Raids rattle Latino residents

Immigration agents descended on a Forest Grove mobile home park two weeks before the massive raid in Portland

By Christian Gaston and Juana Diego

The Forest Grove News-Times, Jun 20, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (15 Reader comments)

Courtesy Photo / News-Times

Immigration agents arrive at Rose Grove.

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A week after 167 people were arrested in a massive immigration raid in north Portland, the news still reverberates through Latino enclaves in Cornelius and Forest Grove.

But rumors of raids in western Washington County started flying two weeks before the Del Monte fruit processing plant in Portland put Oregon at the center of the national immigration debate.

One story had it that federal officials had swarmed into Grande Foods in Cornelius and swept customers into unmarked vans. Another report was that a raid was conducted at Oregon Roses nursery in Forest Grove.

Neither was true, but as is often the case with rumors, they were spawned by a real event.

The News-Times has confirmed that federal immigration officials twice last month descended on a mobile home park on the border of Forest Grove and Cornelius and took three people into custody.

While the enforcement actions could hardly be called “raids,” the presence of immigration officers triggered a sense of dread among the Hispanic community here that has been heightened by the headline-grabbing case in Portland.

“There is a tremendous unrest and fear in the minds of a lot of people,” said Sabino Sardineta, executive director of Centro Cultural, a community group in Cornelius that serves Latinos from across the county.

May 24, 2007, 5:30 p.m.

It’s late afternoon in Rose Grove mobile home park, 3839 Pacific Ave., and the calm of the hot pre-summer air is broken by the noise of vehicles careening into the park.

The commotion arouses Rebecca Solis, who calls herself the park’s resident busybody.

“I heard cars and I went to my window and looked out to see who had parked across from my home,” Solis said. “I saw my neighbor pull in. It all happened so fast. Within the same minute, he hadn’t even finished closing his door (when) immigration vehicles pulled in behind him.”

Three Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents jump out of their white vans and start spreading out around unit 54.

Solis said that the officers asked her neighbor for papers to show that he was in the country legally.

“I just got very angry with the way they were treating him,” Solis said.

She ran out and asked what the officers were doing, and they ordered her to stop in her tracks.

Just then, a landscaping truck and a red car pulled in. The officers turned their attention to the occupants of the vehicles. The two men in the truck and the driver of the car were soon detained.

“It made me so mad,” Solis said. “They were stopped only because they were Mexicans.”

ICE spokeswoman Lorie Dankers said that although that might be what it looked like to observers, her agency had a very specific goal.

The officers were looking for Gabriel Huerta, who they described as a fugitive who is in the country illegally and has been ordered deported.

“This isn’t a random sweep,” Dankers said. “We were looking for that specific individual; we went to an individual house.”

Although they didn’t find Huerta, Dankers said that while looking for him the officers found three men who lacked required documentation.

“For them it was the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said. “But from our perspective it was the right place at the right time.”

The officers took the three men to Portland.

Dankers wouldn’t give the names of the three men detained at Rose Grove, citing confidentiality concerns. But Cecilia Avalos-Garcia says the man in the red car is her son, and is in the country legally.

She said that while it’s true that her son didn’t have the required documentation, his demeanor also might have played a role in his detention.

“My son said he was told to stop and show his documents to prove his legality in this country,” she said. “He admits that he was rude to the officers and not very cooperative.”

Avalos-Garcia said she and her husband quickly rounded up the papers necessary to show her son was here legally and went to Portland to pick him up.

She said the ICE officers at the Portland facility where her son was being held were friendly and professional and, after seeing the documents released her son that night.

Rumors fly

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