Beaten Immigrants Were Desperate For Work ‘Friends Told Them There Was Work In The Strawberry Fields’

The journey born of hope and desperation ended in terror - at least 19 immigrants crammed into a pickup, its camper shell disintegrating in a high-speed flight from the law.

When the truck finally came to a stop, Alycia Sotero Vasquez was still too frightened to flee the baton-wielding deputies.

“Everyone was screaming, ‘Run! Run!’ But I didn’t. I said to officers, ‘I’m here.’ … I didn’t do anything wrong. I merely came here to work,” she said later from a hospital bed.

Because she didn’t run, Sotero has become a focus in a debate over illegal immigrants and what police can do to stop them.

Sotero has said she came north from Xochiaca, a Mexico City suburb, after the clothing factory where she worked closed down.

“The desperation drove her to leave for the United States,” her mother, Genoveva Vazquez, said in an interview in Mexico City.

Many of the people on the truck were farm workers who are uncomfortable with all the media attention, said Bobbi Murray, spokeswoman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, which is representing 17 of the 19 immigrants.

“Friends told them there was work in the strawberry fields,” Murray said.

Two sheriff’s deputies were placed on paid leave after a videotape captured them beating Sotero and companion Enrique Funes following the 80-mile chase.

Rather than flee with the others, Funes, identified as Sotero’s common-law husband, jumped from the back of the truck and helped her and another person out of the cab after the truck rolled to a stop.

An attorney has prepared a $10 million claim against Riverside County on his behalf. The lawyer, Peter Schey, also is seeking $10,000 for Santiago Garcia Pedroza, who allegedly was roughed up.

“I don’t know why they treated our friends like that. We didn’t do any crime. I came to work. I didn’t come to be a criminal,” said Eduardo Roman Garcia, one of the 19 immigrants captured after the chase. The driver of the truck apparently got away, police have said.

Funes, also from Xochiaca, was unemployed and looking for work, his relatives have said.

Life was equally harsh for Eduardo Roman Garcia, a 29-year-old father of two from Veracruz. The auto body shop where he worked closed, so he left for the United States to find similar work.

Just south of the border, he met a man who offered to take him and several others to Los Angeles for $400 apiece if they could get across the border on their own. It took them two days, traveling day and night when not hiding from the Border Patrol, to reach the rendezvous near San Diego, said Murray.

When the pursuit began, Roman Garcia feared the pickup would overturn. Speeds reached 100 mph and the camper shell that had concealed the immigrants began to peel away under the force of the air.

“We were panicking,” Roman Garcia said during a Thursday news conference.

But Roman Garcia says he’s optimistic now. He and the others will be allowed to stay in the United States at least six months to assist in the investigations into the chase and beatings.