Smuggler Posed With Border Patrol Sign Is Deported

SAN DIEGO — A Mexican national who tried to fend off immigrant-smuggling charges by arguing that U.S. Border Patrol agents humiliated him during booking has been deported after quietly pleading guilty.

Lawyers for Jesus Ibarra Chavez, 23, sought to have the federal charges dropped by arguing that agents violated his rights by making him pose for a booking photograph holding a sign that read, “I Support Our Border Patrol.”

But after a federal judge in San Diego rejected the defense argument last month, Ibarra pleaded guilty to transporting more than a dozen illegal immigrants through rural Imperial County.

Ibarra was sentenced to time already served in Imperial County Jail after his Feb. 27 arrest and ordered out of the country. He was deported to his home in Mexicali on July 14 and needs permission from the U.S. government to reenter this country.

But one of his two lawyers says the issue raised by Ibarra remains.

“The way he was treated by the Border Patrol--that’s not mitigated by whether he was guilty or not of the crime,” Shaun Khojayan said Thursday.

Ibarra was arrested while driving a pickup truck carrying illegal immigrants near the farming community of Seeley.

He later said that, during booking, agents forced him to hold the sign, which resembled a bumper sticker, as he was photographed. Ibarra, who has limited understanding of English, said he resisted but gave in under orders from the arresting agent. That agent and a second one “said the picture was ‘beautiful,’ laughed at me, and I felt humiliated,” Ibarra said in a statement accompanying his motion.

A duplicate of the photograph was included as part of the case file. Ibarra’s defense lawyers charged that the incident amounted to “outrageous government conduct,” likening it to abuses suffered by blacks arrested in the 1950s and 1960s.

Federal auditors are investigating to determine who was responsible for taking the photograph.

“It’s something that shouldn’t happen. We don’t condone this type of activity,” said Manuel Figueroa, spokesman for the Border Patrol in El Centro.