Border Patrol to Investigate Allegation That Agent Harassed Legal Alien

Border Patrol officials said Friday that they will investigate allegations by a Salvadoran alien who said that two agents detained him more than two hours and tore up documents that allow him to remain legally in this country pending a ruling on his petition for asylum.

Rutilio Alfredo Fuentes Sanchez, 25, said that Agent J. O. Nelson and an unidentified officer arrested him on the morning of Jan. 25, while he was standing beside a flower stand on El Camino Real in Encinitas with several other men. According to Fuentes and other aliens who witnessed the incident, Nelson and his partner, a Latino agent, appeared to single him out and forced him inside a Border Patrol vehicle.

Several witnesses, including Fuentes’ father, Silvestre Coca, said that Fuentes tried to show agents a copy of his petition for asylum and asked them not to arrest him. The agents ignored the document and drove him around for more than two hours before stopping in a remote, hilly area that he did not recognize, Fuentes said.

“They took me out of the vehicle and Nelson grabbed me by the shirt and threw me to the ground,” Fuentes said. “I landed on my knees and took the immigration papers out of my pocket to show to them. Nelson grabbed the document and tore it up without looking at it. He said: ‘This piece of paper is no good.’ ”

Agents Sped Off

The agents then got inside the vehicle and sped off, leaving him on the ground, Fuentes said. Minutes after the agents left, “four cholos “ robbed him of $300 at knifepoint, he said.

A spokesman for attorney George Siddell, who is representing Fuentes and his father, who has also petitioned for asylum, said that Fuentes reported the incident to them. The spokesman, who requested anonymity, said he took Fuentes to an Immigration and Naturalization Service case worker to explain the incident.

The INS official gave Fuentes a new copy of his petition, which states that he is allowed to remain in this country pending a decision on his case, said Siddell’s spokesman.

Fuentes, who served in the Salvadoran military for three years, entered the United States illegally on Aug. 16, 1988, and applied for asylum on Oct. 27, stating that he feared that he would be killed by leftist guerrillas if he returned home.

Border Patrol Assistant Chief Armand Olvera said his office will refer Fuentes’ complaints to the INS Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates reports of misconduct by agents.

Kind of Action Not Condoned

“We know nothing about this incident. We have turned this information over to the Office of Professional Responsibility for investigation. We don’t condone this type of action,” Olvera said.

Olvera was asked to make Nelson available for comment, but the agent could not be reached.

Fuentes alleged that the harassment by Nelson continued this week. On Tuesday, while Fuentes was waiting at the same site for employment offers, Nelson and another unidentified agent, whom witnesses again described as Latino, heaped obscenities on him again, he said.

Witness accounts of the incident said that, even after Nelson returned to his vehicle, the unidentified agent continued to shout obscenities at Fuentes.

“I finally got mad and told him that I was going to sue him and Nelson,” Fuentes said. “He stepped real close to my face and told me that a judge would never believe anything I said, and that he had the power to send me to jail for one year.”

Wrote Name, License Number

The confrontation ended there, Fuentes said. During the shouting match, Fuentes wrote down Nelson’s name and the license number of the vehicle the agents were driving, but he failed to note the other agent’s name.

In the past, Border Patrol officials have not officially denied that such incidents occur. But officials frequently respond that no record of the incident has been made by agents. The officials have also said that it is impossible to verify an incident without the name of the agent or agents involved.

The difference in Fuentes’ allegations is that he has provided the name of the agent involved and the license number of the vehicle he was in. On Friday, Chief Olvera said that Border Patrol officials had no record of the incident but would investigate.

In November, a coalition of immigrant rights groups sued the INS, charging that U. S. border agents have illegally seized and destroyed immigration documents belonging to hundreds of aliens who are trying to legalize their status in this country.

Roberto Martinez, an activist who heads the U. S.-Mexico border project for the American Friends Service Committee, said aliens frequently complain about Border Patrol agents who seize and destroy their documents.

“This shows the pattern and practice of the Border Patrol in the way they enforce our immigration laws. They are completely ignoring the rights of people who are amnesty candidates, and who have legal authorization to be here,” Martinez said.