"Tell them what they've won, Bob...!"
Posted on 11/19/2005 6:05:19 AM PST by Borax Queen
Tensions are rising in a neighborhood where border crossers who gather on a street corner south of Downtown to be hired for the day mix with dope dealers, alcoholics and thieves.
Neighbors - including Southside Presbyterian Church, home base of the No More Deaths border activists - have complained to police about the day laborers.
Those complaints culminated in the arrest of 20 illegal border crossers by U.S. Border Patrol agents at South Ninth Avenue and East 23rd Street on Monday. Such operations by the Border Patrol are rare in the area.
This South Side neighborhood is a popular pickup spot for employers who want cheap manual labor. Carlos Cervantes, who crossed illegally from Empalme, Sonora, six months ago, says the street corner was his first destination when he arrived.
He earns $8 an hour working for landscaping companies that pick up workers every morning starting at 5:30 a.m.
Cervantes says he doesn't deal in drugs, doesn't urinate on the street corner - he just wants a job.
"Why is wanting to work a crime?" he asked, standing on the corner, his hands bunched in his pockets in the cold morning air.
Cornelio Lopez has lived at the corner of Ninth Avenue and 23rd Street for 13 years.
He paused from pitchforking a pile of mesquite branches off his driveway to watch a group of six day laborers run up to an approaching car. The car slowed when they neared, then drove away. The men returned to the street corner.
"The ones that come at 6 and leave at 7 aren't a problem. It's the ones that stay later, whistling at women, leaving garbage, sleeping in the alleys. They're a nuisance," Lopez said.
Tucson police received several calls last month about the day laborers and vagrants, said Capt. Tom McNally. In turn, police alerted the Border Patrol to an illegal-migrant problem.
McNally said police decided to call the Border Patrol for help because the people who complained, including church officials, told them the problems were caused by illegal border crossers.
"It always seems that for political reasons, we always back away from that. In this particular instance, we had to do something,"' McNally said.
But the call from police is being criticized.
Tucson police will not stop and interview someone based only on a suspicion that the person is here illegally, said Sgt. Mark Robinson.
But Tucson-based Derechos Humanos argues that by calling the Border Patrol to alert them to the day laborers, police did exactly that.
"This could happen to anybody. Does that mean that anybody can make an assessment that you're undocumented and the police are going to act on it?" said Derechos Humanos organizer Kat Rodriguez.
Part of the problem is simply identifying who's who. Rod- riguez said a day labor center would at least keep prospective workers separate from the vagrants.
"You don't know which one is looking for work and which one is going to cause problems," said Al Sarmiento, who runs a shower program for the homeless at Southside Presbyterian.
The courtyard of the church was crowded with homeless, some to use the showers, others sipping coffee and eating honeydew melon. In the parking lot, still more mixed with illegal border crossers, some of whom were looking for work.
To ease tensions in the community, the church has been working with day labor center organizers in Phoenix to open a center on its property. But that project, which was supposed to break ground in October, is now scheduled to open in January and may not open at all.
Sarmiento said he was angry, and that "Sometimes I have second thoughts about opening the center."
Thursday, someone stole boxes of food that Samaritan Patrol volunteers had left at the church after returning from distributing boxes to illegal border crossers in the desert, Sarmiento said.
Illegal border crossers have even used the church's flat roof as a camping spot, he said.
"We have people looking for jobs but we also have people that are drinking and dealing drugs around here," Sarmiento said.
On Monday, the Border Patrol used plainclothes agents to pick up the day laborers, said Jose Garza, a spokesman for the agency's Tucson Sector.
Twenty people were picked up, he said. Three Tucson police officers backed up the federal agents.
Jesus Alvarado Flores says he was among those picked up but was released after he showed his border crossing card to the agents.
Flores gave this account:
At about 6 a.m., a pair of agents pulled up in an un-marked truck pretending to look for workers. Five men took their offer for work, Flores among them. They were deposited in a parking lot and detained by a uniformed agent. A second truck brought five more men, then two loads more for a total of 20 men.
"They pushed us to the ground and had their guns drawn," said Flores, who feels the agency overreacted to what was essentially just illegal border crossers.
The Mexican Consulate in Tucson received complaints that the apprehension was a "setup," said spokesman Oscar Angulo. "But we are not sure about that."
Garza refused requests for details about how the arrest was handled.
Another headline in the Tucson newspaper; another drop in the bucket, but at least the citizens were listened to this time.
I got rights!
"Tell them what they've won, Bob...!"
It's not. Invading another country is.
lol!
For someone who crossed the border illegally, just being here is a crime whether they "want to work" or not.
Somehow I just knew this didn't happen in Springdale. The neighbors would probably be charged with a hate crime.
Ha!
"Tensions are rising in a neighborhood where border crossers who gather on a street corner south of Downtown to be hired for the day mix with dope dealers, alcoholics and thieves.
Neighbors - including Southside Presbyterian Church, home base of the No More Deaths border activists - have complained to police about the day laborers."
-- we can't have these day laborers disturbing the dope dealers, now can we?
Enough of this blather. Get all of them out of our country before we are faced with the French syndrome. There is a legal way to enter the United States, as thousands have. If they choose to sneak in the back door we owe them nothing but a free ride home.
Heck, they are willing to pay coyotes to get in. Let's give them a choice. Either pay for you ride home or spend some time in a prison.
What goes around comes around you Southside loserterians!
WOW! I can't believe the paper had the balls to use the transparent euphimism "Entrants".
Entrants????? Jerks!!!
Check this out......"our border feels more dangerous than visiting Iraq" Congressman Culberson
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47401
Pretty obvious -- Southside Presbyterian is part of the PCUSA... the apostate church.
Everytime I see a Presbyterian church listed in something like this, I cringe. Being in a PCA church (Bible believing, conservative, evangelical) I have to make sure there's no confusion as to WHICH denomination (PCUSA) has the problems.
Neal
Arrest the church leaders for harboring criminals. Audit every landscape company in the area, arrest and fine the owners for tax fraud and felony counts.
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