal that found her walking the streets of Tijuana--penniless--and a futile attempt to return to the United States later in the evening, only to be rebuked by a U.S. Customs agent and an immigration official. And while Betty tried desperately to return home, her mother, Rosa Maria Romo, was equally frustrated in her attempt to convince San Diego police, U.S. Customs and immigration officials that her daughter was missing.

Since the incident, Romo has installed a telephone in the family’s simple three-room home so that her three children can contact her if they are in trouble. The new telephone represents a sacrifice for the family: Its installation was made possible only by forgoing the electric and gas bills for a month.

Deputy Chief Mike Williams of the Border Patrol said Friday that an investigator for the agency looked into the girl’s allegations but found no record of the incident.

“Sometimes kids get in with the wrong crowd and, in order to make their stories seem more credible, they give our agents a phony name so they can be deported. We don’t have a record of the incident,” Williams said. “I’ve had an officer looking at our records for that day and looking at the profiles of the women we picked up that day, but we didn’t come up with anything.

“We don’t know anything about it at this point. We’re in the dark. We’ll be glad to look at this allegation if the girl and her mother would come down and talk to us about it. At this point, we don’t have any facts to show that this incident occurred.”

Betty said the vision of Omar A. Hernandez, 11, cut down by gunfire as he pulled up to the McDonald’s on his bicycle is still etched in her mind from the July 18, 1984, massacre. Her younger sister, Mary Beth, 11, still has nightmares about the shooting, despite undergoing extensive psychiatric counseling.

Betty’s mother now wonders if the girl will be scarred by her experience with the Border Patrol. Romo, 50, a legal resident alien whose status was confirmed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, says that Betty has been asking for a state-issued identification card she can show the agents if she is stopped again.

Betty said she has been stopped before on San Ysidro streets by San Diego police and the Border Patrol and questioned about her citizenship. However, her previous contacts with the authorities had been uneventful. Betty and her family said they were never prepared for the events that occurred on that weekday morning, following a medical appointment for the girl’s minor heart ailment.

“I told her it was God’s way of punishing her for being disrespectful to me. When I sent her to school that morning, she asked for 50 cents that I didn’t have. She got angry and left in a huff,” said Romo, who speaks limited English.

Romo, a widow, supports her family on a Social Security income of $587 a month.

Betty, a shy, dark-skinned girl, said the agents--whose names she never learned--deported her after accusing her of accompanying the two boys who were apprehended. The confusion occurred, she said, when the fleeing aliens decided to run in her direction while attempting to elude the agents.

After Betty’s arrest, the agents drove her and the two boys to a border canyon east of San Ysidro, where an agent kicked one of the youths in the stomach after the boy made a wisecrack, she said.

“Then they drove us around for about 30 minutes, and at 10:30 a.m. they took us to the border and told us to walk to Tijuana. I begged them to take me home, and told them again that I was born in Los Angeles. But they said my home was in Tijuana,” said the girl.

After wandering around Tijuana for several hours, Betty said she returned to the San Ysidro port of entry, where she attempted to reenter the U.S. on foot about 8 p.m.

“The man (a Customs agent) asked me my citizenship and I told him American citizen. I told him I was born in Los Angeles and lived in San Ysidro,” Betty said. “I had some of my school papers in my bag and showed them to the man to prove that I live here, but he didn’t believe me. I also had a letter from the doctor reminding me of my appointment. The man sent me to another man who started talking to me in a language I didn’t understand. This man told me to go back to Tijuana.”

While Betty was looking for a way to return to San Ysidro, her mother began a frantic search when the girl failed to arrive home from school at 2:30 p.m. After an extensive search of the neighborhood and busy San Ysidro Boulevard, the woman decided at 9:30 p.m. to go to San Diego police for help.

Clutching a school photo of the girl, Romo said she approached a policeman in the parking lot of the nearby police station and asked for help.

“He just shook his head and told me to come back in the morning, when the station was open,” said Romo.

“I walked around until 2 a.m. looking for her in San Ysidro and by the border crossing, showing her picture to the immigration agents. I couldn’t sleep that night, waiting for her to come home. The next morning I went to the police station and, in my broken English, I showed an officer her picture and tried to explain that Betty did not return home from school,” said the mother.

Romo could not remember the name of the officer she talked to, but the officer suspected that Betty might be in Tijuana and told Romo to ask the Tijuana police for help. Officers at the San Ysidro station of the San Diego Police Department were unable to recall the incident, but a Tijuana police spokeswoman said that officer Leopoldo Palos drove Romo through the streets of Tijuana in search of the girl.

“Finally, after about two hours of driving around, we found her at the bus station. She was sleeping on a bench, tired, hungry, but she was all right,” said Romo.

U.S. immigration officials allowed them to return to San Ysidro, after Romo showed them proof of her permanent residency in this country.

Border Patrol spokesman Ed Pyeatt said that juveniles who are apprehended alone normally are brought to the station and held for the Mexican consul general, who oversees their safe return to Tijuana. Pyeatt said that all apprehended aliens are advised of their right to seek a deportation hearing or to ask for a voluntary departure. Either way, the alien acknowledges his choice by signing a form.

Unless the youth is carrying an identification card, agents usually take the youth’s word that he is a minor. But Border Patrol agents also use their own judgment when determining if an alien who claims to be a minor is in fact one.

Romo said she was afraid to talk about the harrowing incident and hesitated to take legal action against the Border Patrol out of concern that the INS would revoke her permanent residency. At first, Romo, who immigrated to the United States 23 years ago, was afraid to talk to a reporter because “the migra won’t like it and they will send me and my family to Mexico.”

Pyeatt said the woman is in no danger of losing her visa.

Eventually, the family sought help from the Chicano Federation, a San Diego-based group that specializes in immigrant rights. Romo and Betty agreed to discuss the incident with a reporter after receiving assurances from federation official Yolanda Martinez that no action could be taken against them by the Border Patrol.

The woman said she no longer allows her children to walk the streets of San Ysidro out of fear that they will be picked up and deported. Betty, who said she will be afraid to walk to school until she gets an identification card, now has a school-issued photo I.D.

Her older brother, Pepe, who lives in Los Angeles, scoffs at her fears.

“That’s crazy. You’re an American citizen. Nobody needs an identification card in this country. Betty, you’ve got the same rights as the son of a bitch who deported you. This isn’t Russia,” he said.