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Tag: day laborer

  • ICE officials replaced with Border Patrol, cementing hard tactics that originated in California

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    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is initiating a leadership shakeup at a dozen or so offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to bring more aggressive enforcement operations across the U.S.

    Some of the outgoing field office directors at ICE are anticipated to be replaced with leaders from Customs and Border Protection, according to news reports. Among the leaders targeted for replacement are Los Angeles Field Office Director Ernesto Santacruz and San Diego Field Office Director Patrick Divver, the Washington Examiner reported Monday.

    The stepped up role of Border Patrol leaders in interior enforcement — which has historically been ICE territory — marks an evolution of tactics that originated in California.

    In late December, Gregory Bovino, who heads the Border Patrol’s El Centro region, led a three-day raid in rural Kern County, nabbing day laborers more than 300 miles from his typical territory. Former Biden administration officials said Bovino had gone “rogue” and that no agency leaders knew about the operation beforehand.

    Bovino leveraged the spectacle to become the on-the-ground point person for the Trump Administration’s signature issue.

    The three-decade veteran of Border Patrol, who has used slick social media videos to promote the agency’s heavy-handed tactics, brought militarized operations once primarily used at the border into America’s largest cities.

    In Los Angeles this summer, contingents of heavily armed, masked agents began chasing down and arresting day laborers, street vendors and car wash workers. Tensions grew as the administration ordered in the National Guard.

    The efforts seem to have become more aggressive after a Supreme Court order allowed authorities to stop people based on factors such as race or ethnicity, employment and speaking Spanish.

    Bovino moved operations to Chicago and escalated his approach. Immigration agents launched an overnight raid in a crowded apartment, shot gas into crowds of protesters and fatally shot one man.

    Now Bovino is expected to hand-pick some of the replacements at ICE field offices, according to Fox News.

    Tom Wong, who directs the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at UC San Diego, said the leadership changes are unsurprising, given Bovino’s strategies in Los Angeles and Chicago.

    “The Trump administration is blurring the distinction between Border Patrol and ICE,” he said. “The border is no longer just the external boundaries of the United States, but the border is everywhere.”

    Former Homeland Security officials said the large-scale replacement of executives from one agency with those from another agency is unprecedented.

    The two agencies have similar authorities but very different approaches, said Daniel Altman, former head of internal oversight investigations at U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

    ICE officers operate largely inside the country, lean heavily on investigations and typically know when they set out for the day who they are targeting.

    Border Patrol, on the other hand, patrols the borderlands for anyone they encounter and suspect of entering illegally. Amid the rugged terrain and isolation, Border Patrol built a do-it-yourself ethos within the century-old organization, Altman said.

    “Culturally, the Border Patrol prides itself on solving problems, and that means that whatever the current administration needs or wants with respect to immigration enforcement, they’re usually very willing and able to do that,” said Altman.

    White House leadership has not been happy with arrest numbers. Stephen Miller, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff who is heading his immigration initiatives, set a goal of 3,000 immigration arrests per day, which the agency has not been able to meet.

    DHS says it expects to deport 600,000 people by January, a figure that includes people who were turned back at the border or at airports.

    Tricia McLaughlin, assistant public affairs secretary for the Homeland Security department, didn’t confirm or deny the changes but described immigration officials as united.

    “Talk about sensationalism,” she said. “Only the media would describe standard agency personnel changes as a ‘massive shakeup.’ If and when we have specific personnel moves to announce, we’ll do that.”

    White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said, “The President’s entire team is working in lockstep to implement the President’s policy agenda, and the tremendous results from securing the border to deporting criminal illegal aliens speak for themselves.”

    On Fox News on Tuesday, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said the administration is dedicated to achieving record deportations of primarily immigrants with criminal records.

    “As far as personnel changes, that’s under the purview of the Secretary of Homeland Security,” he said. “I’m at the White House working with people like Stephen Miller, one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met, to come up with strategic policies and plans — how to get success, how to maintain success, and how to get the numbers ever higher.”

    Deborah Fleischaker, a former ICE and DHS official under the Biden administration, said the personnel moves appear to be an “attempt to migrate a Border Patrol ethos over to ICE.”

    “ICE’s job has historically focused on targeting and enforcing against public safety threats,” she said. “Border Patrol has a much more highly militarized job of securing the border, protecting against transnational crime and drug trafficking and smuggling. That sort of approach doesn’t belong in our cities and is quite dangerous.”

    Fleischaker said it would be difficult to increase deportations, even with Border Patrol leaders at the helm, because of the complexities around securing travel documents and negotiating with countries that are reticent to accept deportees.

    In the meantime, she said, shunting well-liked leaders will sink morale.

