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Posted on Fri, Jan. 19, 2007

Agents cast wide net during manhunts
SAN PABLO: Federal officers seeking illegal immigrants detain others; activists reminding community of their rights
By Tom Lochner
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

A 17-year-old San Pablo girl who is supposed to graduate from De Anza High School this year is in custody somewhere in the East Bay, whisked away last week by federal immigration agents who came to her home, ostensibly to arrest someone else.

Her 21-year-old brother, meanwhile, is in federal detention in Arizona after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents picked him up at the San Pablo home as well.

Elvira and Victor Mendoza are collateral characters in the National Fugitive Operations Program's Absconder Apprehension Initiative. NFOP, administered by ICE's Office of Detention and Removal, is a creature of the post-Sept. 11, 2001, Patriot Act.

"Fugitive Ops targets individual aliens who have final orders of removal issued by an immigration judge but have failed to obey those orders," said ICE spokeswoman Lori Haley."We know who they are, and we target them for removal."

The agents have the discretion to check out other people who are present, whether or not the target is there, Haley said.

"If they determine there are other people there who do not have status to be in this country, they are subject to removal as well," Haley said.

San Pablo Councilwoman Genoveva Garcia Calloway said she has heard of similar incidents as the Mendozas' recently in San Pablo and Richmond, cities with large Latino and other immigrant populations. She said her police department told her about the ICE's target list, but "it appears that they're taking other people in the process. People are getting really scared."

She and a group of Latino immigration activists are circulating fliers advising people in Spanish of their rights, including the right to remain silent.

Elsewhere in the East Bay, residents reported increased ICE activity in recent days. Adan Sanchez, 22, said agents have patrolled around Detroit Avenue in Concord, where he lives, for the past two weeks, looking for three people.

"They were here almost every day this week and last week," Sanchez said.

Agents picked up several of his friends and detained them for a day after verifying their identities, he said. Now, when he sees agents, he runs, too, although he has a legal work permit, he said.

"Last time, I jumped the fence," Sanchez said.

The agents who arrested Elvira and Victor Mendoza in San Pablo were looking for someone else: Antonio Martinez, a brother-in-law of the owner of the house, their older brother Carlos Mendoza.

Carlos Mendoza, 32, a legal resident who also owns another property in San Pablo, is currently in Mexico on a family visit, said another brother, Santiago Mendoza, 42, a U.S. citizen and Richmond resident who works for the U.S. Postal Service's bulk mail facility in Richmond.

On Jan. 8, Santiago Mendoza got a wake-up call from his sister at 6:45 a.m.

"My younger sister told me I need to come over right away, that the police was over there," he recounted.

When Santiago Mendoza got to Carlos' house 10 or 15 minutes later, he said, "my brother had the handcuffs on already. My sister, she told me they were mad at her for calling me."

The people detaining his siblings were not local police officers but federal agents.

"They asked me who I was, so I gave them my license right away," Santiago Mendoza said.

Eventually, the agents left Santiago alone, but not his siblings. Elvira had only her student ID; Victor, who works as a clown and magician, could only produce his matrícula, a Mexican ID card.

"They said they were going to take them because they didn't have any identification to prove they were legally in this country," Santiago Mendoza said.

He said his brother and sister are in the process of applying for legal residence.

As the agents took Elvira and Victor Mendoza away, one came back and told their brother that the individual ICE had targeted had given the house as an address two weeks ago -- which baffled Santiago Mendoza.

"All I know about Antonio Martinez is they took his green card away when he came back to the country two years ago, after he was on vacation. That's the version I got from my brother, who is married to his sister," he said.

"I guess he was requested to leave the country, and apparently he did. However, he never showed up in the American Embassy in Mexico, so they never closed the case.

"He's back there (Mexico) now," Santiago Mendoza said. "According to my sister-in-law's version, he has been there since they asked him to leave two years ago."

Santiago Mendoza, who has retained a lawyer, is applying to become Elvira's sponsor while she continues the process of obtaining legal residence in the United States. He has already passed a fingerprint check and hopes to get his sister back today. He does not know where she is; a business card that an ICE official gave him had the address blotted out with a marker, he said.

Victor Mendoza is in the Arizona detention facility on $15,000 bail pending a hearing Jan. 29. His brother could offer no further details.

Haley said where arrestees are detained is a matter of "wherever we have bed space available." She said she could not discuss specific cases.

Some local officials, including Calloway and Richmond' Councilman John Marquez, say ICE's modus operandi jeopardizes people's trust in their local police.

"They identify themselves as police and then when the door opens they identify themselves as immigration," Marquez said. "My concern is, we're trying to build this relationship between our PD and the Latino community. People feel deceived. Our credibility suffers."

Haley defended ICE agents' use of the word "police" to gain access to homes and noted, "Oftentimes, when the door is answered, they elaborate on who they are.

"They are indeed federal police," she said, adding, "People who don't understand much English generally understand the word 'police.'"

Reach Tom Lochner at 510-262-2760 or tlochner@cctimes.com. Times staff writer Shirley Dang contributed to this story.

"To those criminal aliens who have eluded apprehension in the past, be forewarned: ICE agents will seek you out, apprehend you, and remove you from the United States."

-- Michael Garcia, assistant secretary, in a highlighted quote from a National Fugitive Operations Program fact sheet."If the Migra (Immigration) comes to your house ... saying they are the police, call 911 to confirm that it is the police and not Immigration."

-- from "Know your rights!" a Spanish-language flier from immigrant advocates circulating around Richmond and San Pablo