MURRIETA — A former Border Patrol officer said Thursday that constant demands to meet monthly arrest quotas led agents in the Inland Empire to cruise streets, bus stops and even medical clinics looking for illegal immigrants.
"We had to make eight apprehensions a day and if we didn't meet that goal we were pressured to get more the next day," said Tony Plattel, who was fired last month for driving what he said were six dehydrated illegal immigrants back to headquarters despite orders to wait until his van was full. "I interfered with the quota, that's why I was fired," he said.
According to Plattel, agents trying to fill those quotas would drive on Baseline Road in San Bernardino searching for anyone who looked "wet," slang for a newly arrived illegal immigrant.
"If we didn't find any we would go to Home Depot or day labor sites," he said. "We got an old guy stepping out of a medical clinic once."
He said he once saw agents bring in a mother with a child on a respirator.
The Border Patrol is conducting an internal investigation over allegations that its Riverside office had monthly arrest quotas and would punish those who didn't meet them by changing their schedules. The El Centro office, which oversees the nine agents in Riverside, denies setting quotas but said "goals" were in place.
"Quotas would be detrimental to our mission. It would hurt morale and put pressure on agents," said Border Patrol spokesman Richard Velez. "We set goals but not in numerical ways. [Plattel] is no longer an employee and you have to consider why he is making those statements."
But Lombardo Amaya, president of Local 2554 of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Plattel, said all the Riverside agents have made similar complaints.
"It wasn't just Tony," he said. "Everyone who is not a supervisor complained to me."
Plattel, 37, spent 13 years with the Border Patrol. He worked in San Diego and Arizona before coming to Riverside nearly two years ago. He said the quotas varied. Sometimes it was 150 a month, then it was eight arrests a day, he said.
The patrol agent in charge was Ramon Chavez.
"He told us there was a mandate from the sector and they wanted 150 arrests a month, two prosecutions and 20 vehicle seizures," Plattel said. "If we didn't meet the quotas he would change our shifts. We would ask, 'Why? Is there some kind of emergency?' and he said, 'No, you guys are not producing.' "
