INS Says It Won’t Stop OCTD Buses at Random

A top U.S. immigration official assured Orange County Transit District Chairman Ralph B. Clark Thursday that the Border Patrol will not randomly stop OCTD buses but will search them when in “hot pursuit” of illegal alien suspects, Clark said.

Howard Ezell, the outspoken, controversial Western regional commissioner for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, met with Clark for 35 minutes Thursday morning in Clark’s Board of Supervisors office in Santa Ana. Clark said he requested the meeting “out of concern” over a Sept. 25 INS raid in Santa Ana in which several OCTD buses were halted between bus stops and passengers were arrested, including a pregnant woman who was later released after it was determined she was in the country legally.

“I requested the meeting because of my concern over the conduct of the boarding and the impact these boardings have, not only on our passengers, but also our drivers,” Clark told the OCTD board of directors during a regularly scheduled meeting later Thursday.

Specifics Not Discussed

“I’m pleased to report that Commissioner Ezell stated to me this morning that, despite stepped-up INS activities now under way in Orange County, the INS has committed to the transit district that their personnel will not board OCTD buses unless they’re in actual pursuit.”

But after the board meeting, Clark acknowledged to reporters that Ezell never conceded that INS agents did anything improper in the Sept. 25 boardings, but Clark did not accuse the agents of wrongdoing.

“I didn’t get into the specific incidents,” Clark said.

Ezell said INS policy allows “that if we’re in pursuit of somebody who is acting like they’re trying to avoid an INS agent or the Border Patrol, then we not only have statutory authority, but we intend to go into a bus or a restaurant or whatever.

“It is not our policy, and it never has been, to put undercover riders on a rapid-transit bus to cull out people and remove them.”

“We’ve got a full-time 10-person unit working on a continuing basis,” he said, adding that he believed there were no more than seven or eight illegal alien suspects apprehended on buses in raids two or three weeks ago.

“Our efforts will still be focused on the labor pickup points, large areas where illegals are hanging around,” he said.

“We had no plainclothes people out there at all (during the operations). They were all uniformed,” Ezell said. “We don’t need to ride buses to find illegals. If you’re looking for enough illegal aliens to make your day of labor worthwhile, you can do that on the streets of Orange County.”

Ezell said that he and Clark discussed the case of the pregnant woman.

“My understanding was she was a legal alien, but was in violation of the law; she didn’t have her green card,” Ezell said. “I really don’t know if she was fleeing or not.

“She sure didn’t show she was pregnant there. That only came up afterwards.”

Agent Has Option

“Once on the bus, there are two things that we’re trying to do,” Ezell said. “One, we’re really only after people fleeing from us. But yes, he (an agent) has that option (of questioning others who may be suspicious).”

Ezell and Clark told reporters that their meeting, which also involved other officials from the INS and OCTD, was peaceful and that each side was cooperative.

Clark said Ezell told him that Orange County has the fourth-highest concentration of illegal aliens in the country.

“I had particular concerns about the possibility of indiscriminate or random boardings of our buses,” Clark said. “Commissioner Ezell and his staff assured me that this is not INS policy.”

Clark did not ask the OCTD board Thursday to take any action in connection with INS bus boardings. Although OCTD officials are unhappy about the INS actions, they said they have no legal authority to stop the pursuit of illegal aliens who flee onto OCTD buses.

Times staff writers Mark Landsbaum and Bob Schwartz contributed to this story.