INS Questions ‘Unloading’ of O.C. Suspects

Orange County police departments have detained more than 4,000 suspected illegal immigrants over the last two years, driving many straight to the INS checkpoint in San Clemente for deportation, U.S. Border Patrol records show.

They are stopped for infractions such as soliciting work or selling flowers on medians. Instead of prosecuting them under municipal ordinances, officers take them to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service checkpoint, a practice discouraged by federal officials and one that critics say is unconstitutional and smacks of racial profiling.

The practice, acknowledged by eight of Orange County’s 22 departments surveyed by The Times, runs counter to the policies of most major Southern California law enforcement agencies, including Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego police. INS spokesman Bill Strassberger said police have neither the authority nor expertise to enforce complex immigration laws.

Border Patrol spokesman Roy Villarreal added, “It can be confusing even for a Border Patrol agent trained in immigration law.”

The federal agency prefers that other agencies stick to prosecuting suspects, even in misdemeanor cases, he said. If there is a suspicion they are undocumented, police should alert the INS after the local case has been resolved. INS agents are stationed at some city jails, including Anaheim.

Taking undocumented people directly to the checkpoint is “like unloading a nuisance,” Villarreal said.

Orange County police deny racial profiling, but contend that problems with people who are undocumented often warrant swift action, such as taking them directly to the checkpoint.

The departments that acknowledge doing so are Buena Park, Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, La Habra, Newport Beach, Orange, Santa Ana and Tustin.

Some departments do it, they say, because day laborers loitering in search of jobs hamper businesses, clog commercial areas and harass customers. Further, they say, prosecuting a minor offense only to turn the convicted person over for deportation is costly.

“From the immediacy of punishment, taking them down to San Clemente is probably better,” said Wayne Winthers, assistant city attorney in Orange. Border Patrol agents say Orange police drop off immigrants more than other county police departments.

Most such suspects give police a phony name or don’t show up in court, Winthers said. “Do you want to spend a couple of hours of an officer’s time taking a suspect to the station, fingerprinting him and booking him, only to release him with a promise to appear?”

For civil rights groups that condemn the targeting of people based on their appearance and ethnicity, the debate has reached fever pitch. In Anaheim, a group fighting illegal immigration was rebuffed last month when it asked the city to empower police officers to arrest people for violations of federal immigration law.

Anger boiled anew last week over an 18-year-old Anaheim woman who was taken into custody by police after a traffic stop for an expired registration. An INS agent determined that Marcella Duque was in the country illegally, and the native of Colombia now faces deportation.

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Outraged Latino activists have demanded that Anaheim break its INS ties.

“I had heard that if you were stopped for driving without a license, the police would take your vehicle away but let you go,” Duque said. “I was surprised that I was taken to jail and more surprised when they told me I was going to be deported.”

Orange Police Capt. Art Romo said complaints about immigrants crowding sidewalks and parking lots have increased over the years, forcing police to vigorously enforce a 1988 ordinance that bans soliciting jobs on the street.

“Business owners complain that they block access to their stores,” Romo said. “We’ve also received complaints from women who say they’re harassed and intimidated, and there’s a problem with urinating in public.”

Jaime Soto, auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, said he is disturbed that officials are targeting and turning suspected illegal immigrants over to the INS.

“Some officials may be operating under the assumption that these are quick solutions to dealing with the abiding immigrant presence in the county,” said Soto, a longtime immigrant rights advocate.

Roberto Martinez, director of the San Diego-based Border Program for the American Friends Service Committee, said stopping people and asking about their immigration status is a form of racial profiling.

“It’s racist; you can’t call it anything else. They’re not stopping white people and asking them for their papers,” said Martinez, who helped persuade San Diego police more than 20 years ago to stop turning over suspects in minor crimes to the Border Patrol.

Soto said immigrants can be easy targets.

“What are they going to do? Who can they complain to? They’re voiceless, powerless.”

In the last fiscal year, police in Orange County apprehended 2,207 people for immigration violations, accounting for 40% of undocumented people processed at the San Clemente checkpoint, Border Patrol figures show. In the previous fiscal year, police detained about 2,000 illegal immigrants--33% of the checkpoint’s apprehensions that year.

While apprehensions by police are increasing, those by the Border Patrol at San Clemente have plunged 82% since 1994, from 30,692 to 5,582.

A 1996 measure passed by Congress allows local police to do limited enforcement of immigration laws, but only after undergoing training by U.S. Justice Department officials. Such training, however, has never been offered.

An attorney for Maximiliano Mateo Morales said such lack of training showed when Tustin police arrested his 16-year-old client for jaywalking in April 1999. He was fingerprinted but never charged. Although the teenager was in the country legally, he couldn’t produce identification. Tustin police turned him over to the Border Patrol.

Border Patrol spokesman Raul Villarreal said the teen was deported when he told agents he was in the United States illegally and claimed to be an adult. Morales’ pending lawsuit alleges that the teen was manhandled by agents and pressured to sign a voluntary deportation form.

