Free Republic

At a ramshackle homeless shelter in Reynosa, Mexico, on the south bank of the Rio Grande, a group of men stand in the suffocating heat all day. From behind a low cement wall, they stare across at the country where, until recently, they lived, worked and raised families. ... Manuel Cantero is among the men at the shelter. He's a 54-year-old laborer originally from Nuevo Laredo. For the past 29 years, he lived quietly in Miami, worked odd jobs, married and had three kids. "But work began to get scarcer; my wife got into drugs. They deported me. I lost...

....The two men are normally part of the vast corps of immigrant day laborers who gather by the thousands on street corners and curbs across Los Angeles every morning..... As members of Teatro Jornaleros Sin Fronteras – Day Laborer Theater Without Borders – they are part of a Spanish-language theater troupe of day laborers who perform for their fellow workers ..... "In our culture, some guys have never seen a play," said Juan José Mangandi, a Salvadoran laborer who serves as the troupe's director. In the final skit, a group of day laborers were shown hanging around a job site...

Overhill Farms, a major food-processing plant in the L.A. area, terminates more than 200 employees after an IRS audit finds that they had provided 'invalid or fraudulent' Social Security numbers. No immigration agents descended on Overhill Farms, a major food-processing plant in Vernon. No one was arrested or deported. There were no frantic scenes of desperate workers fleeing la migra through the gritty streets of the industrial suburb southeast of downtown Los Angeles. For more than 200 Overhill workers, however, the effect was devastating: All lost steady jobs last month and now find themselves in a precarious employment market, without...

Maureen Ebel, 60, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, thought she had $7.3 million invested with the New York financier when he was arrested last month and charged with running a massive hedge fun scam, possibly the largest financial fraud in history. But after Mr Madoff's alleged confession that the scheme was "all just one big lie", a revelation that shook the investment world, Mrs Ebel realised she had nothing. She went from an annual income from her investments of 400,000 dollars to worrying about how to pay her next bill and picking up coins in the street. In less than a...

It is a little slice of Long Beach, Calif., brought here by a former gang member by way of a federal prison, an immigration jail and then expulsion four years ago from his homeland, the United States, to the homeland of his parents, Cambodia. The former gang member is Tuy Sobil, 30, who goes by the street name K.K. The boys are Cambodian street children he has taken under his wing as he teaches them the art he brought with him, break dancing, as well as his hard lessons in life. K.K. is not here because he wants to be....

For months, CBS News has been following the deepening troubles of tiny Postville, Iowa, population 2,200. Now the shutdown of the town's main employer following a federal immigration raid has Postville at the point of desperation... Postville, Iowa was just decorated with holiday cheer. But looks can be deceiving. "In the last few weeks - it's really gone downhill dramatically," says Mayor Bob Penrod. With empty streets - and shuttered shops - this small town is facing economic calamity. Penrod is taking steps this weekend to declare a state of emergency here - but not a natural disaster - rather...

A man living in the U.S. since he was 10 worked under the impression he was a U.S. citizen. He was arrested and found out he was actually living in this country illegally. He was deported. Four other undocumented families could also be deported, even though their children are U.S. citizens. These parents are pleading to federal officials to let them remain in this country. Unfortunately for Brian Cadena, there is no hope. Even though he was only 10 years old when he illegally crossed the border with his mom, there is no law that protects him from deportation. And...

ROSWELL, Ga. — Like all illegal immigrants, Lorenzo Jimenez knew the knock on the door from immigration agents could come at any time. Still, he had enough faith in the American dream to buy a house in this Atlanta suburb, even though signing the papers meant raising the risk: He put his 2-year-old, American-born daughter's name and Social Security number on the title. And it worked, for a while. Jimenez and his family lived happily enough for several years alongside "regular" citizens. Nicole Griffin's mom lived a few doors away, and when Griffin visited, she said, her kids played with...

