Border Patrol to Pull Out of Simi Gang Sweeps

Citing possible violation of federal policy, the U.S. Border Patrol said Tuesday that it will no longer join Simi Valley police during probation searches of gang members’ homes to scoop up illegal immigrants.

A top Border Patrol commander for California denied earlier statements by one of his own officers, who said the practice would end because of “political fallout” from earlier raids.

But U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) accused the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Border Patrol of knuckling under to political pressure that followed a highly publicized and heavily criticized Jan. 23 raid in which the congressman took part.

“It’s consistent with the INS’ policy of coddling criminal aliens,” said Gallegly, who took political heat from Latino activists for his role in the early morning raid--which snagged 20 illegal immigrants--after he strongly defended the practice.

“It’s the federal government’s responsibility to enforce our immigration laws, and it’s the Simi Valley Police Department’s responsibility . . . to keep the peace in their jurisdiction,” Gallegly said. “Now, the federal government is saying, ‘We’re not even going to help the Police Department to do the job, to help with the problems [that] they’re responsible for having created.’ ”

Simi Valley Police Capt. Richard Wright said the department declines to comment on the issue.

Meanwhile, Simi Valley city staff began drafting a letter for the City Council to send to Gallegly.

Council members said Tuesday that they want to keep the INS involved in the surprise gang sweeps because they often snare illegal immigrants who are contributing to gang violence in one of the nation’s safest cities.

“One of the gangs here in town is composed of a large number of illegal aliens, and when we come across them and the INS picks them up, it basically de-escalates the pressure between the two gangs,” said Councilman Paul Miller, the city’s former police chief. “We had, a couple days ago, a stabbing that was related to the rivalry between those two gangs. I think [INS participation] is an important tool and it ought to be continued.”

But Latino activists have called the practice of combined raids illegal and the council racist.

Tuesday’s revelation “indicates that the INS is an agency that can be at times responsive to the desires of all segments of a community, and that they can--with reflection--avoid being used for political gain by local politicians,” said attorney Daniel Gonzalez.

But the City Council “cannot be similarly characterized,” said Gonzalez, a member of the Ventura County Mexican-American Bar Assn. and lifelong Simi Valley resident.

“They have shown their racist attitudes by their comments during last [week’s] City Council meeting, and their shortsightedness with regards to jumping on Congressman Gallegly’s anti-immigrant bandwagon,” he said.

During that meeting, Councilman Bill Davis responded to the mostly Latino critics of the policy by saying: “If we were in a foreign country illegally, Mexico or anywhere else, I wonder if we would get treated with as much courtesy as the INS treats you people with . . . They’d put you so far back in the jail that they’d have to shoot beans to you with a peashooter . . . If you’re here illegally, you don’t have any rights.”

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On Tuesday, Davis said his remark was in no way racist. “What’s funny about this moron [Gonzalez] is I’m married to one . . . a Mexican,” Davis said, referring to his wife, Virginia, the daughter of Mexican immigrants. “So I’m a racist? What an idiot. These people. You can’t say anything anymore; some of them take it the wrong way.”

But the INS’ decision to suspend its role in the Simi Valley raids has nothing to do with politics, said Alan Dwelley, assistant chief of the INS for Northern and Central California.

The INS is “taking a step back and evaluating this” because of an obscure 1980 policy created by former U.S. Atty. Gen. Benjamin R. Civiletti, a Carter administration official who forbade immigration agents to join police raids, Dwelley said.

Dwelley said that the policy surfaced not as a result of the Simi Valley flap, but because an INS lawyer unearthed it while preparing to defend the agency against a lawsuit filed by someone caught up in a raid several years ago by the INS and the police in Farmersville in Tulare County.

However, a Simi Valley Police Department memo says that Oxnard INS Agent Neal Jensen told the city that politics were the true cause for the INS withdrawal.

Jensen “stated that they have thoroughly enjoyed working with our department in previous gang sweeps, and realize it serves a purpose in our city,” says the memo penned by Simi Valley Police Officer Darin Muehler. “However, due to the ‘political fallout’ that occurred immediately following the last gang sweep, they can no longer participate.”

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When pressed, Jensen reportedly told Muehler that the INS’ role “might be a violation” and said “the press should not have been allowed inside the residences. That is normally against our policy.”

Ventura County reporters and photographers have routinely accompanied police on dawn sweeps of gang probationers’ homes since the practice was begun several years ago as a means of keeping gang violence in check.

A later memo, on Thursday from Simi Valley Police Chief Randy Adams to City Manager Mike Sedell, mentions the Civiletti policy quoted by Dwelley as the reason for the INS’ reticence.

Jensen could not be reached Tuesday for comment.