‘It's racist': Latino tenants who sued their landlord got threatening message about ICE
'It's not fair for him to take advantage of that,' former tenant Yicenia Morales told The Los Angeles Times. 'I was born here. I have a birth certificate. I pay taxes.'
'I was already depressed over the eviction,' she added. 'Now I'm hurt, embarrassed and nervous as well. Will he really call ICE on us?'
'It's racist,' her attorney, Sarah McCracken, added in an interview with the paper. 'Not only is it unethical and probably illegal, but it's just a really wild thing to say — especially since my clients are U.S. citizens.'
The controversy stems from a June message from attorney Rod Fehlman, whom Morales and her lawyers at the firm Tobener Ravenscroft said they saw in state records was the legal point of contact for landlord Celia Ruiz and her real estate agent David Benavides.
In the midst of a back-and-forth over the case in June, Fehlman sent an aggressive message referencing recent arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, McCracken said.
'It is also interesting to note that your clients are likely to be picked up by ICE and deported prior to trial thanks to all the good work the Trump administration has done in regards to immigration in California,' Fehlman told the renters' legal team in email after being served this summer, according to McCracken.
Fehlman told The Independent he cannot comment on 'ongoing litigation,' but said the message was taken out of context. Instead of a threat, he said, he was warning Morales's San Francisco-based lawyer about the ongoing pattern of ICE agents arresting immigrants at courthouses and immigration offices.
'My email mentions nothing about Ms. McCracken's client's citizenship,' Fehlman wrote in an email. 'This is an ongoing problem in Southern California and a sad reality that litigants have been picked randomly at Courthouses. It is unfortunate that this comment has been taken out of context intentionally by Ms. McCracken's firm and used to defame my office.'
(The real estate agent named in the suit responded to the complaint with a different law firm than Fehlman's, according to the Times, and the renters have been unable to serve the landlord with the complaint yet. Fehlman did not respond to a question regarding which parties he was or had been representing in the eviction dispute.)
McCracken told The Independent she was taken aback by her exchanges with Fehlman.
'This case doesn't involve my client's race or ethnicity or immigration status, or at least it didn't until he made that comment,' she said. 'We just thought it was irrelevant and an inappropriate way to try and get an edge in the case.'
The Independent has contacted Morales for comment.
Real estate agent Benavides, when reached by The Independent, hung up.
On Tuesday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta warned that discriminating, retaliating against, or attempting to influence tenants based on their immigration status, including by reporting tenants to immigration services, is illegal.
'California tenants — no matter their immigration status — have a right to safe housing and to access housing documents in a language they can understand,' Bonta said in a statement. 'I will use the full force of my office to go after those who seek to take advantage of California tenants during an already challenging time.'
McCracken said she has encountered landlords making verbal comments about ICE to tenants in the past. Now, however, she said people seem 'emboldened' to make boundary-pushing spoken and written comments about race and immigration status to renters under the second Trump administration, based on what she has heard from potential clients and legal colleagues.
Renters have faced threats over their immigration status predating the second Trump term, too.
In 2019, a New York judge fined a landlord $5,000 and ordered the payment of $12,000 in damages to a tenant who was threatened with ICE if they didn't pay rent, thought to be the first such case in the country.
Earlier this year, an Illinois judge ruled on a similar case, dating back to 2022.
Under the Trump administration, with its mass expansion of military-style immigration raids, unscrupulous individuals have also allegedly impersonated ICE to achieve unsavory ends, including a January incident in which a North Carolina man allegedly pretended to be an immigration agent to coerce a woman into having sex.
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