Posted on 06/18/2006 12:10:28 PM PDT by ARealMothersSonForever
SAN DIEGO - Fewer parents are walking their children to school in this border city's Linda Vista neighborhood. The crowd of day laborers huddled in a parking lot outside McDonald's has dropped by half.
A sense of unease has spread in this community of weather-worn homes since immigration agents began walking the streets as part of a stepped-up nationwide effort targeting an estimated 590,000 immigrant fugitives. Other illegal immigrants are being rounded up along the way.
Juana Osorio, an illegal immigrant from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, said her neighbors have largely stayed indoors since agents visited her apartment complex June 2.
"People rarely leave their houses now to go shopping," Osorio, 37, said as she clutched a bottle of laundry detergent in a barren courtyard. "They walk in fear."
Her husband, Juan Rivera, 29, has stopped taking their two children to the park on weekends. "We want to go out but we can't," said Rivera, a construction worker.
In a blitz that began May 26 and ended Tuesday, federal agents arrested nearly 2,200 illegal immigrants, including about 400 in the San Diego area — more than any other city.
It was the latest salvo in a crackdown on illegal immigration that has included arrests of nearly 1,200 workers at a supplier of wooden cargo pallets and the deployment of National Guard troops on the Mexican border. Meantime, Congress is considering a broad overhaul of immigration laws.
All this has immigrants on edge, even in places such as San Diego that are home to thousands of illegals, many of whom have lived openly for years.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said about half the 2,179 people arrested in the 12-day nationwide raids — dubbed Operation Return to Sender — had criminal records, including convictions for sexual assault of a minor, assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping.
While criminals were targeted, agents also asked neighbors and curious onlookers about their immigration status and, if they were in the country illegally, they got hauled away for deportation, too.
"We can't just turn our heads away from people we find along the way," said Lauren Mack, an ICE spokeswoman in San Diego.
Agents staked out homes to determine when best to come knocking, interviewed apartment managers and checked credit reports and loan applications.
Since last fall, the agency has increased its fugitive task forces nationwide from 18 to 38, and plans to expand to 52 teams by the end of the year. The Bush administration has proposed a total of 70 teams.
San Diego's Linda Vista is a hardscrabble neighborhood of two-story homes favored by Mexican, Filipino and Vietnamese immigrants. As in other cities, the fugitive task force arrived in unmarked vehicles and agents were dressed like civilians. Mack said agents wore something to identify them as law enforcement, perhaps an agency insignia on a shirt or a bulletproof vest marked POLICE.
Day laborer Fredy Calleja said his uncle was arrested about two weeks ago while watering plants outside his home. An agent asked him about someone suspected of selling drugs in the area. When the uncle said he didn't know the drug dealer, the agent asked if he was in the country illegally and arrested him when he said he was.
Calleja said his uncle was deported but then sneaked across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. He was back in San Diego a little more than a week later.
Since the blitz began, Serafina Morales has been looking for unmarked white or black vehicles whenever she leaves the house.
"We're all scared to go to school," she said. "Many of us are letting our children walk alone."
Imagine, the nerve of law enforcement agencies arresting law breakers. What fear they inspire! I wish they would inspire a little more and run all the parasitical law breaking illegal aliens back to their home countries!
Interesting, they are less afraid of potential child molesters grabbing their children (most likely anchor babies) than they are of being picked up and returned to the land of their birth where they are citizens!
Just shaking in fear that American parents and kids won't shake in.
If I were in a position of being caught and deported while walking my kid to school, I would still walk the kid to school. If I got deported we would be deported as a family.
(Immigration sweep brings fear to community)
The only thing wrong with that statement is that is is missing the word "illegal."
She must not be too scared if she gave her real name. How come she and the husband have a different last name?
Had not some despicable judge interfered with prop 187, you wouldn't have this problem and my property taxes wouldn't be paying to educate your criminal children.
If here legally then you don't have anything to worry about.
If here illegally, GET OUT.
MISSION TEXAS — The Mission Chamber of Commerce staffer deported on illegal immigration charges last week did his job to a tee, according to his boss.
Chamber President and CEO Martha Palmer said she had hired Oscar Moreno as the business organization’s Membership director based on glowing recommendations from his former colleagues at Univision Channel 48.
"I feel for him because he was a good employee, she said. "He was a good, hard worker."
Immigrations and Customs agents deported Moreno June 5 during the federal agency’s 19-day crackdown on illegals. ICE officials had said "Operation Return to Sender" would focus on dangerous criminals and people who reentered the country after a judge deported them.
Moreno reported to work as usual June 5, Palmer said, but called her saying he had to leave the office and resigned that same day. He called her again the next day from Mexico, she said, to say he was sorry for the trouble he caused the chamber.
Moreno had been kicked out of the country at least twice before, court records show. He got in trouble the first time based on a 1997 marijuana charge, the San Antonio Express-News reported Thursday. In 2000, a U.S. District Court judge in McAllen sentenced him to 5 years unsupervised probation and sent him back to Mexico for concealing facts about his re-entry into the country.
Officials apprehended him again in March 2004 and charged him with resisting arrest, re-entering the country after deportation and importing marijuana.
http://www.themonitor.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=13759&Section=Local
Cry me a river...
He sounds like a smart , educated guy. Why not just apply for a green card?
"Moreno had been kicked out of the country at least twice before, court records show"
Yeah, Mission, Texas Chamber of Commercerce: Great job of doing background checks on prospective employees.
Ended? Why? Did they get them all?
I meant at the beginning.
Rest assured, your gov't is at work solving ALL the alien problems that surface (/sarc). For example, this letter to the editor appeared in an East Coast newspaper.
Dear Editor: Your readers may be interested in a federal initiative on this important subject (trafficking in sex). As many as 18,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. every year.
To help these victims, the Bush Administration launched a program called "Rescue and Restore" to identify trafficking victims, then provide them with access to shelter, legal assistance, job training and health care so they can establish lives free of violence and exploitation.
"Rescue and Restore" has a toll-free number (888-3737-888) to report suspected cases of trafficking and a Web site, www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/
Human trafficking is a modern form of slavery that we all must work to eradicate. With the help of concerned citizens, we can rescue those enslaved by this, restore their dignity and worth and end this barbaric practice.
Wade F. Horn
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
WASHINGTON, D.C
Good question. I don't know.
I still believe randomly grabbbing people off the street is a waste of man-hours. The most efficient way to employ ICE manpower and discombobulate the illegals is to permanently PERMANENTLY stake out the "choke points." By that I mean employ a handful of agents to stake out the Municipal/County social services offices (most have them all under one roof), Court Houses (imagine the effect on crime and public order if every illegal hauled in for DUI, public intoxication, etc. got nabbed), DMV's, schools, and of course, Emergency rooms (bye, bye, free ER care).
Any random roundups should be concentrated on day-labor hangouts, shopping centers and bodegas, and of course work sites. Imagine simply stationing a single marked van and a single uniformed ICE agent at the gates of a Tyson's chicken plant two-three days out of the week.
I belive the military calls this "Area Denial"
Do that and you can have a massive effect with a minimum number of both agents and actual detentions. Heck, you could probably clear out LA, the Big Enchilada, with 100 men. I would dearly love to have ICE make a workplace visit to that LA spanish-language radio station that posted the "Los Angeles, Mexico" roadside sign recently.
If they do something like that, rather than just grab a few hundred people in a city over a week's time (who'll then be back a week later, like the gentleman in the article) then moving on, then I'll take them seriously.
Simple:
Because BOTH names are fabricated.
As are their social security numbers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.