    “For the folks who are still there, everybody knows you comply or you risk losing your job,” she said. “Dissent, failure to meet targets or even ask questions aren’t really tolerated.”

    On Tuesday, DHS posted a video montage of Bovino on its Instagram page set to Coldplay’s song “Viva la vida.” The caption read, “WE WILL NOT BE STOPPED.”

    Staff writer Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.

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    Andrea Castillo, Rachel Uranga

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  • Supreme Court upholds ‘roving patrols’ for immigration arrests in Los Angeles

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    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday for the Trump administration and agreed U.S. immigration agents may stop and detain anyone they suspect is in the U.S. illegally based on little more than working at a car wash, speaking Spanish or having brown skin.

    In a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an emergency appeal and lifted a Los Angeles judge’s order that barred “roving patrols” from snatching people off Southern California streets based on how they look, what language they speak, what work they do or where they happen to be.

    In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said federal law says “immigration officers ‘may briefly detain’ an individual ‘for questioning’ if they have ‘a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, that the person being questioned … is an alien illegally in the United States’.”

    “Immigration stops based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence have been an important component of U.S. immigration enforcement for decades, across several presidential administrations,” he said.

    The three liberal justices dissented.

    Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision “yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

    “The Government … has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” Sotomayor wrote.

    Sotomayor also disagreed with Kavanaugh’s assertions.

    “Immigration agents are not conducting ‘brief stops for questioning,’ as the concurrence would like to believe. They are seizing people using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions,” she wrote. “Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the Government’s conduct. United States citizens are also being seized, taken from their jobs, and prevented from working to support themselves and their families.”

    The decision is a significant victory for President Trump, clearing the way for his oft-promised “largest Mass Deportation Operation” in American history.

    Beginning in early June, Trump’s appointees targeted Los Angeles with aggressive street sweeps that ensnared longtime residents, legal immigrants and even U.S. citizens.

    A coalition of civil rights groups and local attorneys challenged the cases of three immigrants and two U.S. citizens caught up in the chaotic arrests, claiming they’d been grabbed without reasonable suspicion — a violation of the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

    On July 11, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order barring stops based solely on race or ethnicity, language, location or employment, either alone or in combination.

    On July 28, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

    The case remains in its early phases, with hearings set for a preliminary injunction this month. But the Department of Justice argued even a brief limit on mass arrests constituted a “irreparable injury” to the government.

    A few days later, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to set aside Frimpong’s order. They said agents should be allowed to act on the assumption that Spanish-speaking Latinos who work as day laborers, at car washes or in landscaping and agriculture are likely to lack legal status.

    “Reasonable suspicion is a low bar — well below probable cause,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his appeal. Agents can consider “the totality of the circumstances” when making stops, he said, including that “illegal presence is widespread in the Central District [of California], where 1 in every 10 people is an illegal alien.”

    Both sides said the region’s diverse demographics support their view of the law. In an application to join the suit, Los Angeles and 20 other Southern California municipalities argued that “half the population of the Central District” now meet the government’s criteria for reasonable suspicion.

    Roughly 10 million Latinos live in the seven counties covered by the order, and almost as many speak a language other than English at home.

    Sauer also questioned whether the plaintiffs who sued had standing because they were not likely to be arrested again.

    That argument was the subject of sharp and extended questioning in the 9th Circuit, where a three-judge panel ultimately rejected it.

    “Agents have conducted many stops in the Los Angeles area within a matter of weeks, not years, some repeatedly in the same location,” the panel wrote in its July 28 opinion denying the stay.

    One plaintiff was stopped twice in the span of 10 days, evidence of a “real and immediate threat,” that he or any of the others could be stopped again, the 9th Circuit said.

    Days after that decision, heavily armed Border Patrol agents sprang from the back of a Penske moving truck, snatching workers from the parking lot of a Westlake Home Depot in apparent defiance of the courts.

    Immigrants rights advocates had urged the justices not to intervene.

    “The raids have followed an unconstitutional pattern that officials have vowed to continue,” they said. Ruling for Trump would authorize “an extraordinarily expansive dragnet, placing millions of law-abiding people at imminent risk of detention by federal agents.”

    The judge’s order had applied in an area that included Los Angeles and Orange counties as well as Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

    Savage reported from Washington, Sharp from Los Angeles.

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    David G. Savage, Sonja Sharp

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  • ‘Take your orange aprons somewhere else’: Citing raids, L.A. official opposes Home Depot in Eagle Rock

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    A Los Angeles city councilmember has openly opposed Home Depot’s plans to open a new location at Eagle Rock Plaza, claiming the home improvement retailer has been complicit with immigration enforcement operations.

    In an Instagram post, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado wrote, “Take your orange aprons somewhere else,” citing a raid that occurred Thursday morning at Westlake Home Depot, one of several at that location since June. Jurado’s district spans from downtown to El Sereno and Eagle Rock.

