Aggressive ICE stops in Chatham County raise fears among residents

The operation by federal immigration agents in Chatham County that resulted in the death of a Savannah school teacher this week was not a one-off. 

Since September, federal immigration agents have roamed the mile-long stretch of Whitefield Avenue between Montgomery Cross Road and Hesse K-8 School targeting drivers who appear to be Latino, according to three people who have been stopped in these operations — one American citizen and two Central American nationals working and residing legally in Chatham County.

These three people described the encounters as terrifying. Unmarked vehicles with flashing lights in their grille surrounded their cars and aggressively steered them to the side of the road. Once stopped, masked agents encircled them and demanded identification — without ever identifying themselves.

That’s what appears to have been underway on Monday, when a Guatemalan national in the county illegally, Oscar Vasquez-Lopez, fled immigration agents. He ran the red light at the intersection of Whitefield and Truman Parkway, crashing into Linda Davis’ car, according to Chatham County Police and the Department of Homeland Security. Davis, a teacher at Hesse, died of her injuries, something that DHS blamed on Vasquez-Lopez for using “dangerous tactics” against federal officers and committing the crime of “resisting arrest.” 

“Fleeing from and resisting federal law enforcement is not only a crime but extraordinarily dangerous and puts oneself, our officers and innocent civilians at risk. Now, an innocent bystander has lost their life,” said Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. 

The experience of the three people stopped by ICE in Chatham County suggests that federal agents’ own tactics have endangered the safety of their targets and anyone nearby, as well as potentially violated federal regulations. Immigration agents operating here also appear to have violated residents’ right against racial profiling and random and arbitrary stops. 

“I am an American citizen, but that didn’t matter. I’ve raised my kids in Savannah, but that didn’t matter. They detained me twice since October because I was driving while Hispanic,” said the U.S. citizen. 

All three people agreed to speak to The Current GA anonymously for fear of retribution from the federal government.

Roving patrols

DHS agencies have overlapping guidelines and procedures for enforcing U.S. immigration laws — some of which clash with local law enforcement policies and are being challenged by lawyers in other states. 

In Chatham County, the extent to which immigration agents have operated is largely undocumented and unknown, as federal officers operate without informing or communicating with local law enforcement agencies.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other DHS agencies have claimed authority to conduct operations as far as 100 miles from any U.S. border, which includes international land borders and the U.S. coastline. By that measure, most of Georgia’s southeastern counties fall into such a zone.

Under this authority, immigration and border control officers can pull over motorists in communities. Even so, according to guidelines published by the ACLU, these agents cannot stop vehicles to question occupants about their citizenship or immigration status without a “reasonable suspicion” of an immigration violation or crime.

“Reasonable suspicion is more than just a hunch. It requires officers to have specific facts showing why it is reasonable to believe you are in the country unlawfully or committed a violation of law,” according to the ACLU.

The three people who spoke to The Current were stopped by roving patrols of immigration agents on Whitefield Avenue on three different occasions. During each encounter, no one provided any reason for detaining them. And, the aggressive nature of the stops also made it virtually impossible to ignore or refuse the officers’ demands.  

The married couple originally from Central America said unmarked vehicles surrounded their car in early November while they were traveling on Whitefield. The couple are legal migrants, their vehicle had valid Georgia license plates and both have valid Georgia state IDs. That didn’t stop the roving patrol from targeting them, they said. 

With an armed agent at the driver’s door, it didn’t occur to the couple to disobey the order. After handing over their IDs, the couple prayed in their sedan for what felt like forever. There was no communication from the masked men standing around their car, nor from the man who finally returned their documents and told them they could leave.

Video evidence suggests that a similar roving patrol attempted to stop Vasquez-Lopez on Monday on the same stretch of road. 

The Guatemalan construction worker has lived and worked in Chatham County for years, despite his undocumented status, according to one of his friends. DHS said Vasquez-Lopez was subject to a 2024 federal deportation order. It’s unclear how or whether federal agents identified him as the subject of that judicial order before Vasquez-Lopez was arrested by Chatham County police after the crash killing Davis. 

Traffic stops

The DHS statement about the fatal crash also references alleged traffic violations by Vasquez-Lopez, part of the multiple charges, including vehicular homicide, that Chatham police have accused him of.

