FBI Investigating Alleged Abuse of Migrant Worker in Carlsbad

The FBI is looking into the alleged kidnaping and beating of a North County migrant worker by two Carlsbad brothers outside their rural market earlier this month, a spokesman said Wednesday.

Ron Orrantia, an FBI spokesman in San Diego, said the agency will forward its report on the case to Washington, where U.S. Justice Department officials will decide whether to pursue federal allegations of civil rights violations.

“We’re following the state prosecution of the case and will be submitting whatever happens here to the Department of Justice’s civil rights division in Washington,” he said. “Then they’ll have to decide whether to pursue the case on a federal level.”

Carlsbad police said that FBI agents had met with police supervisors Tuesday.

Detective Richard Castaneda, the police investigator who has been assigned to the kidnaping probe, said he is under orders not to talk about developments in the case.

He referred all questions to his supervisor, Carlsbad Police Lt. Don Lewis, who did not return telephone calls late Wednesday.

The police probe revolves around an alleged kidnaping Jan. 3 outside the Country Store market on El Camino Real in Carlsbad. According to detectives, store owner Rickey Ryberg and brother Randy, a baker at the store, abducted a 26-year-old laborer as he arrived that morning to solicit work outside the rural market.

Candido Salas, a Mexican immigrant who has lived and worked in the growing fields near the store over the past four months, said the Rybergs handcuffed him for several hours to a railing in the rear of the store. He was also beaten about the chest, he said.

Before releasing him, the brothers bound the migrant worker’s legs and arms with duct tape and placed a bag on his head on which was written “No Mas Aqui,” ungrammatical Spanish for “Don’t Come Back.”

Witnesses have since come forth to report that several other migrant workers have received similar treatment from the brothers--but have been afraid to make reports before the most recent incident, police say.

Salas has said that he will press charges against the brothers because he is tired of such violent treatment of migrant workers.

The Rybergs have been charged by the state with kidnaping, false imprisonment, battery and civil rights violations. They are scheduled for arraignment Monday in Vista Superior Court.

Claudia Smith, an attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance, a nonprofit migrant advocacy group in Oceanside, said she called federal authorities last week to request that they investigate the case.

Smith said she first called the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego and was referred to the FBI.

“I asked them to open a case of possible conspiracy to violate civil rights,” she said. “I wanted to make sure that the FBI was going to investigate it.”

Smith, who said her group was considering whether to file a civil lawsuit in the case, said she was also concerned over a statement of sympathy for the store owners made by Carlsbad Detective Sgt. Bill Huntington in a recent Times story.

“They were frustrated, pure and simple, but I don’t think this thing has any racist overtones,” the officer said of the brothers. “This thing is a two-way street. A businessman loses thousands of dollars a year to shoplifters, people scaring away his good customers.

“I’m not taking any sides in this, although I know Rick personally. What he did was wrong. But I can also see the frustration.”

The Rev. Rafael Martinez, executive director of the North County Chaplaincy, another migrant advocacy group in Encinitas, said he was appalled not only by the violence, but also by statements made by police about the case.

“I have a problem with police officers making such a statement that is, in effect, a justification of what these people have allegedly done,” he said. “People need to go see a psychiatrist, not go out and beat innocent people.”

Martinez said he believes the incidents at the Country Store, as well as the Carlsbad Police Department’s handling of the case, deserve serious evaluation.

“Bad things have happened there. And if they’re just going to be swept under the carpet and written off to pure frustration, they’re going to happen again. Hispanic people are citizens here too, and we deserve full protection under the law.

“We’re not begging. We’re demanding it.”