90-year-old Billings woman says search warrant was about racial profiling
Eva Sigsworth doesn’t have a problem with the search warrants authorities had when they knocked on her door at 5:30 a.m. on Sept. 17.
She just wishes they would have given a copy to her.
She doesn’t have a problem with the guns they found in some of her grandson’s belongings on her property — if they were used as part of criminal act, she wants them gone.
She just wishes that they wouldn’t have caused thousands of dollars of damage to her property, including tearing up a mobile home she rents to a tenant so badly as to make it uninhabitable.
And she’s gotten over the embarrassment that people with badges and guns stormed her house, refusing to even let her get dressed as she stood in her underwear and a nightgown.
But in a recent interview with the Daily Montanan, the 89-and-a-half-year old said she was insulted and wants answers as to why there were more than 40 officers ransacking her property when she needs a walker just to get around. And she can’t help but wonder why Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were interrogating her about whether she was illegal and connected with Mexican drug cartels.
Though her family was from Texas, she’s been in Billings since 1963, is an American citizen, a former VISTA coordinator, a volunteer at the local senior center, and the former owner of a popular Billings restaurant, Mamacita’s, known for its chili verde and hot sauce.
So far, a GoFundMe account has raised more than $11,000 to help put her home and two other structures on the property back together. A few days after the raid, nearly 100 Billings residents, many of whom remember Eva from her days feeding them, showed up to help repair the damage that had been done. Three contractors also arrived to rehang doors, put up a trailer skirt and do other things, like put a barn full of property back in place because Eva could not.
She knows her grandson, identified in court documents as John Paul Schmieding, faces serious drug charges, including possessing stolen guns. Eva said she’s always supported law enforcement, but questions why it is legal for authorities to do thousands of dollars in damage to property when Schmieding has never lived there. Moreover, she wants to know if she was profiled because of her brown skin color, and because an ICE agent wanted to know if she spoke Spanish. To her, that didn’t seem like a drug raid or a search for stolen guns. It seemed like an excuse.
Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder said his office has taken some heat from public outrage sparked by the raid. He points out that some guns that had been reported stolen were recovered on her property. However, he also said his office wasn’t the lead agency responsible, instead that the U.S. Department of Justice and its multi-jurisdictional task force, which includes uniformed deputies from his department, is responsible. He explained that while the Sheriff’s Office contributes officers to the efforts, they operate under a federal command. Officers from other area law enforcement also make up part of the force.
Calls and questions to U.S. Department of Justice went unreturned on Wednesday and Thursday. While the website urges members of the media to fill out an information request, that form was not available, likely due to the federal government shutdown.
“Democrats have shut down the government. Department of Justice websites are not currently regularly updated. Please refer to the Department of Justice’s contingency plan for more information,” the website said.
Eva said she was rattled awake by what sounded to her like a cannon or explosion. Then she and her son, Arthur Alvarado, who lives with her, heard the loudspeaker: “Come out with your hands up.”
“I asked if they had a warrant. They said they did. I asked to see it, and they told me they couldn’t show it to me,” Eva said. “I said, ‘I’m 90 years old, what do you want me for?’”
She said she was left in a nightgown, without clothes and unable to use the bathroom. When she was finally interviewed, she was asked by an ICE officer about her nationality. She told them American, and so was everyone else on the property. She later learned it was a warrant for property her grandson, who occasionally visits and has personal items there, had. But originally, she thought it was an immigration raid because of their questions and the color of her skin.
“They asked me if I speak Spanish,” she said. “I told them I did, and then they tried to get me to sign forms that spelled out my Miranda rights. I said: Why would I need to do that?”
Eva said agents then accused of her of being part of a Mexican drug cartel.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I am a 90-year-old grandma kingpin,” she said, pointing to her walker that has foam balls on the legs of it for traction. “I told them, ‘I am not going to sign anything because you guys know how to turn it around. I will talk with legal counsel.’”
They also asked her son, Arthur Alvarado, if he was in gang.
“He told them that he had been in a gang for four years a long time ago,” Eva said. “When they asked which one, he said, ‘The U.S. Marine Corps.’”
The officers, which she said numbered 40, told her to leave. She went to a friend’s house, stunned and confused. She was told when the raid and search were finished, someone would call to tell them they could come back. She said she waited for hours, then went back home. The property was torn apart, the doors were open and no one was there. Her tenant who rents a mobile home was shaken and doors were off the hinges and property was strewn around. A search warrant had been left on the table.
She went to the back, near her sunflowers where she watches birds and takes her dogs, two well-fed Chihuahua-Weiner dog mixes. Property was everywhere — a lifetime of collecting items.
“The more I looked around, the more devastated I felt. They didn’t have to dump things like that. They didn’t have to wreck antiques,” Eva said.
But as devastated as she was, her spirits turned around a few days later as neighbors, family and friends arrived — an estimated 100 people — to help clean, repair and put things back. And Eva did what she knows best: She fired up the barbecue and made hamburgers for the community.
“I thought that people had forgotten about my existence,” she said. “Then all of a sudden, there were all these people caring about me and coming to help me. I’m so grateful that they took care of me and that we take care of each other.”
For now, the tears come and go as she begins to wonder about a community she regards as home. She loves Billings because it has always pushed back hard against racial stereotyping.
“I’m a strong person and I have gone through a lot — and survived,” she said. “I feel like I won’t let this break me. I feel frustrated because I can’t get this out of my mind, the way they treated me and they traumatized my tenant. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything. It’s changed the way I view law enforcement, I guess. To think that they believed I was involved with the cartels. It hurts.”
She says it was the community support that has given her hope when she gets to thinking too much about the raid. Still, no matter what agency was in charge of the operation, she believes things could have been different — and should have been different.
“I watch what is happening all over the country and what Trump is doing. The man is always going on about this and that — and he lies and even his lies are proven wrong,” she said. “Granted there are a lot of illegal immigrants to round up, and there are a lot of people who support what he’s doing — even if they’re guilty or not. There are a lot of my friends who tell me they’re so glad that hasn’t come to Montana. Well, I am here to tell you: It is here.”
