El Centros border patrol boss, which is sued for Bakersfield arrests, speaks

The operation “Back to the sender” immediately turned around the heads.

The sight of dozens of border patrol agents in Bakersfield, a Latin American agricultural community, which hundreds of kilometers from the southern border, was unusual. The headlines of news agencies in the whole state described the panic that the operation has sent in California in the last days of the bidges.

Gregory Bovino, Chief Patrol agent of El Centro, explained the operation as success: It was another example for his team, “in transnational criminal organizations and those who smuggle,” said Bovino to Inewsource recently.

On social media, he emblazoned the arrests of “two children's rapists”. A written statement by the agency pointed to several drug attacks and other crime stories among the almost 80 arrested.

“We did pretty good work there anyway to make this community a safer place,” he said.

But while Bovino made a victory round of one of the “best” operations of his team, lawyers for immigrants said that they had violated the rights and the protection of the constitutional powers of inappropriate search and confiscation.

A new lawsuit, which was submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union, described the operation as a “fishing expedition” in which Latino land workers and day workers “regardless of their actual immigration status or individual circumstances” and then forced them to agree to their own deportations.

The lawsuit is when the Trump administration tries to deport “millions and millions” from the United States, while the administration obtains the arrests of immigrants, of which they say they are dangerous criminals. She has also signaled that she considered someone in the United States as a criminal without legal status.

The presence in the USA without legal status is a civilian crime. The crossing of the border without inspection is usually treated as offenses for the first time.

An analysis by Austin Kocher, an immigration researcher and assistant professor at Syracuse University, indicates that ICE officers are aimed at an increasing number of people without criminal convictions or charges.

ICE is the Federal Authority, which normally makes immigration liability inside the United States in its detention centers. According to the Kochers analysis, the population of those who are only recorded because of immigration injuries has grown more than twice the pace of people with criminal convictions or charges.

The plaintiffs in the Bakersfield complaint include immigrants who have been living in Kern County for decades, US citizens' observers and children and were on their way to work to return to a doctor or home. This includes agricultural workers, a construction worker, painter and gardener.

Bovino are referred to as defendants together with other top officials of the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security.

Inewsource Boovino and other agents interviewed a week before the lawsuit was submitted to the El Centro sector in El Centro. Since then, his team has refused to answer questions in connection with the legal challenge, but their previous answers offer a window in the asset approach and the justification of the sector for the operation – which at least hoped to replicate in other places far from the southern border.

“It was proof of the concept,” said David Kim, deputy chief policeman under Bovino. “Test our skills and very successful. We know that we can now exceed this border about the distance. “

Far from home

Agents in the El Centro sector, which cover counties in the imperial and riverside, patrol one of the quietest regions along the southern border. In January, the sector reported the nine along the international border on the second -loving border crossings – about 550 – along the international border.

In the same month, Bovino sent more than 60 agents that caught over several motorways, including along Interstate 5, State Route 58 and 99, the last of which runs over the length of the Californian central valley from Bakersfield to Sacramento. The agents made assertive stops in a home depot and, according to some reports, a petrol station serves a breakfast that is popular among agricultural workers.

Border patrol can make arrests anywhere in the USA, but have expanded the powers in 100 miles of US or maritime border.

The Bovino team emphasized that the agency, based on the southern border, had operated a sector in Central California, which was closed in the 2000s. After the team of “Illiccic traffic patterns” analyzed by Bakersfield, the Bovino team conducted the “proactive” operation.

When Kim was asked about the specific intelligence that led to the operation, the agents searched for smugglers who wore people and narcotics “especially Fentanyl”, along well -known human trafficking in the region.

“We had intelligence, but I think most people would also be common sense that these great thoroughfares are that drugs and other things – such as other parts of California or the nation,” said Kim.

The operation also included predetermined goals with orders of the distance, but they did not bring all of them to this list. They hoped that the operation would result “something” with a crime on the southern border so that the agents in this Federal Court of Justice were able to raise charges instead of making arrests, said Kim.

The ACLU lawsuit describes agents who smash windows, tire tires, tore people out of their car and throw a grandmother on the floor in an operation that was explained by designs with legal mandates in the US constitution.

According to lawyers, the agents rely on apparent breed and work to determine whether someone was in the country without legal status. Instead of evaluating the persons held for flight risks, everyone was arrested, the lawsuit said.

According to Border Patrol, the arrests arrested 78 people, although some messages were swept almost 200 – agents transported them from Bakersfield to El Centro and forced “at least 40” to sign voluntary departure forms, according to the lawsuit.

United Farm Workers, the California Farm Worker Union with 7,000 members, is also named as the plaintiff. According to a report by the Public Policy Institute of California, more than half of the agricultural workers in California have no legal status.

Yolanda Aguilera Martinez, a legal permanent resident, drove to a doctor's appointment when unmarked vehicles with flashing police lights moved them up according to the lawsuit.

Aguilera Martinez spoke with Univision in Fresno about experience: she said an agent threw her to the ground when she got out of the car – she slowly got out because she recovered from the hip surgery, she said. The agent captivated her with handcuffs before helping her to a seat, she said.

She was first released until she was allowed to make a call so that a family member could send a photo of her green card, which confirmed her status, the lawsuit said. Lawyers say they have no criminal records and has not been a agricultural worker in Central Valley since the age of 16.

Agents also arrested Maria Guadalupe Hernandez Espinoza. They took their things and denied their request to call family. After transporting them to the El Centro Station, the agents searched them “before dozens of men by raising their shirt and exposing their bra,” then photographed and fingered them according to the lawsuit.

It was captured in a cold room without a window and only one bank. Two women and children who said they were asylum seekers, Hernandez Espinoza said that they had been there for days, the lawsuit said.

Hernandez Espinoza initially verbally agreed to sign a voluntary departure shape. But later, after telling the agent that she wanted to see a judge instead, she unintentionally signed the form on an electronic device that did not show the documents, the lawsuit said.

It was only when the border patrol fell across the border in Mexicali that an agent gave her a copy of the shape and left it in disbelief, it said in the lawsuit.

'Unusual' tactics

The operation quickly sent shock waves from the community: agricultural workers who avoid work, and children who stayed at home from school reported Calmatters.

The local representative of the congress, Republican David Valadao, published an explanation after he had received calls from the community affected by the security of their families. He said that immigration officers assured him that they focused on “well -known criminals or those with connections to criminal organizations in our community”.

None of the arrests in the three -day operation was associated with human or fentanyl smuggling, Kim said, although agents arrested someone who wore 30 pound cannabis and caught small amounts of methamphetamine, probably for personal use.

Some of the people arrested also had criminal convictions that were sufficient for minor theft and manipulations with a vehicle over a burglary, duis with a hit-and-run or other injuries as well as spouses and child abuse.

Kelly Thornton, director of media relationships in the southern district, said she knew no indictment that was submitted to the district due to the operation.

Nevertheless, Bovino pointed out the arrest of a convicted rapist that someone wanted someone to sexually attack a child, and “criminals that we walked around in the middle of the day without looking after the world” as evidence of the success of the operation.

When Inewsource According to the names of the arrested, James Lee, the Border Patrol Agent in El Centro, did not provide, among other things. Instead, he said the operation was an “all -threatening” approach.

“Those with crime history, deportation orders and people who are involved in other illegal activities work and live among the citizens, documented and without papers,” said Lee in an e -mail.

Katherine Hawkins, a leading legal analyst at the impartial watchdog group project for state supervision, said that the tactics used in the operation are unusual.

“Usually they look near the border where people were recently smuggled when they want to follow people near the border because of human smuggling,” she said.

Read the rest of the story on inewsource.org.