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Advocates come to aid of immigrants taken by Richmond pay phone

Date published: 10/23/2002

RICHMOND (AP) - Advocates are seeking attorneys for two immigrant laborers who were briefly detained Monday by police seeking the Washington, D.C., area sniper, then turned over to immigration officials for deportation proceedings.

Edgar Rivera Garcma had stopped to use a pay phone outside a gas station when police stormed his vehicle.

"I was about to hang up when they approached the van from the passenger side. They banged on the glass and told me to 'Hang up! Get out!' I don't really know what they were saying," he said Tuesday, speaking in Spanish on a telephone from York, Pa., where immigration officials are holding him.

Garcma, a 24-year-old Mexican immigrant who works as a carpenter, had stopped at a pay phone to call his boss. It was rainy and Garcma needed to know if he should work.

"I never imagined the police were going to detain me," he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

At about the same time Monday, at a station across West Broad Street, police also picked up Guatamalan Josi Morales, a 35-year-old construction worker who had been in Richmond for eight months.

The rain also had kept him from working and he had stopped at a pay phone to call his wife, Lena Hernandez, who lives in Guatemala with their children.

Police took both men into custody and questioned them for more than six hours, suspecting they might be connected with the sniper stalking Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

Police believe the sniper or someone connected to him had used the pay phone Garcma had used, the Times-Dispatch has reported.

The paper also reported Wednesday that police confiscated two weeks of surveillance video tapes from the Exxon station where Garcma had stopped to use the phone.

Neither police or the station owner, Michael Lehman, could confirm the report Tuesday. A clerk at the station who declined to give his name told The Associated Press the tapes had been taken. He said the tapes recorded activities within the station.

While Garcma and Morales were cleared of any suspected sniper involvement, they were handed over to immigration authorities for possible deportation because they could not show they are in the United States legally.

Hispanic leaders and friends of the men have contacted lawyers to help fight deportation and look into possible human rights violations.

Hector M. Moreno, vice chairman of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Central Virginia, is raising money to pay Garcma's lawyer. "This family is another victim of the sniper. They haven't been hit by a bullet, but it is like if they have," Moreno said.

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Date published: 10/23/2002