Police Role in INS Sweeps Assailed : Latinos in Corona Meet at Parish Hall, Warn of Backlash

The Police Department’s participation in immigration sweeps may hamper its ability to prevent and investigate crime in the Latino community, Latino residents said at a community meeting Sunday.

About 150 people--including both members of a special City Council committee studying the recent immigration raids--gathered at St. Edward’s Hall, where a succession of speakers denounced the sweeps and the Police Department’s role in them.

Community leaders vowed to marshal evidence to show that the methods used by Border Patrol agents--who plucked suspects from city streets and playgrounds--were unconstitutional. They also promised to fight the city’s policy of cooperating with federal immigration authorities, possibly taking the issue to state courts.

“Hispanic members of our community have long been taught that police were their friends and were there to protect them,” said Father Bob Buchanan, pastor of St. Edward’s Catholic Church in central Corona. “The aliens knew they had to run from the (Immigration and Naturalization Service), but not from the police.

“They felt tricked in the raid on Thursday, April 10, when INS agents appeared from police cars,” the priest said. “What will happen now when our police are seeking a suspect in a serious crime and (they approach) an alien who is now being taught to run from the police? The consequences could be serious and even tragic.”

Buchanan organized Sunday morning’s meeting not only to inform city officials of community opposition to their policy but also to bring immigration lawyers, Latino activists and local residents together to begin organizing that opposition.

Buchanan, the head of Corona’s largest religious congregation, and other community leaders charged that the sweeps violated a 3-year-old understanding they had reached with Border Patrol and Police Department officials--that the authorities “wouldn’t just come in and indiscriminately pick up kids,” Victor Torres said.

City Councilman William Franklin promised to investigate those charges further. “The information you have given me this morning is new information to me,” he said. “. . . I also want to get the Police Department’s side of what you have told me this morning.”

A groundswell of protest in Corona’s Latino community--which accounts for a quarter of the city’s 45,000 residents--followed a four-hour immigration sweep on April 10 in which pairs of local police officers and Border Patrol agents combed the city in white Corona police cars.

Each team stopped long enough only to start a conversation with suspected illegal aliens, handcuff them and deposit them in a steady stream at the city jail.

Authorities “have no right to stop me,” said Father Rudi Gil, associate pastor of St. Edward’s. “My fear is that I’m going to be walking in my short pants and T-shirt, and they’re going to stop me. I say, ‘Woe to you if you stop me. Woe to you.’

“I am a priest but if I take off my collar and open my shirt,” he said, doing so for emphasis, “I am no different” than any Latino in Corona.

Several speakers challenged city officials’ earlier statements that illegal aliens contribute to an increasing crime rate in the city. “We can stop crime totally if we lock everybody up,” said Robert Nava, a staff specialist for the Orange County Human Relations Commission and representative of the social action group Los Amigos of Orange County.

Border Patrol sweeps “affect all of us . . . not only our undocumented brothers and sisters,” Nava said.

Others at the meeting charged that police officers routinely harass Hispanics stopped for traffic violations by asking for immigration papers or “green cards,” a claim dismissed by police officials.

“If that were occurring,” Capt. John Dalzell said, “we would have had a lot, a lot of feedback from our community. There’s a lot of Hispanic residents that don’t have green cards because they’ve been U.S. citizens all their lives. . . . There would have been a hue and cry that started long ago.”

Authorities’ apparent disregard for Latinos’ constitutional rights “is very unjust to our people, to the Spanish-speaking people,” said Soledad Alatorre of Hermandad Mexicana, an activist group based in the San Fernando Valley.

“Sooner or later,” she said, “the situation is going to be like Germany; what happened to the Jews in Germany is going to happen to our people.”