By Ryan Katz
It was still dark on a crisp morning in March 2017 when Carlos
Rueda Cruz clambered into his Toyota Tacoma pickup truck to go to work.
He turned the key in the ignition and pulled around the corner to pick
up his friend, who worked for the same roofing company in Sacramento,
California. Carlos made it three blocks before he saw the flashing
lights in his rearview mirror. He pulled over near an Arco gas station.
“They better just give you a ticket,” the friend joked.
The police approached with guns cocked, Carlos said. They shouted for
him to put his hands in the air. As Carlos stepped out of his truck, he
noticed five law enforcement vehicles surrounding him. The police
started asking questions: Where are you going? Are you carrying any
drugs or weapons? Why are you here?
Carlos recalled another time when he’d been pulled over by men with
guns, three years earlier, in his home province of Michoacán, Mexico.
That time, it was by members of a drug cartel. Carlos and his family had
handed out flyers for the leftist Mexican Party of the Democratic
Revolution, known by its Spanish-language acronym PRD, during the 2012
and 2014 elections. At the time, local cartels — most notably, Los Zetas
and La Familia — frequently intimidated voters into supporting the
party they favored. The armed men asked Carlos which party he was voting
for. Carlos replied that he hadn’t decided yet. The men threatened to
kill him unless he voted for the conservative Institutional
Revolutionary Party, or PRI; ultimately, they let him go. Afterward,
Carlos faced a fundamental question: change my political beliefs, or
run? He fled with his family to the United States, where he was about to
face another life-altering encounter with forces beyond his control.
Soon, according to Carlos, he would be drawn against his will into a
deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which asked him to
snitch on other undocumented immigrants or face deportation. When he
refused to comply, he faced retaliation. This account is based on more
than 300 pages of documents and interviews with Carlos, his relatives,
and his attorney. ICE declined to comment on most aspects of Carlos’s
case, though an agency official said an inquiry had determined that some
of Carlos’s accusations were unfounded.
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Source: The Intercept_
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