Boy Deported by INS Waits to Be Claimed in Tijuana Facility

A 13-year-old boy picked up by Immigration and Naturalization Service agents as he rode his bicycle in Orange on Thursday remained in custody in Tijuana on Saturday with little hope that his mother would arrive to get him.

INS officials said they stopped Victor Amador Garcia at the corner of Almond Avenue and Main Street on Thursday morning because he began yelling “ la migra “ to warn others that INS vans were approaching. They said the boy told them his parents lived in Mexico.

Harold Ezell, INS regional commissioner, said the case was unusual and that his agents were not out “looking for children riding bicycles.”

A Different Story

Robert Gilson, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman in San Diego, said Saturday that “the young rascal was riding back and forth” about 11 a.m. when he should have been in school, while agents tried to round up illegal residents.

But Victor, in an interview at a Mexican juvenile facility in Tijuana, told a different story.

“No, I wasn’t yelling or shouting at anyone when I was on my bike. I was alone and the street was empty, and there was no one else around,” he said. He also said it happened at 7:30 a.m., as he was going to buy candy, “because I knew I had to be at school at 8.”

Victor now waits for someone to get him. The problem is that he says he has no relatives in Tijuana, and he will not give information about his mother, who has lived in Orange illegally for eight months and who fears the INS, he said.

When INS agents arrested him, Victor told them his parents lived in Culiacan in the state of Sinaloa. On Saturday, Victor said he lied because “I wanted to protect my mother.”

An American friend working on behalf of his mother tried to have the boy released from the juvenile facility shortly after his apprehension, but Victor said he refused to sign the necessary documents because he feared it would harm his mother.

If his mother did come forward, she would face deportation, although she could request a hearing before an immigration judge.

Ezell said he was not “using that boy to get one more illegal female. I’m not using that kid as bait.”

But Victor brought the attention onto himself with his warnings by yelling to others, he said. “Otherwise, they would not have even noticed him,” Ezell said.

The intersection is near Chapman Avenue, one of several sites INS agents have pinpointed for sweeps of undocumented immigrants who gather on corners to wait for landscapers, construction supervisors and others to stop and offer them temporary jobs. INS officials said they rounded up about 100 suspected illegal aliens Thursday.

For Victor, a slightly built teen-ager about 5 feet, 4 inches tall, the last few days have been hectic. After INS agents seized him, he was taken to a Border Patrol office in San Clemente, where he said he showed authorities the only identification he had with him: a school lunch ticket with his name and the name of the school. According to the youth, an agent tore up the ticket. Both Ezell and Gene Smithburg, a Border Patrol spokesman, said they were not aware of such an incident.

From San Clemente, he was transferred to a Border Patrol facility in San Ysidro and later across the border to the juvenile facility in Tijuana.

When the INS picks up juveniles who are alone, Ezell said, agents release them to a legal guardian, a relative with permission from a guardian or authorities from the juvenile’s country, Ezell said. The minors are not permitted back into the United States without proper documentation.

Mexican authorities are now in charge of the boy. “It’s in their hands,” Smithburg said.

Ezell said he expects a relative in Mexico will claim Victor and, eventually, he “will end up being smuggled across again.”

“It’s too bad. The kid is illegally here. Once you find that out, you can’t ignore that,” Ezell said.

Daniel Romero, the chief counselor at the juvenile facility, Consejo de Orientacion y Re-educacion para Menores de Conducta Anti-social , said Saturday he had not heard word that the mother or anyone else was coming to pick up the boy.

Asked if he was afraid, Victor looked up and answered in a low voice, “No.”