Bogus traffic stop saves local couple from deportation
In early 2016, a couple was driving to work when they got pulled over by a police officer. The driver, Zenon Natividad Cruz, didn’t know what he did wrong but intended to follow orders obediently as he and his wife had come to the US illegally 20 years earlier, reports The Dispatch.
After the couple presented their international and Mexican IDs (sans a driver’s license), the officer let them on their way.
Soon after the couple arrived to their workplace at the German Village McDonald’s, the “police officer” who was really a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent (ICE) showed up and arrested Natividad Cruz.
Jessica Rodriguez Bell, an immigration attorney, took on the case and was prepared to challenge the unjustified traffic stop.
The Dispatch reports ICE claimed Natividad Cruz’s previous DUI conviction was enough to pull him over. That, plus he matched Homeland Security’s discription of a “criminal alien.”
Rodriguez Bell fired back, saying the traffic stop was based purely on Natividad Cruz’s ethnicity and was therefore unlawful.
Before the hearing could even take place, feds decided to drop the case.
Natividad Cruz and his wife have since quit their jobs at the German Village McDonald’s and are laying low.
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