INS Memo Calls Gang Allegations False

As the Rampart scandal widened last fall, a ranking Immigration and Naturalization Service agent warned that many Latinos arrested by the LAPD and handed over to INS agents involved in a drive against the 18th Street gang had been falsely accused of gang membership, according to an INS memo obtained by The Times.

The memo said alleged gang members arrested in the joint effort of the LAPD, FBI and INS were referred to the INS’ Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, which arranged the deportations or prosecutions of 200 people accused of immigration offenses in 1997 and 1998. Some of the arrests were made by officers from the now-notorious CRASH anti-gang unit in the LAPD’s Rampart Division.

“It was later discovered that many of the individuals arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department . . . as suspected gang members were not gang members at all,” said the Oct. 18 memo from the task force’s section chief, Jorge Guzman, to Frank Johnston, deputy assistant district director for investigations in the INS’ Los Angeles office.

Guzman’s memo was the first official warning that the crackdown on the violent 18th Street gang led federal authorities to scoop up immigrants who were in the country illegally but were not members of any gang. The suppression effort came at a time when concern over the size and activities of the 18th Street gang--including shootings and drug dealing--had created a wave of public anxiety and pressure for an official response.

Federal authorities are particularly concerned about the cases of 23 immigrants arrested in the drive against the gang but prosecuted solely for violating immigration laws.

Earlier this month, Linda Ellinger, deputy director of the INS task force’s executive office, wrote to John Gordon, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, asking why his office had prosecuted the 23 only for illegal reentry into the country.

Ellinger asked prosecutors to explain “how [the defendants] came to be reported as part of the [task force] file without the knowledge of the [prosecutor] assigned to the case or to the FBI agents sponsoring the case.”

The FBI office in Los Angeles confirmed that the 23 arrests had occurred without its knowledge and said its agents had never worked with Rampart anti-gang officers in the 18th Street crackdown.

Ellinger requested a written description of “the relationship of these defendants to the FBI [and INS task force’s] investigation” and a “full explanation to the office of the attorney general or others who have queried us on this matter. . . . The unexplained recording of 23 defendants charged and sentenced solely with immigration violations in this case is troubling,” she wrote.

Two days later, Gordon replied that he had “no clear recollection” why the 23 had been indicted in the 18th Street crackdown. But, he wrote, an INS supervisor “told me that I authorized those indictments to be listed in the 18th Street [INS task force] investigation after [the] INS informed me the [prosecutions] were against 18th Street gang members and associates.”

According to one top INS official, who asked not to be identified, “We arrested many people and deported many people. I suppose there was a possibility that some of them were not gang members, but all of them were deportable as authors of crimes or as illegal immigrants.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. George Cardona said, “There appears to be some kind of disconnect between the INS and other agencies working on the [task force’s] investigation.”

According to the top INS official, however, there was no disconnect between his agency and the LAPD’s anti-gang units. The INS, the official said, “was working hand in glove with CRASH.”

In fact, Guzman’s October memo raises the specter that the multi-agency 18th Street probe may have been undermined by faulty information from CRASH officers, whose intelligence-gathering activities included providing a quarter of the 250,000 names listed as those of suspected gang members or associates in a state database.

In September 1999, for example, city and county prosecutors successfully sought suspension of a sweeping injunction against 18th Street gang members because they believed it had been obtained, at least in part, on the basis of false statements by Rampart CRASH officers. Two such injunctions are now on hold, according to David Demerjian, head deputy of the district attorney’s hard-core gang division.

A May 1998 INS document records a lengthy exchange between an INS agent and a former Rampart officer now under investigation, Michael Buchanan, concerning the immigration status of a suspected gang member, Jose Gudiel Brenes. A few days later, the document says, Buchanan arrested Gudiel.

The officer took the suspect to the Rampart station and turned him over to an INS agent whom the documents identify as J. Jones.

Gudiel’s lawyer, Jorge Gonzalez, said the encounter clearly violated Special Order 40, a city policy that forbids police from initiating an arrest with the intent of discovering the person’s immigration status.

“This is the essence of what they call proof positive,” Gonzalez said. “It definitely is a violation.”

City officials say they would take violations of the policy seriously.

“Special Order 40 is important. People need to feel they have the ability to go to the police when they are victims of crimes,” said Gerald L. Chaleff, president of the city’s Police Commission. “If people are afraid that every time they go to police they are going to be deported, we will create a class of individuals who can commit crimes with impunity.”

The U.S. General Accounting Office began a probe of the INS’ alleged involvement in the Rampart scandal two weeks ago at the request of Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles).

Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for the INS’ Western region, declined comment on the issue, pending her agency’s inquiry into the matter.