    Home Depot plans to demolish the former Macy’s department store in Eagle Rock Plaza to make space for its new location, The Eastsider reported.

    On Thursday, surveillance video obtained by The Times shows federal agents arriving in several vehicles across from the Home Depot and CARECEN Day Labor Center, and immediately running after people, including vendors and day laborers.

    As people scattered, federal agents can be seen deploying tear gas.

    A man who was apprehended and pinned to the ground by federal officials was punched in the face, according to a statement by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

    “We are disturbed by what can only be described as an act of terror and indiscriminate roundup of Latino street vendors, day laborers, and people who were going about their daily lives,” the organization stated.

    At least eight to 15 people were arrested during the operation, according to CHIRLA.

    This specific home improvement store on Wilshire Boulevard and South Union Avenue has been the site of four immigration operations since June 6, including “Operation Trojan Horse,” in which half a dozen border patrol agents jumped out of a Penske truck and arrested 16 people.

    These raids, Jurado said, “are part of a disturbing pattern across Los Angeles, with ICE repeatedly targeting Home Depot parking lots — common gathering spots for day laborers — without judicial warrants, in clear violation of people’s rights.”

    In her post, the councilmember accused Home Depot of “remaining silent.”

    “When your name becomes associated with terror and you refuse to speak, you are complicit,” the post read. “Home Depot has chosen power and profit over the working people who sustain it.”

    In a statement to The Times, Home Depot spokesperson Sarah McDonald said the company isn’t notified of planned ICE operations and “we’re not requesting them.” In many cases the company doesn’t know arrests happen until after they’re over, she said.

    “We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate,” McDonald said.

    The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to the Times’ request for comment before publication.

    Earlier this month, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s block on “roving patrols” across much of Southern California. The ruling maintains a temporary restraining order barring masked and heavily armed agents from snatching people off the streets without first establishing reasonable suspicion that they are in the U.S. without documentation.

    The excessive use of force that occurred during Thursday’s raid “and apparent disregard of community safety standards by federal agents is deeply disturbing, may be a violation of the TRO currently in place, and must be investigated,” CHIRLA stated.

    On Friday, the East Area Progressive Democrats announced on Facebook that the group launched a #NoHomeDepot campaign to stop the retailer from opening a brick-and-mortar in the Eagle Rock Plaza.

    Staff writer Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.

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    Karen Garcia

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  • LAPD looking into whether police turned away men who reported finding body parts

    LAPD looking into whether police turned away men who reported finding body parts

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    The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating whether several men were initially turned away at a police station when they tried to a report that someone paid them hundreds of dollars to dispose of human remains, Chief Michel Moore confirmed Tuesday.

    The remains are believed to belong to Mei Haskell, whose husband, Samuel Bond Haskell, was charged Monday with three counts of murder in connection with the disappearance of his wife and in-laws.

    Authorities said Haskell tried to get day laborers to remove what he said were several trash bags from his Tarzana home on Nov. 7. But after initially taking the bags, which weighed about 50 pounds, the men stopped their truck a block away, checked inside and saw dismembered body parts, identifying a belly button, and drove them back.

    Haskell then reportedly loaded the bags into the back of his Tesla and drove them to Encino, where he dumped them — and was caught on video doing so.

    In an interview with NBC4, one of the men said Haskell had tried to pay them $500 to haul away bags he first said were full of rocks, then later said contained Halloween decorations. But the day laborers told NBC4 the contents felt soft and soggy, like meat. “When we picked up the bags, we could tell they weren’t rocks,” one of the workers said in Spanish.

    The workers ended up at the LAPD’s Topanga-area police station, where they tried to lodge a report at the front desk but were told to call 911. The officer at the station desk did not speak Spanish and couldn’t understand the day laborers’ story, according to police sources who requested anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

    Speaking to reporters after Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting, Moore said the department had launched an internal investigation into the matter. Based on a preliminary inquiry, he said, the individuals were directed to the station after first going to a nearby state Highway Patrol office with “a report of concerns relative to the contents of some trash bags that they had been asked to dispose of.”

    “They didn’t have those bags with them, [which] were back at the individual’s home or location where they had been asked to do this service, and they believed that the bags, as I understand it, contained potentially human remains,” Moore said during the news briefing. Instead, he said, the workers were instructed to go outside and call 911.

    “My concern is that very act right there, of having them go outside and call 911 versus summoning a unit via other available channels and ensuring that the people remain there with their cooperation,” Moore said.

    The chief said that a police squad was eventually dispatched to the location where the workers reported seeing the suspicious bags, but that officers did not find any remains. The following morning, a bag containing human remains was found in a “garbage container” some distance away, Moore said, and police eventually made the connection to the earlier report.

