4 U.S. Citizens Jailed in Border Robberies

In a highly unusual case, San Diego police and the U.S. Border Patrol arrested four U.S. citizens, who police say are all enrolled in the San Diego Job Corps Center, in the armed robbery of 11 undocumented immigrants north of the border Thursday night.

Three of the suspects were booked into County Jail on suspicion of armed robbery. The other, a juvenile, was booked into Juvenile Hall on suspicion of the same, police said.

Sources said the juvenile arrested is a 17-year-old member of Metal Militia, a group featured on a Feb. 24 Fox Broadcasting Co. episode of “The Reporters.”

The broadcast, which depicted local high school students harassing undocumented workers along the border, drew the ire of Latino groups, who called for a government investigation into the alleged racist paramilitary activities there.

At the same time, police, school officials and parents charged that the show was slanted to make the youths appear to be vigilantes.

Later, however, police said they had evidence supporting some of the claims of harassment.

Robberies of undocumented immigrants are not uncommon in the area just north of the border, but police say the perpetrators are almost always from Mexico.

Thursday’s arrests came about 9 p.m. near the 2300 block of Hollister Street in south San Diego, police spokesman Bill Robinson said.

The 11 victims had entered the country illegally, he said, and were confronted by four males who were dressed in dark or camouflage clothing and brandished a handgun, knife, club and scabbard.

“The victims were robbed of about $170, as well as jewelry, including gold bracelets,” Robinson said.

The Border Patrol arrested William Eugene Barnes, 24, said supervisory Border Patrol Agent Ted Swofford.

Soon afterward, the Police Department’s Border Crime Intervention Unit “was dispatched to the area, and they flushed out the other three suspects,” Robinson said.

Donald Tyrone Young, 22, and Ruben Augustine Saucedo, 20, were booked into County Jail early Friday along with Barnes on suspicion of armed robbery, said a jail spokeswoman, who said each man’s bail was set at $195,000.

Arraignment for the three is scheduled for Tuesday between 1 and 3 p.m., she said.

Swofford called the arrest “kind of unusual.”

“I don’t recall a situation where we’ve arrested a U.S. citizen for robbery there in several years,” he said.

Police said the four men arrested were enrolled at the San Diego Job Corps Center in the 1300 block of Iris Avenue in Imperial Beach.

Job Corps programs take in students between 16 and 24, grounding them in a variety of trades, from nursing to welding. At the Imperial Beach center, they can live on or off the grounds.

In mid-July, nine people were hospitalized after “a small-scale riot” at the center that took more than 30 helmeted and baton-wielding law enforcement officers to break up.

After the February broadcast on harassment at the border, many of the youths involved told police they were asked to perform for the cameras and that, in reality, they participate only in harmless “war games.”

“We don’t touch illegal aliens,” one of them said. “We tell them it’s dangerous and they should leave. Maybe we give them a drink of water if they ask for it. Sometimes they scare us, they pop out of nowhere.”

Meanwhile, officials from Fox Broadcasting said they stood by their story.

“After the initial rounds of interviews, we were not convinced the crimes were generated by the students,” Robinson said.

A subsequent investigation led authorities to believe that there was a case, but not sufficient evidence for the district attorney to prosecute, Robinson said.

“Now we have victims who have identified their assailants,” he said.

A spokeswoman with the district attorney’s office declined to say whether the men arrested were involved in other border incidents.