Advertisement

Corona to Continue Illegal Alien Sweeps; Rise in Crime Cited

Share
Times Staff Writers

The U.S. Border Patrol and local officials promised Friday to continue sweeps for illegal immigrants, the day after about 100 suspects were rounded up on the city’s streets and in the barrios and playgrounds.

“The presence of larger numbers of undocumented people in Corona has a direct relationship to the rising crime rate in the city,” said City Manager James D. Wheaton. “. . . If the reason for the ease of the sweep is that word is out that Corona is some kind of sanctuary, we want to dispel that image.”

Six teams of Border Patrol agents and police officers Thursday combed the central district of this Riverside County city, cruising in Corona police cars and apprehending people after brief conversations to determine their resident status in the United States.

Advertisement

The aliens, all Mexican citizens, were taken to the border at Tijuana after they had signed voluntary return forms, Border Patrol spokesman Ed Pyeatt said Friday. The sweep was similar to one conducted Jan. 28 when 74 persons suspected of being illegal aliens were apprehended by the Border Patrol and Corona police.

Inundation Claimed

Immigration officials said Thursday’s sweep was conducted at the request of Corona police “to assist in an area inundated with illegal aliens.”

Illegal aliens are contributing to the rising crime rate “both as suspects and as victims,” said Police Chief John Cleghorn, citing increasing burglaries, shoplifting and car thefts. But Cleghorn said his department has no supporting data.

Some civil libertarians have long complained about local police departments cooperating with federal immigration authorities, and some cities, including Santa Ana, have told police officers not to cooperate with INS agents.

Corona Mayor S. R. (Al) Lopez received several calls Friday afternoon from “people who observed what actually took place,” he said. “They say some rather rough procedures were taken.”

‘I’m Not an Animal’

The mayor quoted one caller: “If you’re going to pick me up, fine. But treat me with some respect. I’m not an animal.”

Advertisement

Lopez had already met Friday morning with Wheaton and Cleghorn “to ensure that our citizens were protected and their rights and due process were not violated,” he said. Although initially satisfied with their report, Lopez said, complaints Friday afternoon about “unnecessary roughness” have prompted him to look further into the sweeps.

“Local police departments have enough to do without messing in Border Patrol stuff,” said one Latino activist, who asked that his name not be used.

Corona city officials, however, defended sweeps. “The role of the Police Department is not just the enforcement of the Corona municipal code,” Wheaton said, “but also the laws of the state and the nation.”

The immigration sweep, Cleghorn said, “is . . . cost-effective in terms of reducing our (crime) problems in the long run.”

The city of more than 45,000 residents--a quarter of them Latino--has become a magnet to illegal aliens who travel up Interstate 15 from the Mexican border, city officials contend. “We’re north of Escondido. We’re the first stop along Highway 15,” Cleghorn said.

“We have been an agricultural community, and there have been farm jobs, orchard jobs and jobs in the packinghouses,” Wheaton said, “ . . . so the history of Corona lends itself” to attracting illegal immigration.

Advertisement

These days, however, the city--once known as “the lemon capital of the world”--is becoming increasingly residential, and its newer economic base is in light industry rather than agriculture. Immigrants “are finding, when they get here, there are not jobs,” Wheaton said.

But Anna Alviso, a relative of two of the men arrested in Thursday’s sweep, said her nephew and her husband’s cousin had found jobs in Anaheim. “I felt bad, because they were people that just wanted to work,” she said in Spanish, her sister translating.

Asked for Green Cards

Both Jose Jesus Alviso-Flores, 20, her nephew, and Jose Trinidad Morales, 22, her husband’s cousin, had lived for about three months with her family in Home Gardens, an unincorporated neighborhood on the outskirts of Corona, she said.

The two were walking along 6th Street, Corona’s main commercial street, with her husband, Elias, when police stopped them. “They asked for their green cards,” Alviso said. Only Elias Alviso could produce the residency permit; the other two were taken to Corona City Jail, then to Mexico.

“I think that the police are getting pretty strong here,” Anna Alviso said.

That sentiment is not shared by local business leaders, according to Steve E. Caseldine, president of the Corona Chamber of Commerce.

“I think that the local business community here in Corona is a fairly conservative group of people,” he said. “And most of them would support the police in this kind of program. . . .

Advertisement

Barry S. Surman reported from Corona and George Ramos from Los Angeles.

Advertisement