Woman questions feds being inside Italian restaurant

McALLEN — Ellen Salas said her family just wanted to enjoy a late Italian dinner.

They never thought federal agents would end up staring them down.

About 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, McAllen police officers accompanied U.S. Drug Enforcement Agents and investigators from other federal agencies into The Olive Garden on Expressway 83.

Will Glasby, who heads the DEA’s McAllen office, would not say who his agents were pursuing — only that they did not find the right person.

“The person that we were looking for, that we thought might be there, was not,” he said.

But Salas said she and her eight relatives, who all live in Pharr, felt as though they were the suspects.

She and her relatives had arrived and were seated at the restaurant before it closed at 10 p.m.

Plain-clothes agents and uniformed police officers awkwardly stared at her family as they waited for their food at the restaurant, Salas said.

When one of Salas’ cousins approached the agents to see if there was a problem, they said little in response, she said.

“They never questioned us; they never said nothing,” Salas said. “They wouldn’t tell us what the purpose of the whole thing was.

“It’s just really weird the way things went on.”

After that, Salas said agents asked her and some of her relatives for their identification.

“They said, ‘We don’t need to give you any information,’” she said. “I have no idea what the problem was to begin with.”

Glasby said his agents were “simply trying to find somebody.”

“(The agents) did not have guns drawn; there was no enforcement action,” he said. “They simply walked into a restaurant.

“I guess (the family) does not like law enforcement.”