INS Schedules Sensitivity Classes for 300 Agents

Immigration agents in Southern California will undergo more cultural sensitivity training, the Immigration and Naturalization Service announced Thursday, after a Camarillo raid in which an agent made derogatory remarks to a Latino and a Jew.

The refresher courses, which will be based on courses already taught at the agency’s academy, will be mandatory for all 300 agents working at the INS offices in Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange and Riverside counties.

The announcement follows a federal internal investigation of the raid last February at Wilwood Engineering, in which an agent referred to two employees as “Pedro” and “rabbi,” INS officials said.

But Bill Wood, president of Wilwood, a factory that produces disc brakes, said the action isn’t enough.

“This is news to me,” Wood said Thursday. “What little information I’ve gotten so far is what they’ve told the press. They haven’t contacted us, they haven’t written to me. There has been no apology.”

Wood, who filed the complaint that launched the investigation, said he also was incensed that federal officials have refused to release a copy of its results.

Thomas Schiltgen, the INS district director in Los Angeles, said Thursday the investigation found evidence that one agent had been unprofessional and discourteous during the raid. He said the agent faces disciplinary action, but he would not say what that could be.

During the raid, 20 agents from the Los Angeles and Camarillo INS offices rounded up about 180 employees and herded them into a small room, where their documents were checked, according to employees. It was during that roundup that the agent made the remarks, employees said.

Ten employees were arrested, seven of whom were undocumented workers who were returned to their native countries. Three were allowed to return to work.

The raid followed a routine check of hiring documents in January that revealed as many as 72 discrepancies, INS officials said.

Schiltgen said that a more thorough review of those documents would have shown that one of the three employees agents temporarily detained was a documented worker.

Wood, who said he never objected to the review of his records, contends that the agency violated his employees’ rights and failed to make amends.

“The problem goes a little deeper than sensitivity training,” Wood said. “Something went grossly wrong here that day. They surrounded my building and came in here like storm troopers.”