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Cold as ICE
Costa Mesa immigrant crack down breaks up families

Correction: Under the heading “Exploited Worker,” this article previously printed the claim by Armando’s fiancé, Zoraida, that he was not given correct overtime pay at his work place, a Costa Mesa restaurant. In fact, pay records indicate that Armando always received correct overtime pay. The assertion was based on an accidental and mutual misunderstanding between the reporter and Zoraida. In any case, the OC Voice apologizes to the restaurant owner and our readers for the factual error and any misunderstanding it may have created. Also, the article points out that Armando sometimes worked two shifts per day, one for each of two restaurants in the same chain and under the same ownership, for a total of 11 hours without overtime pay. We should have also pointed out, however, that under the law the two restaurants are considered separate entities and so Armando would not have been legally entitled to overtime pay. The article has been revised according to the above corrections. EDITOR

By Scott Sink
OC Voice Staff Writer

In the family photo, Armando, 19, cradles his new-born baby girl in his arms and smiles at her lovingly, unaware that the two of them would soon be separated, perhaps permanently, as human casualties in Costa Mesa’s crack-down on “illegal” immigrants.

Armando is now an inmate of Orange County’s Theo Lacey Jail awaiting deportation to Mexico.

Armando grew up on his grandparents’ “ejido” in Hidalgo, México. Ejidos are communal land holdings that were distributed to landless peasants after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. According to Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, these common lands could not be broken up or privatized. The revolutionary leader, Emiliano Zapata, captured this idea in his famous slogan, “The land belongs to he who works it.”

Coming to America

American corporations, the Clinton administration and Congress considered this model of land tenure to be a “trade barrier,” so Mexico’s President Carlos Salinas changed Article 27 in 1993 in preparation for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which went into effect in 1994.

But Armando is among millions of Mexicans adversely affected by “free trade” policies that give huge financial rewards to U.S. corporations at the expense of American and Mexican workers alike.

While NAFTA opened up the national commons to private ownership, it also eliminated the tariffs which had historically protected the small Mexican farmer. Overnight, subsistence farmers had to compete with the subsidized agribusiness giants of the U.S. on the open market. Not surprisingly, the Mexican agricultural sector has been devastated, and México is steadily losing its ability to feed itself.

Meanwhile, these policies pushed Mexico’s rural population northward toward the post-NAFTA “maquiladoras”—the low paying U.S. and other foreign owned factories located along the U.S. and Mexican border— as well as to Mexican urban centers and abroad, mostly to the U.S.

After working as a butcher on his family’s farm, Armando’s hopes for finding gainful employment in Mexico had vanished. “He no longer wanted to work so many hours for so little pay,” said his fiancé, Zoraida. “Also, his brother and brother-in-law were here first, and they encouraged him [to emigrate]. Everyone was coming over here.”

At 16, Armando came to Los Angeles without immigration papers. At first, he worked in construction installing floors, as a cook, washing cars, and then as a cook again in Costa Mesa. Like many “undocumented” workers in the U.S., Armando only had to show false documents in order to work.

At 18, he met, Zoraida, who was also 18 and a Costa Mesa resident. Zoraida worked odd jobs, including cleaning houses and hotels. Together they moved into a bedroom in an apartment rented by Zoraida’s family in the Shalamar neighborhood of the city’s west side. When Zoraida became too pregnant to work, Armando started working two jobs.

Working two jobs

Armando earned $9/hr. at the Costa Mesa branch of popular Mexican restaurant chain. He usually worked a second shift on the same day at one of two other restaurants in the chain, located in Orange County. Armando typically worked about six hours at the Costa Mesa restaurant for $9/hr., and then within a few hours commuted to the other site, where he worked for about five hours at $9.50/hr.

“They never gave him a steady schedule,” Zoraida recalled in frustration.

Even though he often worked 11 hours total in one day for the same business, Armando wouldn’t earn overtime because the restaurants he worked at are legally considered separate entities and overtime pay doesn’t apply.

Unable to apply for a driver’s license, Armando would make these trips in his father-in-law’s car without insurance.

