Police in southern California arrested a man suspected of posing as a federal immigration officer this week, the latest in a series of such arrests, as masked, plainclothes immigration agents are deployed nationwide to meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation targets.
The man, Fernando Diaz, was arrested by Huntington Park police after officers said they found a loaded gun and official-looking documents with Department of Homeland Security headings in his SUV, according to NBC Los Angeles. Officers were impounding his vehicle for parking in a handicapped zone when Diaz asked to retrieve items inside, the police said. Among the items seen by officers in the car were “multiple copies of passports not registered under the individual’s name”, NBC reports.
Diaz was arrested for possession of the allegedly unregistered firearm and released on bail.
The Huntington Park police chief and mayor accused Diaz of impersonating an immigration agent at a news conference, a move Diaz later told the NBC News affiliate he was surprised by.
Diaz also denied to the outlet that he had posed as an officer with border patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). At the news conference, police showed reporters paper they found inside his car with an official-looking US Customs and Border Protection header.
The arrest is one of several cases involving people allegedly impersonating immigration officials, as the nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants intensifies.
Experts have warned that federal agents’ increased practice of masking while carrying out immigration raids and arrests makes it easier for imposters to pose as federal officers.
Around the country, the sight of Ice officers emerging from unmarked cars in plainclothes to make arrests has become increasingly common.
In March, for instance, a Tufts University student was seen on video being arrested by masked Ice officials outside her apartment, after her visa had been revoked for writing an opinion article in her university newspaper advocating for Palestinian rights. And many federal agents operating in the Los Angeles region in recent weeks have been masked.
In late January, a week after Trump took office, a man in South Carolina was arrested and charged with kidnapping and impersonating an officer, after allegedly presenting himself as an Ice officer and detaining a group of Latino men.
In February, two people impersonating Ice officers attempted to enter a Temple University residence hall. CNN reported that Philadelphia police later arrested one of them, a 22-year-old student, who was charged with impersonating an officer.
In North Carolina the same week, another man, Carl Thomas Bennett, was arrested after allegedly impersonating an Ice officer and sexually assaulting a woman. Bennett reportedly threatened to deport the woman if she did not comply.
In April, a man in Indiantown, Florida, was arrested for impersonating an Ice officer and targeting immigrants. Two men reported to the police that the man had performed a fake traffic stopand then asked for their documents and immigration status.
Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, told the Guardian last week that the shootings of two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, by a suspect who allegedly impersonated a police officer, highlights the danger of police not looking like police.
“Federal agents wearing masks and casual clothing significantly increases this risk of any citizen dressing up in a way that fools the public into believing they are law enforcement so they can engage in illegal activity. It is a public safety threat, and it’s also a threat to the agents and officers themselves, because people will not immediately be able to distinguish between who is engaged in legitimate activity or illegitimate activity when violence is occurring in public,” he said.
