Photo by Roy Luck/Flickr
Audio By Carbonatix
Last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers arrested a U.S. Coast Guard veteran in a case of mistaken identity on a Miami cruise ship.
On the final day of an eight-day cruise aboard the Carnival Horizon, federal authorities abruptly awoke Arizona couple Jose Martinez and Tamara Verhas at about 6 a.m. on January 5 to arrest Martinez, he told multiple news outlets. In an emailed statement to New Times, a CBP spokesman confirmed the arrest and subsequent release of Martinez, saying the organization was after someone from Los Angeles with “dangerous drug charges.”
“If it is just based off of my name, what other due diligence did they do?” Martinez asked Arizona radio station KTAR. “What other information did they use to justify the means of going into the room and pulling me out the way they did?”
According to the CBP spokesman, “On January 5, CBP Office of Field Operations officers at Miami Seaport boarded the cruise ship CCL Horizon to process a passenger flagged for a possible NCIC warrant for dangerous drug charges out of Los Angeles. Secondary inspection did not confirm the warrant, and the passenger was released without incident.”
Martinez’s recollection of events, however, was not so tame.
“We heard banging at the door, woken out of our sleep, and next thing we know three men with flashlights in their eyes were entering the room, yelling my name and ordering me out of bed and up against the wall,” he told KTAR. “It was just chaos.”
In an interview with USA Today, Verhas echoed Martinez’s version of the arrest.
“Three giant men wearing black, armed, [were] pointing flashlights at us, shouting. A female agent came in [and] jumped on top of me in the bed to try and snatch my phone, which she did eventually snatch. And then they disappeared with Joey and my phone for 90 minutes.”
In an interview with Phoenix radio station KJZZ, she added, “He has no record. He’s never been arrested. He’s a veteran. He has been FBI cleared. I mean, you know, He’s the average Joe. I figured he would come back, but the trauma that was going to happen in those 90 minutes was what I was concerned about.”
According to CBP, Martinez was detained for less than an hour.
The ship had just returned to port in Miami after sailing around the Dominican Republic and the Antilles archipelago, a trip Martinez took to celebrate his 50th birthday. Verhas recalled the incident in an interview with USA Today.
