Safety Checkpoints in So Cal

Safety checkpoints put illegal immigrants in line to lose cars, sometimes more

Deymi Barrios, of San Jacinto, carries car seats as she walks with daughter Lucero, 4. She was returning from driving her children to school when she came upon the checkpoint. Her car was impounded because as an illegal immigrant, she lacks a driver’s license.

Deymi Barrios, a 25-year-old stay-at-home mom and illegal immigrant, had her car towed away from a checkpoint in Romoland because she was driving without a license.

Wrestling car seats from her Ford Focus as her two young children cried, she said she understood why deputies impounded her car.

“I know that the law is the law,” Barrios said in Spanish. “But because I don’t have papers, I can’t get a license.”

Daytime checkpoints are gaining popularity among police as a way to make roads safer by taking cars from unlicensed drivers. But immigrant advocates say many of those caught up in checkpoints are not people with records of driving dangerously, just illegal immigrants who, like Barrios, cannot get a license at all.

Barrios chose to drive her 5-year-old son to school anyway May 5 because she did not want him to wait outside for the bus while he sniffled with a cold.

Her car was one of 75 taken away on the spot in southwestern Riverside County as part of a safety checkpoint put on by the Sheriff’s Department. Anyone who failed to produce a license was ushered off Highway 74 through a gantlet of orange cones, where tow trucks were queued up like taxis at an airport.

Barrios, who came here illegally from Mexico seven years ago, worried about her husband’s reaction to the $1,000-plus cost of retrieving their car.

“We’ll probably have to cut our telephone service,” she said. “The only thing that could have made this worse is if immigration was here.”

ICE Agents

At two recent sheriff’s checkpoints in Canyon Lake, immigration agents were there. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 35 people suspected of immigration violations.

Melissa Jimenez, 20, a member of the Explorer program for aspiring deputies, volunteered to help with Spanish translations at a March 27 checkpoint on Railroad Canyon Road, where she saw ICE agents making arrests.

“Most were agricultural workers or landscapers on their way to work. ICE filled up the van and took them to immigration jail,” Jimenez said. “It made me feel bad, really bad. But this is my career so I have to do it.”

ICE Assistant Field Director Eric Saldana said agents were there for two hours and took nine people into custody. Police had cited them for driving without a valid license, Saldana said. Eight opted for voluntary deportation, and one requested a hearing before a judge.

At another checkpoint in December, agents arrested 26.

Saldana said agents got involved in the checkpoints as part of ICE’s criminal-alien program, which focuses on identifying illegal immigrants in jail.

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said she did not know how many recent traffic checkpoints outside the Inland area have been visited by ICE agents.

Collaborations on large-scale operations, such as checkpoints, are likely to become more common, Saldana said, because Congress has granted ICE more funding to look for “criminal aliens” in the population.

“We have to start from some place,” he said. “The logical place to start looking is for people who are in police custody.”

“What it is, basically, is outreach,” Saldana said.

Sheriff’s officials said they welcomed having ICE agents at the checkpoints to serve as Spanish interpreters, not to arrest illegal immigrants.

Capt. James McElvain, head of the Sheriff’s Department’s Perris Station — which provides policing services to both Perris and Canyon Lake — said the department doesn’t specifically invite ICE to attend the checkpoints, but it and other government agencies are alerted beforehand. The agencies can include Cal Fire, the Border Patrol, March Air Reserve Base and police departments, he said. The news media is also notified, he added. Read more

Found to be driving on a suspended license, Jim Zenns, of Romoland, walks home from the checkpoint after his vehicle is seized. He lugs the tools he was taking to work.

You will notice how the story starts… Poor little Deymi Barrios and her small child are walking away from the checkpoint looking sad; the bleeding heart liberals are already complaining that the checkpoints are not fair…

Nowhere in the story does it say the Illegal Immigrants  (more commonly referred to as INVADERS) were shot on site for illegally entering a sovereign nation. NOWHERE in the story does it even say the INVADERS were deported via a human slingshot or an even more humane van ride back to their country. The story simply states that the Government agencies are doing exactly what they are supposed to do, enforce the law.

The illegal immigrant that is driving around Southern California is not just a “hard working” illegal, he/she is behind the wheel of a weapon, the same type weapon we all drive, and WE ALL must have the proper documents and insurance in case of accidents. OUR insurance rates are the highest in the nation because of the Illegal drivers and IMO letting them walk off carrying their belongings is tantamount to allowing an armed robber to walk away without his firearm.

Law enforcement personnel has caught the ILLEGAL Immigrant driving with out a license, with out insurance, without PROPER DOCUMENTS to be in this country and they just let them walk off and go do whatever? There should be an I.C.E van convoy there running non-stop to the border, removing the illegal Immigrants from the feeding trough.