A Mexican illegal immigrant claims Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents beat him because he refused to rat on other undocumented foreigners in a bid to save himself from deportation.
Now Carlos Rueda is suing ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for $750,000 for battery, assault and false imprisonment.
Rueda, 28, who emigrated from Mexico, fell under the surveillance of immigration officials after he was pulled over during a traffic stop by cops in Sacramento, California, on March 3, 2017 as he was on his way to his job as a roofer.
Instead of being arrested, Rueda was placed under an order of supervision by ICE and was required to meet with the immigration authorities on a monthly basis.
Carlos Rueda filed a lawsuit in a Sacramento court claiming ICE officials beat him after he failed to continue to snitch on other undocumented immigrants so he couldn’t be deported
During a scheduled visit with the immigration agents, he was given two uncomfortable options: snitch on others that have entered the country illegally to avoid his own deportation or be banned from the country.
‘Well at that moment I was scared. I wanted to get out,’ Rueda recalled in a chat with Univision outside a Sacramento courthouse Wednesday.
‘I wanted to return to my family. I told them, ‘yes,’ I would be coming every month.’
Rueda, a married father-of-three, agreed before he decided to stop providing any names of other undocumented immigrants that were involved in criminal acts or who had previously been convicted of breaking the law in September 2017.
According to his lawyer Luis Angel Reyes Savalza, the desperate ICE federal agents used the extreme measures of asking Rueda to simply report additional immigrants suspected of committing crimes.
But Rueda refuse to continue.
Luis Angel Reyes Savalza, who represents Carlos Rueda, a Mexican immigrant allegedly beaten by ICE, says agents got desperate by having his client name drop other immigrants
Carlos Rueda spent six months in 2017 visiting ICE agents in Sacramento, California. He was ordered to snitch on other undocumented migrants or risk deportation to Mexico
On September 26, 2017, immigration agents detained the Mexican immigrant during his monthly office visit and was informed he would be processed for deportation for failing to own up to his end of the bargain.
Rueda recalled being held for a number of hours before he was taken to another office and told his family would also be deported.
‘They told me that if I did not sign, they were going to go after my family and that they knew where my family lived,’ Rueda said.
While in the room with three ICE agents, court documents detail Rueda was ordered to sign an English language document, but the immigrant refused because he was not fluent.
The court document revealed Rueda refused and two agents with black gloves twisted his arms behind his back. A third ICE official grabbed Rueda’s head and slammed it against a table, and another joined in an attempt to take his fingerprints.
Rueda again returned to the office the following day and some of the agents from the day prior once again tried to coerce him into signing off his deportation.
His head was once again slammed against a table and other agents drove their knees into his ribs and sides.
His fingerprints were there placed on the voluntary deportation order.
‘Carlos was put in an impossible situation where he had to choose between himself and his family and other immigrants,’ Savalza told the Sacramento Bee.
Rueda’s deportation order was stayed based on the claim of the false fingerprint.