INS Screwup

[CalHunter]

This was pretty interesting and a great idea for a resolution to the lawsuit!

Sheriff Supremacy by
Richard I. Mack Director of Public Affairs
Gun Owners of America On June 2, 1993, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) federal agents along with two Big Horn County, Wyoming deputies raided the home of Ramon and Elvia Castaneda.
The deputies were there only to assist INS agents and basically got caught in the "crossfire" of federal in competency and arrogance. The Castaneda v USA case does something for all Americans that has never been done before; it answers the question; who is the ultimate law enforcement authority in this country?
Big Horn County and its officers were sued in this case because they trusted INS agents to be acting within proper parameters of the law. However, INS agents failed to do their homework and did not even have a warrant.
So the INS asked for assistance from the Big Horn County Sheriff's office to raid the home (late at night) of the Castaneda family to capture some illegal aliens. The Sheriff's office cooperated with the INS and in doing so got them in trouble. However, there was one other problem with the federal agents' homework. The Castanedas were American citizens.....

http://www.gunowners.org/op0021.htm

[elgallo114]

I'm sure they had it comming for somthing.

[CalHunter]

Here's a little more of the story. I didn't want to post the whole story so as not to clog things up. Eseentially, the feds didn't have a warrant, claimed they knocked late at night with no answer (like maybe people were sleeping) and then entered the house anyway. I have yet to see any reason as to why they believed they had a legal right to enter these people's house late at night without a search warrant. This is a very unique court settlement in that the feds now have to check with the local Sheriff's Office before doing anything in Big Horn County. This means the Sheriff's Office will review whatever the feds plan on doing in his county BEFORE the feds go out and do it.

A minor dispute still remains unsettled as to how the armed officers entered the Castaneda home. The Castanedas claimed the agents simply barged in without knocking or appropriately announcing their intentions. The government claims their courteous announcements and knocks were ignored so they entered the home anyway. Regardless, the Castanedas claimed to be asleep at the time of the raid, which would seem to be reasonable thing to be doing late at night.


The Castanedas filed a lawsuit with a host of defendants including Big Horn County and Federal officials. The case was cut and dry. The feds were wrong and their actions were untenable, The Castanedas could have sat back and waited greedily for their attorneys to fill in the amount of their checks, but they wanted to do something else. As part of the settlement the Castanedas wanted some insurance that this type of governmental abuse would not recur or ever happen to others.


To their everlasting credit, the Castanedas took a rather nominal amount of cash in exchange for a policy, which seemed to them, the best "check and balance" systems that would essentially stop the federal government from anymore potential abuses.


Amazingly and quite simply, the Castanedas demanded, as part of their federal lawsuit settlement, that the Big Horn County Sheriff's office devise a policy that required all federal agencies to check with the Sheriff before they could take any action in Big Horn County.


Coincidentally, this policy fell on the lap of Sheriff Dave Mattis who was not even Sheriff at the time of the raid. However, Sheriff Mattis agreed with the policy and helped develop this most novel and unique agreement that the lawyers of the United States Justice Department also signed. However, the Justice Department took steps to keep this agreement secret and undisclosed. Imagine a small town sheriff in a county of only 12,000 people being the overseer of federal agencies within his county!