For all the broad powers that federal border and immigration officers have, they are not allowed to stop vehicles for traffic violations, according to Seth Kirschenbaum, a former federal prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney in Atlanta. 

Federal officers need reasonable cause beyond ethnicity to stop, detain or arrest someone, and that cause can’t be a broken tail light or speeding, he said.

However, the U.S. citizen and longtime resident of Savannah said her first encounter with immigration agents in Chatham County occurred on the pretext of a traffic stop. 

On a late September afternoon she was driving to buy groceries when a Georgia State Patrol car drove up behind her along the bridge spanning the tidal marsh on Whitefield Avenue. 

The patrol car flashed its lights, and she pulled over, thinking she must have been speeding. But, then she noticed three masked men getting out of a Black unmarked SUV parked directly behind the GSP vehicle. Those men surrounded her car, with one pounding on the driver side window demanding her driver’s license. “I was numb with shock, but I obeyed,” she said. “I mean, who could believe this was happening to them?” 

In the 40 minutes she waited, she wondered how she was going to tell her family what had happened, because it felt so unreal. She never saw who was driving the GSP vehicle. She was not given a traffic citation. The only communication she had was when the federal agent who returned her driver’s license told her she could leave. 

Georgia State Patrol did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

In January, the U.S. citizen was targeted again on Whitefield — only this time by a roving patrol of federal agents working without a local law enforcement partner. 

On this occasion, two unmarked SUVs surrounded her car, boxing her in from the front and rear. Together, they forcibly pushed her to the edge of the road. “I couldn’t accelerate, I couldn’t escape. They could have hit me and caused me to lose control,” she said.

Once stopped, she felt angry, rather than numb, like she had during the first encounter. The only reason ICE could be targeting her was because of her ethnicity, she thought, given that she was driving the same vehicle as during the first stop. 

“You are really going to do this to me again?” she told the officer who demanded her license. He didn’t reply. 

This time, he returned within 10 minutes, telling her she could leave.

Chase/pursuit

After Monday’s immigration operation, Chatham County and Savannah officials criticized federal agents’ decision to pursue Vasquez-Lopez when he did not comply with their attempt to stop him on Whitefield Avenue.

Federal regulations overseeing immigration enforcement officers allow for vehicle pursuit of suspects for those who have “successfully completed basic immigration law enforcement training.” The same policy also requires that federal vehicles have emergency lights and siren with audible and visual signals in order to warn others that emergency law enforcement activities are in progress.

Eyewitnesses at the scene of Monday’s crash say that vehicles used by federal agents did have emergency lights. An ICE spokesperson told The Associated Press that officers used sirens during their pursuit. Video evidence of the chase along Whitefield Avenue has no audio component to confirm that statement.

What remains unclear are the DHS rules of engagement for initiating a pursuit. 

Both Chatham County and Savannah police have strict policies regarding high-speed chases. Officers are instructed not to pursue suspects involved in misdemeanors, traffic violations, violations of local ordinances or non-violent felonies because the risk is too high. Chatham County Police Chief Jeff Hadley said in most instances there is “a better way, a safer way to apprehend folks without putting the community and our officers at risk.”

Federal officers would have the right to detain Vasquez-Lopez because of the federal order for his deportation, said Wendy Shoob, a senior Superior Court Judge in Fulton County and member of Georgia Lawyers for the Rule of Law. But law enforcement should weigh the consequences to the public before pursuing a nonviolent criminal, she said. 

One of the few instances that she believes a high-speed pursuit would be justified would be if police were “pursuing a person who is more of a danger to the public than a police chase of him,” someone like an active shooter.

A White House statement released Wednesday described Vasquez-Lopez as “the worst of the worst.” The 38-year-old Guatemalan had no criminal record in Chatham County before the fatal crash. Beyond violating the federal deportation order, the DHS statement accused Vasquez-Lopez of multiple traffic violations, but provided no other information about any other criminal record. Immigration offenses are civil violations, not criminal under federal statute.

The ACLU advises people not to flee a federal immigration checkpoint because such action would provide potential cause for federal officials to make an arrest. However, the Central American-born couple stopped by ICE in November say that guidance is considerably more difficult for people whose home country are rife with bands of masked gangs, some with ties to the government, who threatened people with impunity. “We wanted to feel safe. That’s why we came to America,” the husband said.

The Current’s Robin Kemp, Jabari Gibbs, and Christopher Sweat contributed to this report.