Raid Leaves Woman Shaken : Law enforcement: Deputies broke in on dealers, but the dealers had moved, and a Mexican migrant says she was rudely roughed up.

Glafira Gutierrez says the feeling is one of betrayal, so much so that she wants to go home--to Mexico.

The 54-year-old immigrant says she came to America in June, hoping for a better life for her family. But, if what happened Sept. 12 is any indication, America, she said, is a “rude, violent place that I . . . want no part of.”

It was on that morning that Gutierrez became the victim of what she calls “a nightmare, the worst experience of my life.”

She says four armed San Diego County Sheriff’s deputies broke down the door of her one-bedroom apartment in Vista and wrestled her to the ground. They grabbed her by the hair, she said, handcuffed her and slammed her head into the floor so hard that she finally passed out.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me,” she said Friday. “This is horrible! They had no right to do that. They should feel ashamed and embarrassed to make such a mistake and take advantage of a defenseless old lady.”

Gutierrez and her attorney say that she intends to file a claim against the Sheriff’s Department. Sgt. Glenn Revell said that Sheriff Jim Roache has promised an investigative review of the incident and intends to apologize to Gutierrez.

Revell outlined the facts of the case as these: Four deputies entered the Gutierrez home with a search warrant, having been told by an informant that heroin had been sold out of that unit in the 1300 block of Monte Mar Road in east Vista in late August.

But Phil Saenz, Gutierrez’s attorney, said the warrant was not obtained until Sept. 5--after the apartment already had been vacated--and, by the time the search was conducted, a week later, Gutierrez, her husband and three of her 10 children had moved in.

“We served a valid warrant on the appropriate address,” Revell said. “Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, those in the home who were allegedly selling heroin had left the address, and, lo and behold, the Gutierrezes had moved in.”

But Saenz also alleges that sheriff’s deputies failed to show Gutierrez the warrant, instead presenting it to the apartment manager, who did not accompany the deputies to Gutierrez’s door. The apartment manager could not be reached for comment Friday.

“She heard a knock,” Saenz said of his client. “She’s slow to respond--she’s new here and doesn’t speak a word of English. Suddenly, the door is busted down, they tackle her, throw her down on the floor, handcuff her and start beating her up. She thought her life was over--she was convinced these people were burglars who wanted to kill her.

“She remembers a lot of yelling and cursing, and, at some point, she was knocked unconscious. But the worst part is now, because she’s terrified and feels totally betrayed.”

Among Gutierrez’s more serious allegations are that $630 is missing from what she calls her life’s savings--$1,500 she had stashed away in a duffel bag in the closet. She says it’s money her husband managed to save harvesting oranges and avocados in North County.

Revell, the sheriff’s spokesman, said that Gutierrez failed to inform deputies of the missing money when she was interviewed the next day at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, where she was treated for a hand injury and released.

Gutierrez, barely 5 feet tall and wearing a bright, flowery dress, sat in her apartment Friday afternoon and talked emotionally about the morning of the raid. She said that, although her hand often feels numb, the worst part is “wondering why they did this to me.

“Already, it feels so different from Oaxaca,” she said.

She left her hometown June 26 to be with her husband, a longtime North County agricultural worker.

“We thought we could be a family again, but me, I want to go back, just because of this,” she said. “No one has ever apologized to me directly--the sheriff’s people apologized only to the apartment manager. I’m still waiting to hear.”

“She probably will wind up going back,” Saenz, her attorney, said. “And it’s really a shame. Her family has never caused any problems in the United States. These are honest, hard-working, people--people of the earth. They came here because they were poor and hungry, and they really had dreams. And now this . . . . It’s just a sorry way to treat somebody.”