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."
Tell me, what happens to an illegal alien in Mexico, in France, In Germany, etc? Only the US is getting hammered for doing what EVERY other nation does.
Because he's a CROOK!
One law doesn't mean any more to him than another.
"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."
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That's what makes monkeying with the Constitution unnecessary over this issue. Everything I have read states that minor citizen children MUST accompany their deported parents and can only return when they come of age. This "anchor baby" business was bogus from the start.
Good news. Like a breath of fresh air. Why couldn't this have been going on since 1986? There wouldn't be a problem today.
My guess it will only last long enough to pass an amnesty bill. We had best keep our eye on the ball.
2179 down, 12 million to go! :-)
Damn. I wish this story had been about my neighborhood!
I guess it's expensive to get his and her SS cards.
Here, all they'd have to do is hit Tyson and Walmart. I see them all the time, cruising around in nice fancy new cars blaring their obnoxious gangster "music." Walmart, at any given time, is packed with pregant Mexicans and their non-English speaking kids. And to add insult to injury, Walmart caters to them big time. It infuriates me.
Sounds like the old laws work just fine...
Magdaleno Martinez, right, waits on a street corner with other day laborers looking for work in the Linda Vista neighborhood of San Diego Friday, June 16, 2006. The neighborhood was raided as part of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 'Operation Return to Sender.' Since the raids the number of day laborers on the street corner has declined. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)
After that, show up at the large box stores, say early in the a.m. and check everyone's I.D. who is checking in.
Wonder what took him so long? /sarc
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
The inevitable street gangs that follows this immigration has brought fear to many communities.
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