San Gabriel Valley / COVER STORY : The Suspicion Is Mutual : Latinos in Pomona Say They’re Documenting the Border Patrol’s Enforcement Tactics

Carlos Pleitez, a baby-faced 18-year-old from El Salvador, stood on a Pomona street corner one day last year with a few dozen other men hoping for work, his green card tucked safely in his wallet. But on this day, the coveted document did him little good.

“I had papers with me, but (a federal agent) threw me in the van and took me all the way to Riverside,” the three-year Pomona resident said of a Border Patrol visit to the day labor site about seven months ago. “I said I had papers, but they told me, ‘Shut up, wetback!’ ”

When agents learned his documents were valid, Pleitez was released. But he had lost a day’s work and had to make his way back from Riverside on his own, he said.

Legal immigrants throughout the San Gabriel Valley say they increasingly are feeling the sting of anti-immigrant backlash alongside their illegal neighbors. But nowhere are the sentiments stronger than in Pomona, a Latino-majority city and the only one in the valley cruised by the telltale lime-green vehicles of the U.S. Border Patrol.

There, Latinos complain that their businesses have been affected when the Border Patrol hangs around; immigrants, legal or not, don’t want to go near those businesses and risk being questioned, the merchants said. Also, an incident in which Border Patrol agents questioned Mayor Eddie Cortez last summer quickly became local legend, even though agents insist they stopped Cortez because he was following them around.

The activities of the Border Patrol have created such concern that community activists and residents have formed a watchdog organization to educate Pomona Latinos about their rights. Members, a few of them here illegally, also walk the streets to witness and document Border Patrol sweeps.

“Even if you have papers, you feel uneasy,” said Juan, 39, who has lived in the United States legally for 22 years and has run a small sewing business in Pomona for the past three years.

Juan, who is not involved with the watchdog group, declined to give his full name, fearing the patrol would raid his business. “You have to go to work and you have a certain amount of time to get there. They might stop you just because of the way you look,” he said.

Pomona is the westernmost part of territory patrolled by agents based in Riverside, whose main task is to search for illegal immigrants. While the Los Angeles district of the Immigration and Naturalization Service--the Border Patrol’s parent agency--covers a much wider terrain, the INS sets a higher priority on arresting illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes.

The harassment goes beyond Pomona, say immigration activists, who are receiving increasing numbers of complaints from legal immigrants throughout the area.

“We’re hearing a lot of stories,” said Nancy Cervantes of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles. “Employers are threatening people, ‘If you’re illegal, then you’re going to be in a lot of trouble,’ and I’m talking about legal people who have been here for years.”

A Latina student at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut recently complained that she and her French boyfriend were stopped by immigration officials who checked her residency documents. Her boyfriend, in the country illegally, wasn’t questioned.

The fear of discrimination is running high among day laborers, many of whom are documented workers who gather on the streets to find jobs.

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In Monrovia, where more than a hundred day laborers sometimes gather at the Home Depot on Huntington Boulevard, some who are documented said they have increasingly been mistaken for illegal immigrants. As a result, contractors offer lower wages or sometimes refuse to pay them at the end of the day, assuming they will be afraid to complain to authorities.

And on a recent day in Pomona, one contractor angrily walked away from eager laborers, yelling that he wouldn’t hire them for fear of being busted by Border Patrol agents who were on the scene at the time. But the agents already had checked the workers’ immigration documents and found them valid.

Finding day jobs on street corners might soon get harder in unincorporated county areas. County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke is proposing an ordinance that would prohibit day laborers from seeking work in unincorporated county areas, which in the San Gabriel Valley includes Altadena and Hacienda Heights.

The proposed ordinance states that day laborers create safety hazards by interfering with traffic and clogging sidewalks. But immigration activists and day laborers condemn the measure as an attempt to scapegoat immigrants--legal and illegal--for the region’s economic woes.

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“We can’t keep up with all the complaints and calls we get from people saying, ‘Do something about it! I’ve lost my job. I used to make a good living and now they’ve replaced me with someone who makes minimum wage,’ ” said Agent In Charge Raymond Fuhrmann, who estimated that the Riverside station gets four or five calls a day from irate residents eager to report people they believe to be illegal.

Since callers generally cannot verify whether an individual is here legally, Fuhrmann suggests they contact police regarding a person’s illegal conduct rather than his immigration status. But his agents do respond to callers who complain about immigrants congregating on street corners, regardless of their legal status.

