Two staff members at the Ontario Surgery Center have been charged with allegedly interfering with a US immigration officer trying to detain a landscaper who ran to the center to escape.
Jose de Jesus Ortega, 38, of Highlands, was arrested Friday morning and is expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Riverside, according to a news release from the California Attorney’s Office Central District.
Authorities are still searching for another suspect in the coronavirus, 33-year-old Daniel Nadine Davila. Both are accused of conspiracy to attack federal officers and prevent federal officers from being spared from their duties, authorities said.
Earlier this month, staff at the Advanced Threkker Centre, Ontario, told two agents to leave because they had no warrants to go to the property, according to a video obtained by KTLA-TV. The immigration and customs enforcement agents were trying to detain Dennis Gillen Solis, 30, and two other landscapers who worked outside.
In the video, Gillen Solis is asked to hold the entrance and exit of the surgical center and present an identification to the agent. The agents then pulled Gylentholis out of the doorway and took him into custody.
“The illegal foreigner arrested inside the surgical center was not a patient. He ran in for cover and these defendants tried to stop his anxiety by assaulting our agents,” US lawyer Bill Essay said in a statement.
According to the affidavit, the two ICE agents wore government-issued equipment, including vests, and used government-operated vehicles that were not marked when they ran the operation.
According to the release, agents approached them after three men had three men inside and the man left the truck in the surgical center parking lot. Two men fled, one of them suspected of an undocumented immigrant from Honduras, was detained near the front door of the surgical centre, attempting to pull away, and a icy officer fell to the ground.
Medical staff pulled the man off the ground and pulled him away from the officers, according to a news release. The man enters the surgical center, is chased by ice agents, and eventually stops him.
The incident occurred amid an extraordinary immigration enforcement effort by the Trump administration in Southern California. Thousands of unauthorized immigrants (many without criminal history) are detained in the workplace, in courts and in public roads.
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