Arrested on ICE

On one of Armando’s few days off, he was hanging out on the grounds of his apartment complex, playing loud music from a car radio and talking with friends, when Costa Mesa police officers arrived. Instead of just giving his name and remaining silent, Armando talked to the police and consented to a search. Police then arrested him for being under the influence of a controlled substance, as well as possessing a marijuana pipe, and took him to the city’s jail.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer did an over-the-phone interview with Armando while he was in the city jail and got him to admit that he was in the country in violation of U.S. immigration laws. Because of that confession, he was denied bail.

For not exercising his Constitutional right to remain silent, Armando is now serving a 90 day jail sentence and awaiting deportation after his release from custody.

If Armando had been apprehended in the same scenario in neighboring Huntington Beach or Santa Ana, for example, he might have avoided the ICE interview and deportation altogether.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between ICE and CMPD went into effect in Dec. 2006. All suspects taken into the local police station are screened for their federal immigration status, according to police spokesperson Sgt. Bryan Glass.

Critics complain that undocumented victims and witnesses of crimes will be unwilling to cooperate with local police. Immigrant rights advocates are calling this practice low-intensity immigration sweeps.

The current MOU is an outgrowth of a 3 to 2 city council vote in Dec. 2005 to give Costa Mesa police officers the training and power to check the citizenship status of people suspected of “serious” crimes. The approved program was a compromise of Mayor Allan Mansoor’s first proposal, which included checking the immigration status of all suspects, even jay walkers.

Mansoor, a member of the anti-immigrant Minuteman Project, originally claimed that the compromise would target only “aggravated felons,” including gang members and sex criminals, and that it would make the city safer for illegal immigrants as well.

 But the compromise program was never instituted for lack of coordination with the Sheriff’s department. Instead, ICE offered to place its own agent directly in the Costa Mesa city jail at no cost to the city. The city accepted the offer and Mansoor ended up getting almost everything he had asked for at the start.

In the first two months of the current ICE program, according to a recent Orange County Grand Jury report—which recommended that other Orange County cities have ICE agents working in their jails—out of 870 arrested individuals, 107 were detained for alleged violations of immigration law. Of that total, 57 were arrested on misdemeanor charges, 3 for infractions and 44 for felonies. It is not known how many of the arrestees were found guilty as charged.

In June 2007, Mayor Pro Tem Bever drafted a letter in the mayor’s name addressed to President George W. Bush that declared the presence of immigrants in Costa Mesa to be a “disaster” and demanding more aggressive federal efforts to enforce existing immigration laws. According to his letter, 262 arrestees have been identified as “probable illegal aliens” by ICE agents working in Costa Mesa’s jail since Dec. 2006.

“This demonstrates at a local level that existing laws can work if they are applied,” he wrote.

Ironically, the same night Bever’s letter was approved 3 to 2 (councilmembers Kristina Foley and Linda Dixon voted no), Armando’s daughter, Citlali, was born, unmindful that she would soon lose her father.

Now that Armando is gone, Zoraida worries about the future of her child. Her eyes swelling with tears, she recalls that in his first telephone call from the city jail his only concern was for her and the baby, worrying that she wouldn’t be able to pay the rent.

“He told me to take the money out of the bank account,” she said. “I’m not going to work yet because the baby is too small. I’m going to have to borrow money from my sisters. When Armando gets back, he’s going to have to pay for [our] debts.”

Zoraida’s other great worry is what might happen to Armando after ICE drops him off in Tijuana when he’s done serving his jail time. “I’m going to give him the phone number of an uncle that lives in Tijuana,” she says.

Having a baby to take care of will be a powerful incentive for Armando to try to return to Costa Mesa. But if he chooses that route he will face increased border control obstacles that have all ready drastically cut down on the ability of immigrants to cross into the United States from Mexico undetected. It’s also a good bet that those measures have also greatly increased the danger of crossing in the less patrolled but more rugged areas along the border.

Armando will be transported by ICE officials to Tijuana in less than three months. He will be jobless with little money to bide him time while he makes some hard decisions on how he will survive.

The OC Voice will be there to follow his story.

John Earl also contributed to this story.

Editor’s note: For background, see “Zapata’s Revenge: Free Trade and the Farm Crisis in Mexico” by Tom Barry and Harry Browne or “Basta!: Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas” by George Allen Collier and Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello, as well as “A Century of Chicano History: Empire, Nations, and Migration,” by Gilbert G. Gonzalez & Raul A. Fernandez.

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