Jennyfer Mesa has suspected ICE agents have been watching her since February.
“ We've seen vehicles outside of our house,” Mesa told RANGE in an interview last week. “We're regular people. I live with my husband and my kids, and we're out in the front, gardening and cleaning up like everyone else.”
Mesa and her family are regular people, but she is also one of the most prominent advocates for immigrant rights in the Inland Northwest. Under her leadership of Latinos en Spokane (LeS), a nonprofit that has fought for immigrants since 2017, the organization has ramped up its advocacy as President Donald Trump embarked on a massive campaign to deport “millions” of immigrants.
LeS organized the May Day march last week during which about 2,000 people protested to support labor rights and immigrants, which Mesa sees as inherently intertwined. She also helped convince the Spokane City Council to pass a resolution affirming its support for Washington’s law that bars local governments from helping federal agents enforce immigration law. On top of that, LeS organizes legal support for immigrants at risk of being deported.
Mesa and her family are US citizens.
But this week, after his violent arrest by three federal immigration officers who did not present a warrant, Martin Diaz confirmed Mesa’s fears: immigration officers boasted to him they’d been surveilling Mesa’s home, Diaz said.
“My husband called me yesterday and asked me to give her a heads up that her name was mentioned several times while he was being detained by the ICE agents,” Kendall Diaz, Martin’s wife, told RANGE on April 30.
Kendall then reached out to Mesa to relay the information. LeS had been helping the Diazes seek legal services when Martin was arrested. The alleged surveillance started taking place in February, when Mesa first noticed cars driving slowly past her house on the street. That also coincides with the timing of ICE’s first attempt to arrest Martin, when an agent had pretended to crash a car into Kendall Diaz’s car, causing a scene that drew her and their roommate out of the house to interrogate them. Martin was not home.
Kendall Diaz told Mesa “that when he was in the vehicle, they mentioned my full name, Jennyfer Mesa, and that they were watching my house,” Mesa said. “They also provided my home address to him [which showed] that they're monitoring my house.”
She said the allegations prompted her to increase security at her home.
“We have a heightened awareness,” Mesa said. “We're installing cameras in our house. I gave a heads up to other activists. I have the privilege of being a US citizen, but I know that right now, that could be stripped away for any reason because we're seeing how they're targeting activists and union organizers.”
She pointed to news reports of Trump administration officials deporting people who are in the US legally, including citizens. National news reports also show that ICE has been targeting activists who are legal permanent residents, green card holders and visa holders.
ICE spokesperson David Yost declined to comment on this story.
Part of a trend
ICE agents have reportedly surveilled and detained many immigrants living in Spokane since Trump took office after stoking resentment among voters for immigrant communities. Some of these arrests have been violent.
Mesa frequently posts videos to Facebook of vehicles she suspects are surveilling Latine people and communities.
RANGE detailed Martin Diaz’s arrest on Friday, which took place as part of a broad and brutal campaign by federal agencies under Donald Trump to deport immigrants, many of whom are in the US legally and were not allowed due process as required by the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.
Since then, more details have emerged about the 2008 deportation order the Diazes have been trying to have removed by applying for his green card. The order was prompted by a 2007 incident in which Martin pleaded guilty to a third-degree assault charge and was sentenced two months in jail. In 2017, he was convicted of felony domestic violence for assaulting his father-in-law, according to reporting in The Spokesman. Both charges were filed in the Yakima area.
He was charged with assault after the most recent arrest because he allegedly elbowed one of the arresting agents in the face. Security video shows Diaz exiting his car on Tuesday morning last week and running for the safety of his backyard. Three agents — one in uniform, two in civilian clothes — gave chase and tackled him in his backyard, dragged him into the front yard and arrested him. At no point did any of the agents show a warrant.
Federal agents have also had their eyes on LeS headquarters on Monroe Street in North Spokane. As RANGE reported in March, the office received a series of threatening phone calls in February.
“They said, ‘ Hey, who are your funders?’” said Jorge Guerrero, a senior organizer for LeS, in a March interview. “‘How are you guys working? We’re gonna make sure you get audited. We’re gonna make sure that ICE agents show up.’ All ICE agents need is probable cause for something like a call.”
Later that week, an agent showed up at LeS’s doorstep wanting in. But LeS had by this time created an appointment-only policy and was keeping its doors locked; the agents were denied entry.
After agents were denied entry at LeS headquarters, Guerrero said things calmed down there, but ICE agents seemed to ramp up operations in the community.
This development seems to reflect a broader evolution in the Trump administration’s strategy to deport “millions” of immigrants. Initially, federal agents, including some deputized from agencies that don’t normally enforce immigration law, sometimes arrested more than 1,000 people a day.
Those numbers fell off, so the agencies started targeting people who are in the US legally — people whose addresses are recorded and who are easy to find.
In one March instance, agents with no warrant broke the windows of a truck driven by Jeison and Cesar Ruiz Rodriguez, Nicaraguan immigrants who were on their way to a court hearing. They dragged the men from the car, TASERed Jeison and hit Cesar in the head with the butt of a rifle, Jeison’s wife Kayla Somaribba told RANGE shortly after the arrest. They took them to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, a detention facility where immigrants are processed for deportation.
Mesa told RANGE at the May Day march last week that she gets calls every day reporting immigrant arrests often made under the authority of “administrative warrants,” rather than “judicial warrants.” According to the Immigration Law Center, the former is “a formal written document authorizing a law enforcement officer from a designated federal agency, such as an ICE agent from DHS, to make an arrest or a seizure. … Unlike a judicial warrant, an administrative warrant does not authorize a search. Therefore, an ICE agent who has only an administrative warrant may not conduct a search based on the warrant, though, in certain circumstances, the administrative warrant would authorize the agent to make a seizure or arrest.”
Mesa said people can refuse to be searched if the agents are only carrying an administrative warrant, whereas a search warrant signed by a judge compels them to consent to a search.
