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One year after a dawn raid by federal, state and county law enforcement agents terrorized West Wendover’s Latino minority, the score remains; six of the arrested “international gang” members deported, two still in this country, free on bail and two who were released a day after being arrested because they were as they insisted in legal residents of the United States.
Faustino Collazon-Munoz and Raymundo Ramirez Sanchez are now free on bail after waiting five months in jail for their hearings before a deportation judge.
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Federal agents began what was to be a 13 hour long raid June 12, 2010 on what ICE spokesmen described as drug dealers, illegal immigrants and gang members.
The squad of federal agents aided by Elko County Sheriff’s deputies and local police raided several homes and business beginning that Saturday morning.
Several vans were said to have been brought into the Nevada/Utah border town to transport suspects taken in the raids but by the end of the day most of those vans returned to Salt Lake empty.
The ICE haul became even smaller, after two of the ten arrested in Wendover were released that same day in Salt Lake after their documentation was found valid and proved they were in the country legally.
While several sources confirmed that some if not all of the eight may have had gang affiliation, none of the arrestees were thought of local gang bosses much less as ‘kingpins’ in an international drug cartel.
In fact according one source the eight arrested were described as probably some of the smallest fish in Wendover’s small pond of illegal gang activity.
According to one local, none of the tattoos, ICE released were specifically gang oriented. The most common mark of a gang member at least in Wendover is the number 13 derived by the name “Sur 13” the largest and oldest Wendover gang.
Latinos make up between 50 to 60 percent of Wendover’s population and while a great many took advantage of the immigration amnesty offered in the late 1980’s, many did not and since then a new wave of migrants mostly from Mexico and mostly illegal have come to Wendover.
The issue about gang membership was also raised in a copyrighted story in the Salt Lake Tribune.
“We’ve gotten five or six of these gang cases in the past week, and I have three clients who have no criminal record,” said Aaron Tarin, an immigration attorney told the Tribune earlier this year. “They were not affiliated with gangs or participating in illegal activity, but they are being labeled as gang members because they have tattoos, usually that are completely unrelated to gang membership.”
Of the 158 people rounded up in the April-to-August sweep in Utah, 65 face no criminal charges, ICE Spokeswoman Karen Kice said. Many of those 65 have no criminal records, she said, but are “potentially associated” with a gang due to clothing colors or a tattoo.
“If there’s an indication that they have known gang associations, we want to take that preemptive action so they can’t get involved in a crime that has a negative impact on the community,” she said.
That tactic doesn’t fly with many Utah immigration attorneys.
“They are picking low-lying fruit to get another badge of honor over people who have never committed crimes in their lives,” said immigration attorney J. Christopher Keen. “Why is this going on in this country? They should go get a warrant and properly follow it.”
Just how long the reaming Wendover men will remain at the Utah County jail is anyone’s guess.
“It all depends on when their case is up for a hearing,” said a jailer. “And ICE doesn’t tell us when each case is going to be heard. Sometimes they are gone within a week of getting here and sometimes they are here for a year or more.”
