Sacred worship, duty to law pitted (Houston Chronicle)

Sacred worship, duty to law pitted
ICE agent removes man, 31, during church service

By SUSAN CARROLL
Houston Chronicle
Feb. 18, 2009, 10:43PM

On a Sunday morning, in a church sanctuary near Conroe, an off-duty immigration agent tapped Jose Juan Hernandez on the shoulder and asked him to step outside.

A 31-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico with three prior deportations, Hernandez quietly followed the agent and promptly was detained on suspicion of illegal re-entry after deportation, said Gregory Palmore, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman in Houston.

The case would be unremarkable, except for the setting. The fact that Hernandez was detained in church has sparked controversy locally. Hernandez was arrested Oct. 26, pleaded guilty to the re-entry charge this month and is scheduled for sentencing in April. He remains in federal detention in Conroe. Hernandez’s attorney, Rick Soliz, said he plans to file a complaint against the ICE agent in connection with the arrest.

“I wonder what the agent was thinking, if he was thinking at all,” Soliz said. “How do you decide to do that in the middle of a religious service?”

ICE has demonstrated a long-standing reluctance to detain suspected illegal immigrants at churches and schools. The agency waited more than a year before arresting Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who publicly took sanctuary in a West Chicago church to avoid being deported and separated from her U.S.-born son. She was picked up after she left the church and traveled to Los Angeles in 2007 to launch a national campaign for immigration reform.

Palmore confirmed that Hernandez was arrested at the church in October, calling it an “unusual circumstance.” But he defended the agent’s actions as fulfilling his “sworn duty to enforce the nation’s laws.”

He said the agency has guidelines related to arrests “in sensitive community locations.” Palmore said those guidelines are internal and cannot be made public, but they allow agents to make arrests at churches in specific circumstances.

No record of violence

Hernandez is expected to be deported after he serves his sentence. According to court records, he was convicted of a felony drug charge in Montgomery County and deported in 2000. He was deported again in 2001.

Hernandez was convicted in Montgomery County for DWI in January 2004. In October of that year, he was convicted of driving without a valid license. He was deported for a third time in 2004, according to ICE records.

Palmore said the ICE agent took part in one of Hernandez’s earlier arrests and recognized him at the church.

Soliz said his client had never been convicted of a violent crime and had no outstanding warrants at the time of his arrest. Although the agent had legal grounds to make the arrest in the church, Soliz said, doing so appeared to go against ICE’s general practice, specifically citing the Arellano case.

“It’s unbelievable to me that an agent can be so ignorant,” Soliz said. “Just a short time ago, his superiors at the highest levels purposely waited a year for a woman to come out of a church, yet this renegade with a gun and a badge decides in the middle of a religious service to make an arrest.”

‘They have no respect’

The arrested man’s mother, 51-year-old Ana Maria Hernandez, said she was particularly upset to learn that her son, who has been in the U.S. illegally since age 6, was detained in a church.

“A church is a sacred place,” she said. “They have no respect, not even for that.”

Hernandez regularly attended Conroe First Assembly church, but was at a different church in Montgomery with a friend when arrested.

Michael Moak, a pastor at the church where Hernandez regularly attended, said word of the arrest upset some members of his congregation.

“I think it was distasteful, the way it was done,” he said.

Moak suggested ICE could have arrested Hernandez at his job or home, and “could have been a little more professional,” instead of singling him out at church.

Curtis Collier, president of the U.S. Border Watch group based in Spring, which advocates stricter border controls, said it “might have been a little more prudent” to wait until after the service.

But without knowing all the details, Collier said, “I have to go with the agent’s judgment.”