INS Apologizes for Cypress Park Activist’s Arrest

The INS’s top official in Los Angeles has apologized to Cypress Park activist Art Pulido after immigration agents mistakenly picked him up Sept. 10--believing he was an illegal immigrant--as he was about to head a community meeting, it was learned Thursday.

Pulido said the immigration agents repeatedly ignored him when he told them that he was a U.S. citizen.

After nearly an hour, the agents realized their mistake and released him. But an irate Pulido, 44, said the agents returned him to the community meeting in Cypress Park only after handcuffing him, again, for transport in an INS vehicle.

After The Times reported the incident last week, Pulido’s attorneys fired off letters to federal and city officials, demanding an investigation for what they say was an attempt to inhibit Pulido’s public activities in the Northeast Los Angeles area where Cypress Park is located.

Immigration officials initially defended the agents’ actions, but the uproar arising from the incident, which was witnessed by an estimated 20 to 30 people, may have prompted the letter from Richard K. Rogers, the INS district director in Los Angeles.

“On behalf of the Los Angeles district of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, I would like to extend my sincere apology regarding the inconvenience that we have caused you,” Rogers wrote in a Sept. 19 letter to Pulido.

“The service is committed to carrying out its official duties as unobtrusively to the public as possible; although on occasions, situations occur which may inconvenience individuals. In this case of mistaken identity, we were in pursuit of a criminal alien for whom we had a warrant of arrest.”

The apology, however, didn’t satisfy Pulido, who pointed out, for example, that the letter said nothing about the agents handcuffing him in order to return him to Cypress Park--even after they realized they had picked up the wrong person. The INS said agents had been searching for a criminal named Arturo Pulido Mejia, an illegal immigrant living in Bell who was wanted by authorities.

“They were in the wrong,” Pulido said. “There are lots of U.S. citizens who are being put into this situation. The question is, if this happened to me, who will this happen to next?”

One of his attorneys, Luis Carrillo, bluntly accused the INS of harassing Latinos who are lawful U.S. citizens and residents. “We have to stop the Nazi Gestapo tactics of the INS,” Carrillo said.

Pulido’s other lawyer, Humberto Guizar, was more diplomatic but accused the INS of being duped. “While we clearly appreciate the apology, there is a failure [by Rogers] to recognize that [the INS] was used,” Guizar said. “How did the agents get [to the Cypress Park meeting] in the first place? How did they know he was going to be at a community function?

“Didn’t they know he was a community leader?”

Some suggest that Los Angeles police were responsible for Pulido’s detention. They say that one officer, who was present at the Sept. 10 incident, knew who Pulido was but said nothing to the INS agents. In recent years, especially since the 1995 slaying of 2-year-old Stephanie Kuhen in Cypress Park, LAPD officers have been among those who have attended meetings organized by Pulido’s Cypress Park Advisory Council.

On Thursday afternoon, Lt. Anthony Alba, a Los Angeles police spokesman, said he didn’t know who tipped off immigration officers. He added, however, that it would have been inappropriate for LAPD officers to interfere with immigration officers even if, for example, they knew Pulido.

“We were there to keep order,” Alba said. “We’re not there to argue with [INS agents].”

If Police Chief Bernard C. Parks decides to act on the letter from Pulido’s lawyers seeking an investigation, they will hear directly from him, Alba said.