Rights Violated, Plaintiffs Charge : Witnesses Describe Raids at Beginning of INS Trial

LOS ANGELES — Dramatic accounts of immigration officers forcing doors open at a Fullerton home, swarming into a Department of Motor Vehicles office and raiding a Corona soccer practice marked the opening of testimony Wednesday in a federal court trial of a lawsuit against the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The plaintiffs are all legal U.S. residents who allege that INS agents violated their constitutional rights by entering their homes or businesses without search warrants.

Seven Orange County residents originally filed the federal lawsuit in 1979. In April, however, U.S. District Judge David W. Williams expanded it to include “all persons of Latin ancestry” who are legal residents of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Attorneys representing the INS said the allegations are not true and criticized the witnesses for not complaining directly to the INS before filing the lawsuit. In many of the incidents, the INS did in fact arrest illegal aliens, according to court records. “The real way to resolve this is for people to make complaints to the INS,” said George Wu, an assistant U. S. attorney representing the INS. “If this was a problem, it should have come up before.”

Manuela (Nellie) Zuniga, a Santa Ana resident who works at the DMV office in Santa Ana, testified about a Sept. 30, 1985, raid in which about 20 INS agents swarmed into the office and parking lot.

“They were just stopping the Latin-looking people,” Zuniga told Williams, who is hearing the case without a jury.

Zuniga said about 10 uniformed and armed INS agents inside the office were pulling people out of line for questioning. Another group of about half a dozen agents in the parking lot were stopping people in their cars, she said, adding that the agents arrested several people and “packed them like sardines” in waiting vans.

“At that moment I felt ashamed that I was a U. S. citizen,” Zuniga said in an interview outside the courtroom. For two weeks after the raid, she said, the number of customers visiting the DMV office dropped dramatically.

Home Entered

Virginia Zepeda, 29, of Fullerton testified about what happened on two nights in September, 1979, when she said INS agents entered her home without a search warrant. On the first night, she said, two agents accompanied by a Fullerton police officer arrested five people, including her father-in-law and her live-in baby sitter. All five were here illegally from Mexico, according to court records.

Five nights later, while she and her husband were asleep, INS agents knocked at their bedroom window and demanded that the couple open the front door, she said. Once inside, two INS agents asked to see her birth certificate and her husband’s immigration papers before leaving, Zepeda said.

“Everybody was upset. We were all upset,” said Zepeda, who was born in San Bernardino.

Rudy Valdez, 14, of Corona testified about an April 10, 1986, raid at a Corona soccer field. Valdez said he and about 18 other Latin youths were questioned by INS agents accompanied by Corona police officers.

‘Pretty Scary’

“I was afraid because the guy (INS agent) had a gun,” said Valdez, who is a U.S. citizen. “It was pretty scary,” he added.

Valdez added that since the raid, his soccer team has disbanded because his classmates and friends are afraid to play at the field.

In May, 1980, in response to the lawsuit, Williams issued an order barring the INS from entering homes and businesses without a warrant. But a portion of that order was reversed by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in March, 1985.