Two staff members from an Ontario surgery center have been charged with allegedly interfering with U.S. immigration officers trying to detain landscapers who ran into the center to escape.
Jose de Jesus Ortega, a 38-year-old Highland resident, was arrested Friday morning and is expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Riverside, according to a U.S. attorney’s office Central District of California news release.
Officials are still looking for the other suspect, Danielle Nadine Davila, 33, of Corona. Both are charged with assaulting a federal officer and conspiracy to prevent by force and intimidation a federal officer from discharging his duties, authorities said.
According to video obtained by KTLA-TV, staffers at the Ontario Advanced Surgical Center earlier this month told two agents to leave because they didn’t have a warrant to go onto the property. The agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement were trying to detain 30-year-old Denis Guillen-Solis and two other landscapers who had been working outside and ran into the surgical center when the agents showed up.
In the video, Guillen-Solis is shown holding onto the doorway at the surgical center and asking the agents to present identification. The agents then pulled Guillen-Solis from the doorway and detained him.
“The illegal alien arrested inside the surgery center was not a patient. He ran inside for cover and these defendants attempted to block his apprehension by assaulting our agents,” said U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli in a statement.
According to an affidavit, the two ICE agents wore government-issued equipment, including vests and were using unmarked government-operated vehicles when they conducted their operations.
The agents followed a truck with three men inside and approached them after the men exited the truck in the parking lot of the surgery center, according to the release. Two of the men ran away and one of them, an alleged undocumented immigrant from Honduras, was detained near the surgery center’s front entrance and tried to pull away, causing the ICE officer to fall to the ground.
A medical staffer helped the man off the ground and pulled him away from the officer, according to the news release. The man went into the surgery center and was chased by the ICE agent, who eventually stopped him.
The incident occurred amid an extraordinary immigration enforcement effort by the Trump administration in Southern California. Thousands of unauthorized immigrants — many without a criminal record — have been detained at work, in courthouses and on public streets going about their day.
