Fighting Deportation, Woman Sues City Attorney and LAPD

A Guatemala-born housekeeper faces deportation over the alleged theft of a few blouses and some costume jewelry from her North Hollywood employer.

Gronia Lopez Perez’s attorney blames her immigration problem on the city attorney’s office, contending that it “overreacted” because the employer is a Los Angeles Police Department volunteer.

A federal civil rights lawsuit, filed Friday, says the employer’s complaint should have been handled administratively, not as a criminal matter.

But when the employer, Beth Howard, called the LAPD, officers arrested and jailed Perez rather than citing her, the suit says.

Spokesmen for the Police Department and the city attorney’s office denied any wrongdoing.

As part of the arrest procedure, officers checked outstanding warrants and found that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had issued a 1998 deportation order for Perez after denying her request for political asylum.

Perez has a 4-year-old daughter who was born in Los Angeles and is therefore a U.S. citizen. If Perez is deported, the girl will suffer because she will be deprived of her right to live in the United States and be educated here, said her attorney, Luis Carrillo of Montebello.

The deportation order would not have been discovered had Howard’s accusation of the $70 theft been handled administratively, Carrillo said.

Mike Qualls, spokesman for the city attorney’s office, denied that Howard received special treatment. The office charged Perez with misdemeanor theft. An LAPD spokesman said Perez’s arrest in March at Howard’s home was routine.

“If it’s one dollar or a million dollars, it’s still a theft,” Sgt. John Pasquariello said.

Howard said she has been an unpaid worker in the LAPD’s North Hollywood Division for five years. She said she spends three hours a month answering phones in the community relations office. She said there was “absolutely no way” that police gave her complaint preferential treatment.

She acknowledged that she did not withhold taxes from Perez’s wages. She said Perez had a work permit when she hired her.

Howard said she is not worried about whether she broke a tax law. “If it comes down to that, it’s my responsibility to deal with that.”

The suit, filed against the LAPD, Howard and City Atty. James K. Hahn, seeks unspecified damages and an injunction barring the LAPD from violating an in-house policy that says that the department won’t initiate police action merely to discover someone’s immigration status.

Perez sought asylum after her arrival here about eight years ago, Carrillo said. She skipped her final hearing in 1997 because she was days away from giving birth and was in pain, the attorney added.

He was unsure how her asylum case ended, but it appears that the deportation order was issued as a result of her failure to appear in Immigration Court. He said she requested asylum because she feared both the army and guerrillas in Guatemala.