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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...