BREAKING — About two years ago, Mexico native Carlos Perez left his job at a factory in Dayton, Tenn., to start Perez Produce, a distributing company for local Hispanic restaurants and stores. Now, Mr. Perez said he regrets leaving a stable job at the La-Z-Boy factory because the produce business is not going well and he is on the verge of closing. “When I first started with the business two years ago it was going well, but starting about three months ago it started going down, down,” he said in Spanish. “If the situation continues to get worse, I think...

In their East Lake home, Marcos Tomás and his wife, Lidia Velázquez, recently packed 10 years of their lives into cardboard boxes, preparing for their long journey back to their native Guatemala. “My dream was for my children to study and be raised here, but the current economic situation has stolen the dream I had for my children,” Mr. Tomás said, standing in an almost empty house with a few portraits of the family on the wall and a framed painting of the words “Home Sweet Home.” The economic slowdown, high unemployment rates and tighter immigration laws are pushing local...

Jose Luis Hernandez rose from vegetable chopper to sous chef at an exclusive New York restaurant -- and saved $100,000 along the way. Recently, the illegal immigrant from Mexico contacted real-estate agents in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he currently rents an apartment. "I wanted to use my money as a down payment on a house," says Mr. Hernandez, 32 years old. In doing so, he sought to join thousands of undocumented workers who in recent years have purchased homes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, instead of a Social Security number. The Internal Revenue Service doesn't give Social Security...

–Luis Martínez went from being a successful Dallas businessman to a struggling alfalfa farmer in rural central Mexico because of a North Texas crackdown on illegal immigrants. "You make $10 an hour over there and $10 a day here in Mexico," said Mr. Martínez, who added that in addition to his recycling business he has Dallas property and pays U.S. taxes. Of the 500,000 Hispanics who have lost their jobs since January 2007, he estimates 60,000 are illegal immigrants from Mexico. Some have been forced to take jobs that pay much less..... Meanwhile, U.S. authorities are deporting Mexican immigrants at...

DEMACÚ, Mexico – Luis Martínez went from being a successful Dallas businessman to a struggling alfalfa farmer in rural central Mexico because of a North Texas crackdown on illegal immigrants. Now, that crackdown is squeezing towns across Mexico as immigrant unemployment grows in the U.S. and money sent home declines at a record rate.

Despite concerns from business groups and immigrant advocates about a government Web-based employment verification program, a growing number of local companies are using it. Since the voluntary program E-Verify was offered to employers in 2004, almost 4,000 Georgia companies and more than 800 businesses in Tennessee have signed up to participate in the federal program, including 50 employers in Chattanooga and 96 in Dalton, Ga. The E-Verify program is a voluntary, Internet-based program established to allow employers to verify workers’ employment eligibility electronically with the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. “We have been using E-Verify without...

PHOENIX (Reuters) - U.S. immigration agents have arrested 595 people at a Mississippi factory in what was the largest workplace enforcement raid in the United States to date, an immigration official said on Tuesday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said federal agents arrested the workers in a raid at the Howard Industries Inc. factory in Laurel, Miss, on Monday, "This is the largest targeted workplace enforcement operation we have carried out in the United States to date," Gonzalez told Reuters by telephone. The swoop at the plant, which makes electrical equipment including transformers, was part of an ongoing...

TIJUANA, Mexico - The towering black gate opens silently to an alley with walls of corrugated metal. Scrawled in large white letters on one wall is: "The End." For those deported from the United States, the words are an unnecessary reminder. Nearly every hour of the day, guards unlock this gate that leads back into Mexico, clicking open the padlocks hung on each side, in each nation.

When Felicita Bautista prepared her husband’s coffee and kissed him goodbye on the morning of April 16, she thought she’d hear from him at lunchtime when he usually called. Instead, the phone rang at 8 a.m. Ms. Bautista’s husband, José Ramírez, told her immigration agents had raided the Pilgrim’s Pride chicken processing plant in downtown Chattanooga and that he had been arrested. “At first I didn’t believe him, I thought it was a joke, but he assured me it was true,” the 28-year-old Guatemala native said. Ms. Bautista’s husband, who had been in the United States illegally for five years...

