In February, Huntington Park City Council held a closed room to discuss seemingly everyday items on the agenda.
Everyone on the council was allowed to attend the meeting. The 22-year-old, banned from discussing the closed door, later saw her pick up her things on camera to create a quiet exit.
When the council met again a week later, Castillo was no longer listed as a member. Instead, there were items to fill her seat.
As Castillo began to learn, the city quietly began an investigation, determining whether she was a city resident, concluded that she was not, and kicked her out of the council.
While local government residents requirements are common, experts say Huntington Park’s move to investigate one of its own councillors and then unilaterally remove them is virtually unprecedented.
“I’ve never heard of a city that does that, and there are usually people who complain to the district attorney from the other party,” said Steve Cooley, who oversaw 12 residential cases while he was a top prosecutor in Los Angeles County.
Two weeks ago, in response to a lawsuit filed by Castillo against the city, council and mayor, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order that would prevent Huntington Park from filling the vacant seats.
The removal from Castillo’s office has angered residents of the city. Amid the ongoing legal battle to regain her seat, current and former council members are caught up in a corruption investigation with the DA’s office over alleged misuse of public funds.
On February 26, DA investigators executed a search warrant as part of an investigation into alleged misuse of a taxpayer fund allocated to an unbuilt $24 million aquatic center. No one has been charged.
The search warrant was carried out at the homes of then Mayor Carina Macias, councillor Eduardo “Eddy” Martinez and mayor Ricardo Reyes. The search warrant was also carried out at the homes of two former councillors, a contractor and a consultant.
Overall, the confusion is exhausting Huntington Park residents.
“I feel sad, fraud, anger, helpless,” said 50-year-old Huntington Park resident Maria Hernandez, a longtime Huntington Park resident, attending a court hearing last week to support former councillors.
Castillo refused to be interviewed for the story, but her lawyer, Albert Robless, said his client cared for his sick parents while maintaining a full-time residence in Huntington Park. He said the removal of Castillo was politically motivated.
“Here, the defendant not only acted as a judge, ju judge and executioner, but they also conducted an investigation to further highlight the defendant’s unjust political grasp of his self-directed self-direction,” Castillo argued in her case.
The city notified Castillo via letters where she was investigated and excluded from the council as a non-resident, but did not allow her to attend the February 18 closed door meeting when the probe results were discussed, Robles said. He alleged it was retaliation against Castillo, who accused members of bullying and harassment in January of official complaints to the city.
But Andrew Salega, whom the city hired to oversee Castillo’s investigation, challenged those claims and said the investigation into Castillo began months before she filed her complaints.
He said a complaint was filed in August with the district attorney’s public consistency department.
According to an email obtained by the Times, the DA’s office refused to obtain the case, saying the matter was a citizen, not a crime. This brought the incident back to the lap of Huntington Park authorities. Huntington Park officials have seen city laws and say mayors and councillors will either leave the city or “quickly empty” their seats.
“I’m not saying you need to go to court. You don’t have to do X, Y, Z. That’s what the Black Letter law says,” Salega said. “So it’s based on the investigation and everything that was discovered to be considered vacant.”
Scott Cummings, a law professor at UCLA who teaches ethics, said the council’s actions may not have been best practices, but they appear legally sound.
“It was her actions that created the vacant seats, and the city council was not necessarily obligated to vote for anything because it was an automatic trigger,” he said. “But it all sums up as to whether it’s true or not, and it appears to have a complete, transparent investigation in place.”
Cooley has established the DA’s public integrity department to consider potential misconduct by civil servants, agreed to Cummings, saying local and state prosecutors should file these cases to combat the emergence of the conflict.
The city began investigating Castillo in November. Salega said after hearing multiple complaints the mayor claimed Castillo did not live in the city.
The investigation included monitoring at the Huntington Park apartment and Southgate’s parents’ home, court-approved GPS tracing and a search warrant. According to Salega, investigators also interviewed five witnesses, including Castillo.
He said investigators tracked Castillo’s vehicle for a month in January and discovered that she had only stayed once in an apartment in Huntington Park. Someone else lived there, but she also emailed her there, Salega said.
The Times visited the former councillor’s apartment for several days in February, and no one answered the door. Most neighbors in the area said they had never seen Castillo when they showed her photos.
Castillo’s attorney, Robles, challenged the city’s allegations.
In a declaration in support of the restraining order against the city, Castillo wrote that she moved to an apartment in Huntington Park near Saturn Avenue and Malabar Street after the homeowner was renting it for her family.
“Neighbor across the street,” she wrote.
She writes that her parents moved to Southgate, and their mother’s health had deteriorated and they began frequent visits to doctors and specialists. She said that includes an overnight stay.
Robles said she was never given a due process guaranteed under California law, regardless of which city his clients live in.
He worried that his decision against his client could set precedents for cities in the state that could act similarly when dealing with cases in which elected officials were accused of not living in their cities.
“If you don’t think other cities are trying to do that, you’re wrong,” he said.
