Farm Workers Say Bogus Officers Robbed Them : Theft: A victim reports the loss of $600 after being pulled over by men in a pickup truck; one had what looked like a badge.

A Mexican farm worker who told authorities that he was swindled out of $600 and his green card by two men posing as police officers on a Camarillo farm road said Thursday that the theft has temporarily cost him the chance to bring his wife and children to the United States.

Francisco Madrigal, a 38-year-old migrant worker from Michoacan, said the loss of his immigration papers and two weeks wages has forced him to cancel a trip to Mexico to reunite his family.

“I had planned to go to Mexico to get my wife and children, but without my documents I can’t go there and come back,” Madrigal said during an interview in the fields.

Madrigal, a migrant worker for the last 17 years, told Camarillo police that he and co-worker Jesus Elias, 42, both living in Oxnard, were robbed Tuesday about 4 p.m.

Police said two men in a large black pickup truck forced the farm workers’ car to pull over on Pleasant Valley Road, next to the strawberry fields where they had been working.

The driver had honked and waved what appeared to be a police badge at him, so he pulled over immediately, Madrigal said.

“I really thought they were police officers. After he took my wallet and my keys, and told me that I’d have trouble if I got out of the car, then I knew I was in trouble,” he added while surveying the farm scene around him.

The truck’s driver--whom Madrigal described as a white male between the ages of 30 and 40, wearing a black baseball cap and sunglasses--told the two farm workers in English that he was a police officer, Madrigal told police.

After inquiring whether they had any drugs in the car, he took their wallets and Madrigal’s car keys and ordered them to remain in their car. Madrigal said he had recently cashed his paycheck.

The second man, also a white male between 30 and 40, stayed in the truck, which Madrigal said was practically touching his car. Madrigal said the man appeared to be holding something in his lap and he assumed it was a gun. Once the farm workers turned over their wallets, the two men sped away.

Although they did not see the license plate on the pickup, they identified it as having a camper shell with a wooden door.

Marco Antonio Abarca, a staff attorney for the Migrant Farm Worker Project of California Rural Legal System, said the incident Tuesday is typical of the way criminals can easily swindle many migrant workers.

Because they are often poorly educated and usually do not speak English, migrant workers from Mexico are easy targets for such crimes, Abarca said.

“For a lot of criminals they’re practically walking targets. If they’re illegal, that’s even better, because then they’re that much more scared of the system.”

Mexicans often assume that police officers are brutal or disrespectful of ordinary citizens, Abarca said, so it is natural that Madrigal and Elias went along with the bogus policemen’s scheme.

“You’d expect this to happen in Mexico, but not here,” Madrigal said.