At 7 months old, Kemberly Méndez doesn’t roll over or sit in a propped-up position. Her right thumb is flexed downward; her index finger is a nubbin and the rest of her right-hand fingers are webbed. Her short life has consisted of physical therapy sessions and visits to specialists who are treating her for Poland syndrome, a pattern of one-sided body malformations, usually on the right side, that are present at birth. But all the care Kemberly, a U.S. citizen, is receiving at Erlanger hospital and at the Shriners Hospital in Lexington, Ky., is in limbo because her mother is...

When Hilma Díaz was handcuffed one April morning at Pilgrim’s Pride, she had one thought. “When I realized we were being arrested, the first thing I could think of was my son,” Ms. Díaz said later, holding her son Raymond in her arms. “As a mother you worry about them. Who’s going to take care of them?” Ms. Díaz and her husband, César Mazariegos, were released the afternoon after their arrests wearing monitoring ankle bracelets so they could care for their now-9-month-old son, who is an American citizen. The couple will leave the United States voluntarily in October, about seven...

Joann Gardner sat forlornly on her living room floor, waiting for the final step in her home's foreclosure process. The lender's representative was due any moment to give her "cash for keys," a transaction in which she would deliver her family home vacant in exchange for an incentive payment. "I'm glad it's done," Gardner said wearily. "I just want to sit down and have some Hennessy." Only days earlier, the house had been jammed with boxes and bags holding the worldly goods her family had accumulated during 54 years in the cramped Oakland bungalow. Now it was entirely empty, the...

Eight years ago, Mr. Jiménez, 35, an illegal immigrant working as a gardener in Stuart, Fla., suffered devastating injuries in a car crash with a drunken Floridian. A community hospital saved his life, twice, and, after failing to find a rehabilitation center willing to accept an uninsured patient, kept him as a ward for years at a cost of $1.5 million. What happened next set the stage for a continuing legal battle with nationwide repercussions: Mr. Jiménez was deported — not by the federal government but by the hospital, Martin Memorial. After winning a state court order that would later...

Memo to the illegal-alien community: That presumably doped-up Brazilian with the criminal rap sheet as long as your arm was not shot by a Yarmouth policeman because he was in this country illegally. Andre Martins was killed after he rammed a police car in an attempt to avoid being arrested. You can’t blame this one on the traditional excuse of a “language barrier.” Ramming a police car is what you call a global language. In any tongue, it means the same - I’m willing to kill you to escape. The fliers were out on Cape Cod yesterday demanding “justice” for...

Veronica Matias and her aunt Eulalia Matias were leaving for a church retreat Saturday morning when two vehicles blocked their driveway in East Ridge. Men got out of the cars and, without identifying themselves, started asking if she and her aunt were in the country legally and demanding identification, Ms. Matias said. “I got out the car and asked them why they needed my information,” said Ms. Matias, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen. “I was told they were looking for a murderer, and they showed me the picture of a man from Ecuador.” She told the men she didn’t recognize the...

<p>Hundreds of legal and illegal immigrants in Arizona are being sent back to their home countries, sometimes against their will, for medical treatment because they lack insurance.</p>

POSTVILLE, Iowa -- Antonio Escobedo ran to get his wife Monday when he saw a helicopter circling overhead and immigration agents approaching the meatpacking plant where they both work. The couple hid for hours inside the plant before obtaining refuge in the pews and hall at St. Bridget's Catholic Church, where hundreds of other Guatemalan and Mexican families gathered, hoping to avoid arrest. "I like my job. I like my work. I like it here in Iowa," said Escobedo, 38, an illegal immigrant from Yescas, Mexico, who has raised his three children for 11 years in Postville. "Are they mad...