    The case is being investigated by the department’s elite Robbery-Homicide Division.

    The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office filed three special circumstances murder counts against Haskell, the son of a Hollywood executive. Haskell briefly appeared in a courtroom Monday, where a judge ordered that he be held without bail; his next court date is set for Dec. 8.

    LAPD Capt. Scot Williams said police were still searching for Mei Haskell’s missing parents. “We have not found them yet,” he said. “Our search efforts continued today, but no luck. We are confident we are searching all the places we believe [Haskell] may have gone in the days leading up to his arrest.”

    Moore said he was concerned that the workers weren’t immediately helped at the station.

    Asked whether there was any reason the desk officer couldn’t have simply taken a report on the spot, Moore said he “didn’t have one in my mind.”

    “The desk officer has at his or her disposal the watch commander on scene, so the supervisor there, they have radio communications that they can summon, communications that issue or dispatch units,” Moore said.

    He said he had similar concerns in the case of Takar Smith, a man who was in the midst of a mental health crisis when he was fatally shot in his kitchen by LAPD officers in January after he wouldn’t drop a knife he’d picked up. Hours before the incident, Smith’s wife had walked into the Rampart police station to report he was behaving aggressively and was told to return to her apartment and call police from there. Moore said he also ordered a complaint investigation “regarding that action.”

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    Libor Jany, Richard Winton

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  • Son of Hollywood exec tried to get day laborers to move body parts, officials say

    Son of Hollywood exec tried to get day laborers to move body parts, officials say

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    The son of a Hollywood executive first tried to get day laborers to remove bags from his Tarzana home with what they realized were body parts and, when that failed, he was caught on video dumping them out of the back of his Tesla in Encino, authorities said.

    Samuel Bond Haskell IV is slated to be charged Monday afternoon after being behind bars on suspicion of murder following the gruesome discovery of dismembered body parts last Wednesday. Los Angeles police investigators say those remains are likely those of his wife, Mei Haskell, and both his in-laws remain missing.

    LAPD Robbery Homicide Division detectives arrested Haskell after working through the weekend, gathering evidence from his home at the 4100 block of Coldstream Terrace in Tarzana and around the Encino dumpster at a strip mall where a man found a suitcase with fresh human remains. Investigators found evidence of body disposal inside the home and brought a dog that tracks human remains to check the surrounding area.

    Haskell tried last Tuesday to pay day laborers $500 to take away bags he first said were full of rocks, and then said were Halloween decorations, the workers told a reporter for NBC4. But the day laborers told NBC4 the contents felt like meat inside. “When we picked up the bags, we could tell they weren’t rocks,” one of the workers said in Spanish.

    The men described the bags as soft and soggy, weighing about 50 pounds. They stopped their truck a block away, checked inside and saw human remains, identifying a belly button. They returned the remains and reported the discovery first to CHP and then to the LAPD. But the bags were gone when authorities went to check it out, police said.

    Haskell was then apparently captured on security cameras opposite an Encino strip mall. The video obtained by Fox News shows a man hauling a large and seemingly heavy sack over his shoulder from the back of his Tesla at about 4:45 p.m. Tuesday and dumping it into a trash bin.

    An unhoused man Wednesday morning found a human torso stuffed into a duffel and thrown in a trash bin in a parking lot near Ventura Boulevard and Rubio Avenue — about five miles away from Haskell’s home, police said.

    LAPD Capt. Scot Williams of the Robbery-Homicide Division said the torso is assumed to be that of Haskell’s wife, Mei Haskell, who has not been located. But forensics will be needed to confirm the identity.

    Haskell, his wife and her parents, Yanxiang Wang and Gaoshen Li, all lived in a single-story home in the 4100 block of Coldstream Terrace in Tarzana. The couple’s three children were in school the day their father was arrested, authorities said.

    Williams said detectives will present a criminal investigation to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office Monday afternoon for filing. None of the missing persons have been located.

    LAPD Det. Efren Gutierrez told reporters last week that efforts to reach Mei Haskell’s parents had yielded no results. “They would normally be home in these hours, and attempts have been made to contact them by phone, by cellphone, and no answer. And the same with Mei. She is unaccounted for.”

    Inside Haskell’s house, detectives discovered blood and other evidence consistent with killing and dismemberment, according to investigators.

    Haskell is being held in lieu of $2 million bail.

    Court records show that in December 2008, Haskell was arrested and charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. He pleaded no contest to battery and was placed on probation in 2010.

    Records show that Haskell is the son of Sam Haskell, the former executive vice president and worldwide head of television for William Morris who represented a slew of A-list stars and is still listed as head of Magnolia Hill Productions, which has produced several specials featuring Dolly Parton.

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    Richard Winton

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