Inland Latinos say Border Patrol engages in racial profiling
By DAVID OLSON
The Press-Enterprise
In an effort to show U.S. Border Patrol agents how to spike up arrest numbers, the head of the agency's Riverside office recently went to a gas station and interrogated the first Latino man he saw, an official with the Border Patrol agents' union said.
After the man proved he was a legal resident, the agency head walked up to another Latino man, who was pumping gas, the union official said. That man was arrested on immigration charges.
As the Border Patrol steps up its enforcement in the Inland area, Latino and immigrant organizations are increasingly worried that agents are randomly pulling over Latino drivers on area roads and interrogating Latinos on city sidewalks.
Agents say they are being pressured by supervisors to increase apprehensions.
U.S.-born Luis Espinoza said he was driving down Main Street in Lake Elsinore several months ago when he was pulled over by a Border Patrol agent.
Emilio Amaya, executive director of an immigration-assistance group, said when Border Patrol agents go to the San Bernardino Greyhound station, they only query Latinos.
Riverside activists allege racial profiling in a Jan. 29 Border Patrol sweep of streets surrounding a day-labor site.
The Border Patrol denies the allegations of racial profiling.
The accusations from Latino residents and organizations come five years after similar racial-profiling allegations against agents in the Temecula Border Patrol office and amid a Department of Homeland Security investigation into whether the Riverside office broke agency rules by allegedly punishing agents who didn't meet arrest goals.
EX-AGENT'S ALLEGATIONS
Former Riverside agent Tony Plattel said pressure to increase arrests that started in December 2007 caused agents to randomly question Latinos who they believed looked like recently arrived immigrants.
Plattel estimated that up to half of the people agents stopped were legal residents or citizens. He said he never saw an agent question a non-Latino.
Plattel was fired last month for insubordination.
Lombardo Amaya, president of Local 2554 of the National Border Patrol Council union, said the patrol agent in charge of the Riverside office, Ramon Chavez, was accompanied or followed by other agents and supervisors when he interrogated Latinos at the Riverside gas station, telling them "this is what you need to be doing."
"I would like to know, how many Chinese, Asian and black people, how many of them he stopped?" asked Amaya, who feared tactics that he termed racial profiling would expose agents to legal liability.
RACIAL PROFILING DENIED
Chavez declined to comment.
Agent Richard Velez, spokesman for the El Centro Border Patrol sector, which includes Riverside, said agents do not engage in racial profiling and they question people of different races.
In the Jan. 29 sweep, citizens and legal residents were stopped along with illegal immigrants, said community activist Jennie Rivera, who alleges racial profiling.
Two days later, U.S. citizen Armando Salazar said he was grabbed by a Border Patrol agent as he was leaving a convenience store near a Moreno Valley day-labor site.
Hispanics should be happy to be stopped by Border Patrol agents, because it combats illegal immigration, said Raymond Herrera, national rally spokesman for the anti-illegal-immigration Minuteman Project and a Victorville resident.
Not bothered
Herrera, who is Hispanic, said he was not bothered when he was briefly stopped at a rest stop near the Mexican border last year.
"The people who are complaining are the ones who play a heavy race card," he said.
Espinoza, 22, said he was offended the Border Patrol stopped him and asked for identification.
"They're just wasting my time, and it's not right," he said.
"I'm a U.S. citizen."
Espinoza and his brother Francisco, 26, both Lake Elsinore residents, said they get nervous when they spot a Border Patrol vehicle.
"It makes everyone uncomfortable," said Francisco Espinoza.
"I guess they assume everyone who is brown is an illegal alien."
In 2004, Temecula-based agents, who patrol Lake Elsinore, viewed speaking Spanish as a reason to suspect someone of illegal status, according to internal Border Patrol documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
"I spoke to them in English but they responded in Spanish," one arrest report said. "Because of this I questioned them about their citizenship."
REASONABLE SUSPICION
Ahilan Arulananthan, immigrant rights director of the Southern California ACLU, said the 2004 incidents, and recent allegations of random stops, appear to show that the Border Patrol repeatedly violates the constitutional rights of Inland Latinos.
"They interrogate and arrest people first and then try to develop reasonable suspicion about them afterward," he said.
Agents can only legally stop people if they have reasonable suspicion they are illegal immigrants, Arulananthan said. Ethnicity and use of Spanish are not enough.
Agent Jerome Conlin, a spokesman for the San Diego Border Patrol sector, which includes the Temecula office, said agents do not profile by ethnicity or language.
Conlin declined to reveal what agents look for before stopping people, saying it would tip off illegal immigrants.
The Border Patrol turned over the 2004 documents only after the ACLU sued to obtain them.
The agency now refuses to release detailed information about recent Inland arrests.
SEEKING DOCUMENTS
Last month, the Los Angeles-based National Immigration Law Center and National Day Laborer Organizing Network filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records of recent Inland arrests and interrogations.
Nora Preciado, an attorney with the center, said the request stems in part from concerns about racial profiling.
Legal resident Daniel Laynes said he was stopped twice in December by agents in Lake Elsinore and asked to show identification, once at the day-labor site where he waits for work, and the other time on Main Street.
On a recent early afternoon, Laynes, 28, was one of only seven day laborers in the parking lot outside Ibarra's Market No. 2, where in the past more than 100 workers congregated.
Sweeps reported
Dozens of other men have been arrested in recent weeks during Border Patrol sweeps of the site, workers said.
Conlin declined to confirm where the Border Patrol conducts its operations.
Norma Carrillo, an employee of Ibarra's, said that, several weeks ago, agents put a woman and her two children into a van after they left the store.
"They just start grabbing people because they look Mexican," said Carrillo, adding that her father, a legal resident, was asked for his identification as he sat outside his nearby home.
Carrillo, 20, a 15-year resident of Lake Elsinore, said she had rarely seen Border Patrol agents until a few months ago, when they suddenly began regularly patrolling the city.
Conlin and Velez said the increased Border Patrol presence is part of a nationwide hiring of additional agents.
IMMIGRANTS LEAVING
Ibarra's is one of several Lake Elsinore stores that report sharp drops in business when Border Patrol agents are in town.
At La Unica bakery and restaurant, people sometimes call to ask if the Border Patrol is around before coming in, said owner Miguel Topete.
Even U.S. citizens avoid the bakery when agents are questioning people in the area, because it makes them uncomfortable, Topete said.
Topete and others say dozens of illegal immigrants have left Lake Elsinore in recent months because of the Border Patrol presence.
Others left because of the economy.
Some returned to Latin America.
Immigration activists in San Bernardino and Perris said illegal immigrants there are also leaving.
Andy Ramirez, chairman of Chino-based Friends of the Border Patrol, said the exodus is a sign immigration laws are being taken seriously.
"They have no business being here," Ramirez said. "The fact they're showing concern shows they know they're breaking the law."
Reach David Olson at 951-368-9468 or dolson@PE.com
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