2 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
‘Shock and disbelief': U.S. citizen says ICE arrested her during Santa Ana park raid
Heidi Plummer, a U.S. citizen and Orange County attorney, strolled through Centennial Regional Park in Santa Ana on June 14 to clear her mind after a family funeral when she suddenly encountered an immigration raid.
The park, with its vast grassy fields, playgrounds and artificial lake, usually bustles with families watching youth soccer games on weekends while push-cart vendors sell ice pops.
'There were families picnicking and spending time together,' Plummer said. 'But it was definitely a quiet day.'
Out of view on the opposite end of the nearly 70-acre park, event organizers, city staffers and vendors welcomed guests to the city-sponsored Juneteenth Festival, which celebrated the end of chattel slavery.
Plummer recounted seeing several vans pull into a big parking lot near where she walked, sometime between noon and 1 p.m. Masked federal agents poured out of the vans wearing tactical gear emblazoned with 'ICE' and made their way through the park.
'They were just grabbing people that were close to them and handcuffing them,' Plummer said.
She stood only a few feet from the sweep, she said, when ICE agents approached and arrested her. Plummer said the federal agents didn't ask any questions before taking her personal belongings and leading her back to their vans.
Plummer, who is half-Ecuadorian, began advising people of their rights after agents handcuffed her. In Spanish, she told those arrested by ICE not to answer any questions and to ask for a lawyer.
Her advice continued after vans transported Plummer and other detainees to an ICE detention facility in Santa Ana. Agents had separated men from women in different vans. Plummer said that at the center she was held in a room without enough chairs for all the women detained. Agents called detainees up one by one.
Plummer said she provided authorities with her identification. After about an hour-and-a-half, they returned her ID, cellphone and released her.
A spokesperson for ICE did not respond to a TimesOC request for comment.
After the raid, which the Daily Journal first reported, Plummer retained legal representation.
'It's pretty clear that it's racial profiling,' Jesse Rivera, an attorney representing Plummer, said of the raid. 'They're going in and just grabbing Latinos. It's a clear violation of these individuals' constitutional rights.'
The raid appeared to have avoided drawing much attention in Santa Ana, Orange County's only sanctuary city.
A spokesperson for the Santa Ana Police Department, which had personnel at the park during the Juneteenth Festival, was not aware of any raids that day.
The Orange County Rapid Response Network, a coalition of ICE watching activists, did receive a tip about the Centennial Regional Park ICE raid, but did not have any photos or videos to put out a confirmed public alert.
As a Santa Ana resident, Plummer reached out to Rep. Lou Correa, a Democrat representing the 46th congressional district, about her arrest.
'Being a U.S. citizen means something,' Correa said of Plummer. 'It means that under the U.S. Constitution, you have rights. Right now, it appears that none of those rights are being respected.'
Correa recently introduced the No Secret Police Act that would require federal immigration agents, such as the ones Plummer said arrested her, to clearly display identification and be banned from wearing non-tactical face masks.
'Having masked individuals not identifying themselves, just jumping [out] at people, essentially racially profiling them, is creating a very dangerous situation here,' he said.
Plummer's arrest is cited in a federal class action lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Trump administration by civil and immigrant rights groups alleging that the raids have, in part, 'led to numerous U.S. citizens who work, reside, or just happen to be in neighborhoods with large numbers of people of color also getting swept up.'
Outside of the class action suit, Plummer, who is the vice president of the Orange County Women Lawyers Assn. and co-founder of the Newport Beach Bock & Plummer firm, is reviewing her legal options following the arrest.
'We're investigating this matter,' Rivera said. 'We're making the determination as to whether or not an action should be filed.'
In the meantime, Plummer is still recovering from the harrowing ordeal.
'I've been going to Centennial Park my entire life,' she said. 'I was in utter shock and disbelief that this could happen to any U.S. citizen.'
