Deputies anger rights groups over Chaparral family's case
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 01/10/2008 12:00:00 AM MST


Just three months after being sued for allegedly conducting immigration raids in Chaparral, N.M., the Otero County Sheriff's Department once again drew the ire of civil-rights groups for calling the Border Patrol on a family of undocumented immigrants Wednesday.
The incident happened about 10 a.m., when a sheriff's deputy went to a house of a Chaparral woman "without a search warrant or an arrest warrant and demanded she open the door," said Maria Nape, the director of the southern regional office of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, one of the groups with a pending lawsuit against Otero County.

Briana Stone, director of the Paso Del Norte Civil Rights Project, the other group suing Otero County, said the deputy "was telling her things that are not true to get her to open the door, like that he was going to get a warrant to take away her property."

Both Nape and Stone spoke to the woman Wednesday.

The Sheriff's Department could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuits alleged that last summer sheriff's deputies violated civil rights by entering homes without warrants and engaging in racial profiling.

Stone said she was considering filing for a temporary injunction against the department.

During operations funded by Operation Stonegarden, a federal border-control program, Otero County deputies made seven arrests and turned over 75 undocumented immigrants to the Border Patrol, including 28 children.

Immigrants'-rights activists accused the deputies of conducting thinly veiled immigration raids and of trampling civil rights.

Sheriff's officials previously denied those accusations.

A lawyer for the county said previously that he would not comment because of the ongoing litigation.

Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier confirmed Wednesday's incident, saying that Border Patrol agents were called to the Chaparral house Wednesday by sheriff's officials.

"The subject stated that she had a document stating that she was a battered wife and was allowed to stay.

"Nobody was taken into custody pending further investigation," Mosier said.

Battered women can apply for visas under the Violence Against Women Act.

Border Patrol officials said that the family -- a 35-year-old man, a 31-year-old woman and a 16-year-old boy -- first came to the United States in September 2001 on a border-crossing card and settled in Chaparral, where they had since been living and working illegally.

Border Patrol agents were first alerted to the family's immigration status by Otero County sheriff's deputies on Jan. 2.

The family members were returned to Mexico, but found their way back to Chaparral in the past week.

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