INS Arrests 42 Ice Cream Vendors : Raid: Agents found illegal aliens living in a company warehouse. They are believed to have been smuggled in from Mexico to operate dessert pushcarts.

In a raid dubbed “Operation Icicle,” immigration authorities raided the warehouse of a vending business in Pacoima on Friday and arrested 42 illegal aliens believed to have been smuggled in from Mexico to sell ice cream from pushcarts in Los Angeles, authorities said.

A manager and a foreman at the Delicias de Michoacan warehouse were also arrested in the 6 a.m. raid at 13303 Van Nuys Blvd., said Robert Moschorak, district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Los Angeles.

Moschorak said agents learned four weeks ago that the warehouse was being used as a home by illegal aliens. After a preliminary investigation, they obtained a warrant to search the property, which includes two buildings and a covered parking area.

Moschorak said about a dozen INS agents found the workers sleeping inside and outside the buildings.

“They were living there and sleeping in somewhat squalid conditions,” Moschorak said. “They were sleeping in cars, on freezers, in boxes.”

A member of the family that owns the Ontario-based Delicias de Michoacan denied that the company, which has warehouses throughout Southern California, had any involvement in smuggling workers into the country.

Gus Mora called the raid a “witch hunt,” and said none of the 44 people taken into custody, including the two described by Moschorak as a manager and a foreman, were employees of the company. The people were sleeping on the property without approval, he said.

Moschorak declined to say what prompted the investigation of the warehouse. He said an investigation is continuing, but the warehouse was believed by the INS to be the end point of a smuggling network.

“They were being smuggled into the United States, transported to this location and harbored there,” Moschorak said. “The initial indications are that some paid as much as $1,500 to get here.”

Moschorak said a manager of the property, identified as Margarito Macias de Ando, and a foreman, whose identity was not known, were arrested on suspicion of harboring illegal aliens. All of those arrested were being held at the federal detention center in Los Angeles where they were being interviewed by INS agents Friday.

Moschorak said investigators had not determined how the 36 men, five women and a boy were transported to this country, or how long they have been here. He said they were apparently allowed to stay at the warehouse by night and sell ice cream and frozen fruit bars called paletas from vendor carts by day.

“It is believed that some of them were allowed to work to pay back the people who smuggled them here,” Moschorak said. “We will attempt to learn if any were held against their will, but I doubt that will be the case. They were put out on the street with carts. If they wanted to leave, they could have.”

Mora said the company rents carts to vendors and sells ice cream and fruit bars to them. He said that he does not require vendors that rent or buy products from the company to prove they are U.S. citizens.

“I have no way of determining that,” he said.

Mora said that he has often changed locks on doors and fences at the warehouse and garage complex because of a problem with vendors sleeping on the property at night. But he denied that the company knowingly allowed the vendors to sleep inside the buildings.

Moschorak disputed that claim, saying that the fact that the vendors were found sleeping inside the warehouse--while the men believed to be the property manager and foreman were there--indicated company approval. He said evidence from the raid will be presented to the U.S. attorney’s office, which may seek sanctions against the company for employing and harboring illegal aliens.

The warehouse was closed Friday, but Mora said it would reopen today. Meanwhile, some vendors, such as Mediano Lopez, had to go to other distribution warehouses to get carts and ice cream.

Lopez said he went to the Van Nuys Boulevard warehouse at 7 a.m. but was told to leave by INS agents. He was able to rent a cart and buy paletas from another Delicias de Michoacan warehouse about a block away. He then set up shop on a curb across the street from the closed warehouse.