27 Hostages Turned Over to INS After Police Rescue

Maximino Calderon-Interino and 26 other undocumented immigrants were being held against their will in a South-Central Los Angeles “drop house” by alien smugglers demanding a $1,000 ransom from each of their families.

Confused and frightened by the kidnapers’ demands, Calderon’s family called attorneys Wednesday evening at the Central American Refugee Center. The attorneys, in turn, called the Los Angeles Police Department.

Within hours, the immigrant hostages had been rescued by eight LAPD officers, who found the men, women and children were hungry, bruised and beaten. The smugglers had apparently escaped.

The immigrants, however, did not go free and their troubles have not ended. Newton Division police called the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, whose agents arrived an hour later and hauled the people away as illegal aliens.

Immigrant rights attorneys accused the LAPD of violating its own longstanding policy that officers should not identify crime victims to the INS.

Police officials, however, said Friday that the sergeant in charge of the operation acted correctly. “If this circumstance comes up again as it did (Wednesday) night, I believe we will handle it the same way,” said Cmdr. James Chambers of the LAPD’s Central Bureau.

On Friday, the immigrants were being held in an INS detention center on suspicion of having entered the United States illegally. At least one of the immigrants, Calderon, a 29-year-old native of El Salvador, told attorneys he plans to apply for political asylum.

Ironically, the bond that has been set for his release--$5,000--is considerably higher than the ransom demanded by his kidnapers. Immigrant advocates say the incident may dissuade future kidnap victims from calling the police for help.

“The feeling in the immigrant community is that the police and the INS are the same thing and that they have no recourse if they’re victims of a crime,” said Madeline Janis, executive director of the refugee center. “(The police) could have held them and questioned them without calling immigration but they called immigration anyways.”

Janis was also one of the attorneys who notified police of the kidnapers’ demands. The refugee agency is accustomed to sheltering immigrants from the authorities, not turning them over to the police, and Janis said the incident has caused bitterness and regret among workers there.

“We’ve been shell-shocked,” Janis said. “We’ve been asking ourselves how could we be the cause of all this misery for these people.”

The police decision to call the INS came after a long telephone conversation at about 5 p.m. Wednesday between officers at Newton Division and attorneys at the refugee center, both parties confirmed. The attorneys gave the telephone number of the drop house that was provided by the family of one of the hostages and then requested that police not notify the INS.

But police told the attorneys they could not comply with the request. Then officers, using the phone number, found the drop house in the 1200 block of East 23rd Street near Central Avenue.

Sgt. Pat Findley, one of two police supervisors on the scene, said he and seven other officers discovered the immigrants early Wednesday evening. Ranging in ages from 4 to 60, the immigrants were at the home “just sitting there.”

“I’m assuming they were told harm might come to them if they left,” Findley said. “Apparently, the actual smugglers themselves, a couple of them had fled already.”

Findley said the officers questioned the men and women at length to determine if any were coyotes, or smugglers. “They all claimed that the smugglers that had brought them over were not there,” he said. “We don’t know if they were covering for them. We have to assume that they were telling the truth.”

Among the immigrants was one man who had suffered an epileptic seizure and a girl about 4 years old who had facial cuts, apparently caused by falling into a cactus plant while crossing the border, Findley said. Paramedics took both to local hospitals.

“These are regular people just trying to get up here,” Findley said. “They’re not criminals. You don’t treat them the way they would treat everybody else.”

Still, Findley said, the officers felt they had little choice but to call immigration authorities. “The reason we call the INS is because that’s their jurisdiction,” he said. “They’re the ones who know how to interrogate. They know how to get these smugglers. They have the expertise.”

The attorneys argued, however, that the immigrants were victims of a crime, not the perpetrators.

Janis said that at least one of the immigrants was fleeing political persecution. Calderon’s family, she explained, was active in an agricultural cooperative in El Salvador that had been a target of government repression. She added that four members of his wife’s family have been granted political asylum in the United States.

She said Calderon had left El Salvador earlier this year with his wife and four children. Janis said that Calderon was detained by Mexican police who “sold” him to the smugglers. “He never paid the coyotes ,” she added.

John Gerardo, head of the INS’ anti-smuggling unit in Los Angeles, said agents had not charged any of the detained immigrants for smuggling. He said all 27 were charged with illegally entering the United States and 20 had chosen to return voluntarily to their native countries.

INS Los Angeles District Director Robert Moschorak applauded the LAPD’s actions in cooperating with his agents.

“If they find people who are illegally in the country and encounter individuals who are suspected of having smuggled illegal immigrants into the U.S., that is (a) federal felony,” Moschorak said. “I think the officers used superb judgment if they notified the INS and I fully support their decision.”