“It was definitely profiling,” said Juan Silva, Morales’ attorney. “He is Latino and doesn’t speak English. If they only stopped him for a jaywalking infraction, why did they ask about his citizenship?”

Tustin police declined to comment.

Unlike apprehensions, the Border Patrol says it does not keep statistics on legal residents wrongly taken to San Clemente for deportation. Spokesman Fernando Grijalva said police “occasionally” bring such people to San Clemente.

“We question them and determine they have a legal right to be in the U.S.,” he said. “The police put them in the car and take them back.”

Strassberger, the INS spokesman in Washington, said, “It’s common for non-immigration law enforcement to say, ‘He looked illegal.’ ”

Profiling is the practice of making a police stop because a person matches a certain profile, not because he or she is committing a crime.

By law, Border Patrol agents can inquire about immigration status, but they must cite reasons to explain why they need to inquire, Strassberger said.

Los Angeles civil rights attorney Antonio Rodriguez said police who ask Latinos about their citizenship or legal status when stopping them for minor infractions violate the 4th Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

Border Patrol agents said they meet with sheriff’s deputies at South County gas stations, fast-food restaurants and parking lots to pick up undocumented people.

Such arrangements, sheriff’s spokesman Steve Doan said, are rare and occur “when the safety of the undocumented resident or community dictates.”

Other police departments also defended the practice, even if it takes a patrol car out of service in some cases for more than two hours.

“We don’t ask [about a suspect’s immigration status] unless there is criminal activity,” Huntington Beach Police Lt. Chuck Thomas said.

Newport Beach Police Sgt. Mike McDermott said “there has to be some underlying reason for us taking them there, like being extremely drunk or combative.”

La Habra Police Chief Dennis Kies said most such suspects picked up in his city have violated an ordinance against selling such items as flowers and fruit on a median or sidewalk without a business license.

In Orange, police are pressured by merchants such as Bill Bartholomae, business manager of the Chapman Center on Chapman Avenue, who videotapes job seekers at his strip mall near the corner of James Street most mornings.

“They’re loitering, making it difficult for customers to come in,” he said. “They’re talking Spanish, gawking. I don’t know what they’re saying. It’s intimidating.”

Hector Arzola, manager of nearby Alameda Market on Hewes Avenue, said he calls police when 50 or 60 day laborers line up outside.

“Sometimes, when a customer pulls up, they all run to the car, thinking he’s looking for workers,” Arzola said.

Jose Luis Vasquez, standing outside Arzola’s store recently, said he was arrested in 1999 and driven to the San Clemente checkpoint with five other men. All were deported.

“The only question he asked was if I had papers. Then he handcuffed me. You think they ask a white person standing around if he has papers?” said Vasquez, 22, who is undocumented and has since returned to Orange.

Orange police also conduct stings, in which an officer in a van offers work to immigrants. Those who jump in the van are detained and taken to the checkpoint.

Former INS prosecutor Carl Shusterman expressed concern about the practice.

“These are people not convicted of serious crimes, or any crime. It seems to me that the letter of the law isn’t being followed, and this is pretty startling,” said Shusterman, now a Los Angeles lawyer.

“The Rampart scandal has shown that allowing police officers to have a say in immigration matters can be dangerous in many ways,” he said. “But the most detrimental effect is that officers lose the trust of illegal immigrants, who are less likely to volunteer witness information or report crimes.”

“It’s one of the drawbacks,” said Romo, the Orange police captain.

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In Los Angeles last week, a Police Commission panel ordered the LAPD to amend its operating manual to ensure that officers don’t stop people solely to check their immigration status.

At issue is Special Order 40, which in 1979 barred such conduct but was never fully implemented, panel members said.

The panel, created after the Rampart Division corruption scandal erupted, did not address allegations by community activists and former Officer Rafael Perez that police routinely violate the rule. But it said the absence of adequate guidelines allows abuse.

Los Angeles immigrant leaders have long contended that close cooperation between police and the INS discourages witnesses and crime victims from speaking. That was the rationale behind the 1979 order, which was among the first such police directives in the nation.

The Los Angeles County sheriff, as a matter of policy, also refrains from targeting suspected illegal immigrants. However, deputies who detain suspects later found to be illegal immigrants will inform the INS and hold them for agents, sheriff’s spokesman Val Rosario said.

San Diego Police Chief Dave Bejarano said his department’s policy for dealing with suspected illegal immigrants “is very restrictive.”

“We’re not in the business of enforcing immigration law. If an officer comes across an illegal immigrant in a minor enforcement, our policy prohibits the officer from taking or releasing him to the Border Patrol. We don’t inquire about a person’s citizenship or legal status unless he’s booked in our jail or at the county,” Bejarano said. San Diego County sheriff’s spokesman Ron Reina said deputies there do not ask about citizenship. “They may look illegal because they don’t speak English, but you make that assumption and you invite trouble,” he said.

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Staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell contributed to this report.