Students Must Pay To Make Up Difference In Out-Of-State Tuition. Was it a promise kept, or a promise broken? Four years ago in an auditorium at Cole Middle School, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper promised the 300-plus students in attendance that he would find a way to send each of them to college for free. Now, the first group of those students is set to graduate, and some are finding that the mayor's promise isn't adding up. The promise only pays in-state tuition, and state law requires illegal immigrants to pay out-of-state tuition. So undocumented students must make up the difference....

In his first years in the United States, Carlos B. Jacinto endured the itinerant life of a Guatemalan migrant worker, from picking fruit in Florida to moving logs at a sawmill in Washington. Eventually, he settled here in northern Georgia and erected a middle-class American life. The carpet factories that sustained this town were desperate for workers to supply a nationwide boom in home construction. The wages Mr. Jacinto earned over the last decade were enough to buy a minivan and a brick house with a yard and a swing set for his four young girls. It was a long...

The changes have also brought thousands of Hispanics, some legal immigrants and others not, who have migrated up Interstate 270 to meet the demand for construction and service jobs. Until now, the county has handled the influx with outreach classes in schools and community policing programs. Chic Hispanic restaurants flourish in downtown Frederick, and working-class Latinos have remained relatively invisible. Suddenly, however, their presence is igniting a controversy that some fear could escalate into the kind of war over illegal immigration that has torn apart Prince William County. In the past month, the Frederick County sheriff has joined with federal...

Oakland -- Immigration arrests at homes in Berkeley and Oakland on Tuesday sent a wave of panic among parents in both cities, as authorities mistakenly believed immigration agents were raiding schools. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were in both cities Tuesday, performing routine fugitive operations, spokeswoman Virginia Kice said. Teams go out virtually every day looking for specific "immigration fugitives," she said. Officers arrested four family members at a Berkeley home and a woman at an Oakland residence. They were not at schools. Yet, within the next few hours, rumors of raids circulated throughout the communities. In Berkeley, school...

MOUNT PLEASANT — Friends and family of the 46 people taken to jail by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in April met Sunday with supporters offering legal and emotional support. The federal government moved on Pilgrim's Pride Corp. facilities in Mount Pleasant and in four other states on April 16, gathering some 400 employees on various identity theft charges. A year-long investigation produced the arrests. It also produced a vacuum of information among much of the Latin immigrant community that feeds Pilgrim's Mount Pleasant workforce of about 3,300 people. That lack of information drew an attorney from the Mexican...

CHICAGO — Diego Hernandez and Anh Phan have never met, but they may share something of a common path. Both Hernandez, 40, a native of Mexico, and Phan, 27, a Vietnamese national, were held for immigration officials after they were arrested in Madison County, and will attend court hearings in Chicago to resolve their citizenship status. Anderson police arrested Hernandez this month on suspicion of misdemeanor drunken driving and driving without ever having received a license. Indiana State Police troopers arrested Phan in September at the Pendleton BMV branch when she allegedly tried to get an Indiana ID card using...

The arrests of 100 foreign workers at a Chattanooga poultry plant came swiftly Wednesday morning, but it could be months before they are sent home. “Time in the detention facility can be anything from weeks to months,” said Robert Divine, Chattanooga-based chairman of the immigration group for the Baker Donelson law firm. “It depends on the availability of a judge, and the need to get the person where there is a judge, Atlanta or Memphis.” Most foreigners arrested this week in Chattanooga will have to appear before a U.S. Immigration Court judge. The deportation process also can drag because U.S....

After a tough day of testing on Wednesday, some Hamilton County Schools students got off their buses to find an even more stressful situation at home: Their parents were nowhere to be found. Tennessee and local officials still are assessing the needs of the children, who they say are among those most profoundly affected by Wednesday’s sweeping federal immigration raid at Chattanooga’s Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plants. “There are a lot of families really hurting,” said Mike Feely, executive director of the St. Andrew’s Center, a resource for the city’s multi-cultural communities. “If you have that many moms and dads arrested,...

