HATFIELD — Federal immigration agents say that arrests they made on Tuesday were part of a “targeted vehicle stop,” which has resulted in deportation proceedings against three undocumented Guatemalan immigrants.
Deportation officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement pulled over a van on Elm Street late Tuesday afternoon with nine farm workers inside on their way from a local farm back home to Springfield. The target of the stop was the driver, Rudimel Esteban-Cash, though two other men — Edgar Lopez and Gustavo Adolfo Gonzalez-Velasquez — were also arrested in the encounter, according to ICE spokesman Shawn Neudauer.
“Lopez and Gonzalez-Velasquez will remain in ICE custody pending immigration removal proceedings,” Neudauer said in a statement. Esteban-Cash, he added, “will remain in ICE custody pending removal from the U.S.”
Bill Newman, director of the Western Regional Law Office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the ACLU’s immigrant protection project is organizing legal representation for the detainees.
Neudauer said Esteban-Cash has twice been deported from the United States, in 2007 and 2009, and that he has previously pleaded guilty to battery, and had a misdemeanor conviction for drunken driving.
According to ICE, Lopez has prior convictions in Massachusetts for assault and battery on a police officer and drunken driving, as well as an active state arrest warrant in Connecticut for driving under the influence. Concerning Gonzalez-Velasquez, Neudauer made reference to “prior misdemeanor convictions” without specifying what those convictions are.
Newman declined to comment on the men’s cases at the present time, agreeing only to speak generally about such statements from immigration officials.
“In our experience, generally when ICE uses terms like ‘other misdemeanors,’ frequently that means minor traffic violations,” Newman said, taking care to reiterate that he does not know whether or not that is true with any of these men’s particular cases.
The arrests Tuesday evening were observed by several witnesses, who described the remaining six immigrant workers left in the car as “traumatized.”
The workers declined to speak to a reporter Tuesday, citing safety concerns.
Gabriella della Croce, an organizer with the Pioneer Valley Workers Center who conducted interviews with the six workers after the arrests, said a call came into her organization’s rapid-response hotline at around 4:30 p.m.
Hatfield Police Chief Michael Dekoschak said ICE agents did not forewarn him that they were coming to town at that time.
“I don’t know if I would even expect them to, to be perfectly honest,” he said.
From Hatfield, the three were taken to the Franklin County House of Correction in Greenfield, where they were kept in custody overnight.
“This morning (Wednesday), first thing, they were transferred to Hartford, Connecticut, for processing,” Franklin County Sheriff Christopher Donelan said.
Organizers from the Pioneer Valley Workers Center staged a rally at the Greenfield jail Tuesday night, decrying the detention of the three men and two other immigrants whom organizers say ICE arrested earlier in the week during a workplace raid at a Holyoke factory.