Thread: CA. Five arrested by immigration agents Thursday in Riverside, Bloomington

Five arrested by immigration agents Thursday in Riverside, Bloomington


David Marin, Field Office Director, right, and ICE Fugitive Enforcement Operations Team take into custody Fidel Delgado Guerrero in Riverside County on Thursday, June 22, 2017. (Photo by Ed Crisostomo, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

By ALEJANDRA MOLINA | amolina@scng.com | The Press-Enterprise
PUBLISHED: June 22, 2017 at 5:10 pm | UPDATED: June 22, 2017 at 5:22 pm

Fidel Delgado Guerrero wasn’t the man immigration agents were looking for early Thursday morning, but he was arrested and may now be deported.

He was nabbed in what’s referred to as a collateral arrest. Delgado wasn’t the intended target, but he was at the same location of an immigration enforcement operation. A previous deportation on his record was enough to get him arrested.

Delgado told immigration officers he had a job, and asked what would happen to his wife.

“You have no right to be here. You’re here illegally,” David Marin, a field officer director with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told him.

Delgado, who has no criminal record, was one of five men arrested in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, operation in the cities of Riverside and Bloomington on Thursday, June 22.

Two of the arrests during the 6-hour operation were collateral, meaning those arrested were not the intended targets.
Immigration officers, who are part of Los Angeles-area fugitive operations teams, spent days conducting surveillance and confirming the whereabouts of the men they were targeting Thursday.

These teams are tasked with conducting targeted enforcement actions in seven counties encompassing more than 30,000 square miles.

The six men they sought Thursday all had been convicted of previous crimes ranging from domestic violence and animal cruelty to possessing controlled substances for sale. Many had been previously deported. A number of the men had recent contact with local police, but were released despite the existence of ICE detainers, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for ICE.

Not all of the men’s names were released.

“We don’t proactively release the names of those arrested on administrative immigration violations,” Kice said in an email.

ICE officials issue immigration detainers to request that police hold people for up to 48 hours after their criminal justice proceedings so they can be taken into custody and removal procedures can be initiated.

“Once these people are out on the street, confirming their whereabouts is often time-consuming and resource intensive,” Kice said.

The enforcement action began just after 4 a.m. with immigration agents huddling in the parking lot of an Ace Hardware store in Jurupa Valley. There they discussed the whereabouts of the six men they were seeking. Officers knew their morning routines. One man was known to get his morning coffee about 7:30 a.m. at a Riverside Chevron station. Another was known to get home from work about 8:30 a.m.

The officers arrested the men by stopping their vehicles as they headed to work, knocking on the doors of their houses or by simply waiting outside their residences until they came in or out.

Delgado, who is from the Mexican state of Guanajuato, was taken aback by his arrest at his Riverside home.

Officers were looking for his 24-year-old son, who has a criminal and deportation record.

“I don’t know if they didn’t believe me that he wasn’t home … but they wound up arresting me,” Delgado said.

Delgado and his wife have five children; their youngest is 15 years old. His wife also was previously deported and will be served with a letter to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at a later date, said Marin, an ICE office director for the Los Angeles field office. She also does not have a criminal record, Marin added.

“I’m a little scared because I leave and my family stays here,” said Delgado, who milks cows for a living. “If they deport me, I’m not coming back. It’s too hard here.”

Delgado, who is the main provider for his family, said he has brothers back in Mexico. If he is sent back, he plans to work in the fields growing corn and potatoes.

“We don’t do any wrong by coming here to work and move our families forward,” he said. “Being illegal is the only problem I have.”

http://www.pe.com/2017/06/22/five-ar...e-bloomington/

“We don’t do any wrong by coming here to work and move our families forward,” he said. “Being illegal is the only problem I have.”

And being illegal is the reason you will be deported.