Although there is no formal tally, Mexican consular sources say a growing number of illegal immigrants across the United States are starting to pack their bags and return home. Illegal immigrants were able to buy U.S. homes during the boom years, either by showing evidence that they pay taxes or by simply presenting false documents. Many of them took out high interest fixed-rate loans or subprime mortgages with a low entry rate that later rose sharply. Experts say language difficulties made them more vulnerable to being offered, and taking, bad deals.

It's not yet 3 a.m. Juana Rivas grabs her shopping cart and steps off the curb into the dark.She shields herself from the cold with a sweat shirt and jacket, along with a pink hat and gloves she bought at the 99-cent store. Only a barking dog interrupts the silence. Rivas arrives at the first house, lifts the trash can lid and shines her flashlight inside. Nothing. "No hay. No hay," she says in Spanish. She peers into another trash can. Nothing. She zigzags back and forth across the street, stopping at each house to search for aluminum cans, glass...

PHOENIX -- Parents are pulling students out of school. Construction workers are abandoning their jobs. Families are hastily moving out of apartments. Two months after Arizona enacted a law punishing employers who hire illegal immigrants, the law is achieving one of its goals: Scores of immigrants are fleeing to other states or back to their Latin American homelands. Gaby Espinoza, who has been unemployed since November, is among those affected. Espinoza said she has given up looking for a job because of the law and might have to return to Mexico. Although her husband works here legally, the law requires...

Henry Fuentes closes his eyes and tries to sleep. But he can't. He is restless. He looks out the airplane window. This may be the last time he sees the United States. In less than three hours, he will land in El Salvador, a country he hasn't seen in eight years. Fuentes hadn't planned on returning. Immigration agents arrested him at his Houston apartment last month. Now the government was flying him and 115 other illegal immigrants back to Central America. Some had just crossed the border. Others, like Fuentes, had spent years in the United States and held jobs,...

KSFY has learned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are in the Worthington, Minnesota area today. An ICE spokesperson confirmed that ICE is conducting an enforcement aimed at specific individuals - not a general sweep of a certain businesses. KSFY spoke with an ICE official, who said they are in the midst of an ongoing investigation and that it could take the remainder of the week. ICE will not say how many individuals have or will be arrested. They did say this is not a large scale raids. Instead, they said this is a small targeted operation throughout Worthington. Much...

Saúl Espinoza readily admits he's no angel — his life is a chronology of felony convictions — and that he deserves to be punished for being a weasel with the justice system. But that shouldn't include getting booted out of the country and not being allowed back, he said. Espinoza, 36, claims he's a U.S. citizen about to be wrongly deported to Mexico. He's expected to receive a final deportation order Thursday at a court hearing in San Antonio. "Just because I've done bad stuff in the past shouldn't mean they can take away my citizenship," he said by phone...

Deadline's up to make sure BMV, Social Security records match. The The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles says it will revoke the driver's licenses of up to 56,000 people across the state in coming weeks. They are among the 206,000 people who had received letters in November saying the information on their licenses didn't match Social Security records. Thursday was the deadline to fix the mismatched data -- be it their name, gender, date of birth or Social Security number. The whole effort -- a comparison of the BMV's 6.4 million records with those of Social Security -- had raised...

Federal logjam of red tape may shut them out of the 2008 election For the 25 Hispanic immigrants taking a citizenship class Tuesday evening in downtown Houston, voting is a fundamental right they hope to gain. The students, attending the nonprofit Houston International University inside a shopping center, answered enthusiastically as their instructor quizzed them on American history and civics topics they must know to pass a citizenship test. They are part of an unprecedented nationwide surge of 1.4 million legal immigrants who applied for U.S. citizenship in the 2007 fiscal year. But now many of those immigrants fear a...

mmigrants hit hard by U.S. slowdown and subprime crisis Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:14am EST By Adriana Garcia WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As an economic slowdown and the subprime mortgage crisis deepen across the United States, Hispanic immigrants are increasingly in danger of losing their jobs and their homes. Both legal and illegal immigrants joined Americans in buying homes they could barely afford when the market spiraled upward and many have been caught with mortgages higher than the value of their homes as prices have slumped in the past year. Just as subprime mortgage payments rose and house prices fell, the...