Fuhrmann said his officers usually can spot a phony immigration document, but he conceded they have on occasion pulled legal immigrants into the Riverside office before verifying their documents were valid.

While Pomona’s Latinos say agents stepped up patrols in their city over the past year, particularly in the summer and early fall, Fuhrmann said arrests have not increased. With just 12 agents to cover 8,000 square miles, more arrests would not be possible, he said.

Between October, 1992, and last September, agents from the Riverside station arrested 6,421 people--937 fewer than the previous year. That difference is likely due to tight budgets that cut two agents off the payroll in fiscal 1993, Fuhrmann said.

Current statistics for October through the first half of January were comparable to the previous year.

But Latino business owners and day laborers said visits by agents have increased, even if arrests haven’t.

Fernando Garcia, 22, a legal immigrant from Michoacan, Mexico, said the agents come by the Contractor Warehouse on West Mission Boulevard several times a week.

“They treat us very badly,” said Garcia, a resident of Pomona for seven years. “When they arrive, they don’t ask us whether we have papers or not. They just say, ‘Hey, wetback!’ and sometimes they grab us by the hair.”

Fuhrmann said he has never seen his officers behave that way. Many are compassionate toward the people they arrest, he said, purchasing food and drinks or diapers for the children before they board the 4 p.m. daily bus for the border.

On a recent day in the city, agents were not hard-pressed to find arrestees. As a team of lime-green vehicles and vans cruised Pomona’s streets and alleys, one man abandoned his car and fled into a house as a woman yelled ‘La migra! La migra!’ from her front yard.

Many of the day laborers at the site on West Mission Boulevard flashed their documents, but more than half a dozen were marched into waiting vans. Within an hour, 21 men were apprehended, most of them within Pomona’s city limits.

In any group approached by agents, Fuhrmann said, there are bound to be legal residents, particularly in Pomona--with a Latino-majority City Council and a school district whose Latino student population tops 60%

“It varies. Of 10 people, sometimes half take off running. Sometimes it’s only one or two,” he said, adding that sometimes legal residents run, too, as “a joke.”

“When you approach a group like that, there’s no way of knowing which is going to be illegal, especially if they’re recent arrivals, other than by talking to them,” Fuhrmann said. “But it doesn’t take long. Within a few minutes, our agents usually know.”

In September, seasoned community activists banded together with newly politicized immigrants to form the watchdog Alliance for Immigrant Rights. Members walk Pomona’s streets on the lookout for the Border Patrol and hand out cards emblazoned: “Immigrant: Know Your Rights.”

The group formed shortly after the run-in between Mayor Cortez and Border Patrol agents. Cortez was following agents on a sweep through town when he said he was pulled over and asked for identification. Cortez, who was driving an old pickup truck, said an agent told him he “fit the profile” of an illegal immigrant. Border Patrol officials said agents questioned Cortez because they considered his behavior unusual.

The incident spurred rumors in the city and even made the papers in Mexico City. It also fueled Pomona’s nascent immigrant rights movement. A September workshop on Border Patrol issues drew more than 80 people.

“When they start asking us for ID and papers, we think they’re going to take us away. Sometimes we run, out of fear,” said Roberto, a legal immigrant who attended the workshop to learn about his rights.

Roberto, who has lived in Pomona since 1984 and supports nine children in Mexico, ducked into a hair salon when Border Patrol agents appeared at the day labor site recently, rather than face questioning he finds unpleasant and frightening.

Albert Castro, 60, who was born in Pomona and has owned Realty World on West Mission Boulevard since 1967, said he is more concerned about the real estate market than the Border Patrol. But he knows many others feel differently.

“Several people have said to me, ‘I’m not going to go out in the streets until noon or 1 p.m.,’ ” Castro said. The immigration patrols usually come through town in the early morning.

On a recent afternoon, Norma Y Nico was shopping for pinatas at the Rancho Pomona Market when the sight of Border Patrol agents across the street paralyzed her.

“I screamed to my nephew, ‘Oh my God! La migra !”’ said Nico, who owns Pomona’s La Lupita meat market.

Nico and her nephew, both Mexican-born, are here legally. But the specter of immigrants fleeing from agents has planted an irrational fear in Nico.

“The Border Patrol shows up and people start running,” Nico said. “They look like animals. It makes me feel very bad, because they are my people.”