PHOENIX, Arizona (AFP) — One month after Arizona introduced a law cracking down on businesses which employ illegal immigrants, Latino workers are fleeing the state and companies are laying off employees in droves, officials and activists say.

Ash Patel's workers have been leaving him in droves. It's not because the sagging stock market has forced him to let people go -- Arizona's new immigration law has driven away his staff, Patel said. "I would estimate I've lost at least 10 to 20 percent of my workforce" in the five Arizona hotels he runs with Southwest Hospitality Management, in anticipation of the law that took effect Jan. 1, Patel said. The company's hotels include a Best Western in Payson, Ariz., and a Fairfield Inn and Ramada in Flagstaff, Ariz. The law takes a slightly different tack than most...

Business owners feel the pinch as families drop from community life WAUKEGAN, ILL. — She is a homeowner, a taxpayer, a friendly neighbor and a U.S. citizen. Yet because she is married to an illegal immigrant, these days she feels like a fugitive. Whenever her Mexican husband ventures out of the house, "it makes me sick to my stomach," said the woman, who insisted on being identified only by a first name and last initial, Miriam M. "I'm like, 'Oh, my God, he took too long,' " she said. "I'll start calling. I go into panic." Over the last year,...

The president of the MEChA club at Palomar College has been deported to Mexico, immigration officials said yesterday. Paola Oropeza, 22, was arrested Jan. 8 by a fugitive operations team with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for the department in San Diego. Oropeza had been ordered to leave the country by an immigration judge, but she failed to comply with that order, Mack said. At the time of her arrest, Oropeza was in the country illegally and was taken to Tijuana, Mack said. Oropeza did not have a criminal record, said Mack, who could not...

A group of Mexican lawmakers have taken it upon themselves to make a trip to the United States to say they don't like tough immigration laws. Nine state legislators from Sonora traveled to Tucson, Arizona to tell 'em how they really feel about Arizona's new employer sanction law. Como se dice en espanol: "Mind your own damned business." Now get this, the Mexican lawmakers are upset because Arizona's law "will have a devastating effect on the Mexican state." Yeah ... all those Mexicans coming back home really bothers them. Excuse me, but just how is this Arizona's problem? These lawmakers...

Oklahoma's local law against illegal immigration is among the toughest in the nation. The law went into effect Nov. 1, and advocates for undocumented workers and activists for tougher immigration measures both say that since then, thousands of immigrants have left Oklahoma. Among other things, the new law makes it a felony to harbor, transport or aid an illegal immigrant. Hispanic leaders say the law is causing widespread fear in the Hispanic community. Builders say they can't get enough workers and are threatening a lawsuit to try to block the law. But backers of the measure say it's doing what...

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - A 23-year-old Mexican woman with three American-born children, including one just three weeks old, will return voluntarily to Mexico after what supporters call a harrowing experience with authorities during a traffic stop. Miriam Aviles-Reyes, an illegal immigrant, and the human rights group Derechos Humanos say a Tucson police officer was abusive and called the Border Patrol without necessary cause.

PHOENIX -- Arizona steel fabricator Sheridan Bailey has been laying off employees in recent weeks even though he has plenty of orders on the books. His firm, Ironco Enterprises, shed around 10 percent of its 100-strong workforce to get in line with a state law going into effect on Tuesday that targets employers who hire illegal immigrants. "We have let some people go who we came to know were not properly documented. So in that respect the law is already doing what the framers expected," he said. The maker of steel frames for buildings is among an estimated 150,000 businesses...