http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14580906.htm

Posted on Mon, May. 15, 2006


IMMIGRATION
Raid fears fueled but unfounded
Authorities have stepped up detentions and deportations of immigrants, creating the erroneous impression among some people that agents are rounding up undocumented foreigners everywhere.
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@MiamiHerald.com

Hector and a friend were launching a boat at a Haulover Beach marina when immigration officers showed up and hauled him off to the Krome detention center. The Uruguayan admitted to officers he had lived in South Florida illegally for five years.

Luisela Quintero and her family were sleeping at their Coral Gables home when immigration officers knocked on the door and detained everyone. The Panamanians are now back in their home country. They say they were unaware of a judge's 1998 deportation order after they failed to qualify for asylum.

Fabiola Guevara was stopped at a light at Krome Avenue and Southwest 200th Street when she noticed officers stopping vehicles and demanding papers from drivers. Was this a random immigration checkpoint?

The three incidents were not random raids, and, in fact, immigration authorities were not stopping vehicles at Krome Avenue. Miami-Dade police were simply checking vans to see if they were properly licensed.

Nevertheless, immigrant rights advocates note that such incidents in late April and early May fueled fears among immigrants that officials were staging random raids throughout South Florida. In fact, a Miami Herald review did find stepped-up targeted operations to weed out immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and others who have outstanding deportation orders, but no random raids.

The increase in operations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other Homeland Security immigration agencies comes as Congress debates building a miles-long fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, tightening enforcement and legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants.

President Bush plans to address the nation tonight on border security and legalization.

Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Border Patrol do conduct what some people could consider random operations: regularly patrolling marinas, for instance, and checking passengers on buses that travel from one state to another.

But those operations are not new. They have been in force for years, made more systematic after 9/11 -- an effort to protect the country from foreign terrorists.

''We don't conduct random operations,'' said Zachary Mann, Miami spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency that arrested Hector, whose last name was not provided by his family. ``Everything we do is well planned and professionally executed in our mission to protect the borders of the United States. The constant rumored random raids may be an urban legend developing.''

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced on April 24 the detention of 183 foreign nationals in Florida in Operation Phoenix, the news conference received wide media coverage. The 183 arrests were almost double the number of detentions during a similar statewide operation in September, when 99 foreign nationals were picked up.

DETAINED BY ICE

About one-fourth of the 183 arrests were of people who were not wanted by ICE but were detained when they were found near those sought by ICE, because they were felons or had outstanding deportation orders. The arrests of otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants also could have fueled the rumors of random raids.

Immigration authorities deported 209,024 people in fiscal year 2005, ending Sept. 30.

ICE officials did not provide South Florida figures for this year or fiscal year 2005.

Had random raids of businesses and random road checkpoints occurred, they would have required a sudden influx of hundreds or even thousands of officers in agencies with chronic personnel shortages.

ICE has slightly more than 5,500 agents nationwide. An estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants are living in the United States -- with nearly one million in Florida.

The Miami ICE office won't say how many agents are in Florida, but officials familiar with deployments said it's probably fewer than 500. One official said agents need two to three hours to process each person detained.

Cheryl Little, executive director of the Miami-based Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, suggested that Operation Phoenix was linked to much of the fear.

''Widespread fear of other sweeps or raids paralyzed immigrant communities following this operation,'' Little said.

Staff members at the advocacy center said they met several people picked up in recent days and most appeared to have been detained during Operation Phoenix, though one or two may have been detained randomly.

Hector, the Uruguayan, was at the marina April 26 launching a boat he had recently fixed.

Two Customs and Border Protection officers appeared and questioned him. The man questioned ''freely admitted that he had been in the country illegally for five years.'' said Mann, the Customs spokesman.

Customs and Border Protection agents routinely patrol marinas to check people arriving or departing on boats. For example, on Wednesday, three agency officers were seen patrolling the Crandon Park marina in Key Biscayne.

Border Patrol officers periodically look for undocumented migrants at airports or Greyhound bus stations. They routinely show up at the Greyhound bus depot in Fort Lauderdale to ask traveling foreign nationals for their immigration papers.

Last year, when a similar wave of speculation about raids spread through South Florida, Border Patrol officers were accused of boarding municipal buses and Metrorail trains in Miami-Dade County and arresting undocumented migrants. Border Patrol officials maintained they only target buses and trains that cross state lines.

This time, ICE agents were said to have pulled many undocumented immigrants from city buses all around Miami-Dade -- particularly Key Biscayne. Manny Palmeiro, a Miami-Dade Transit spokesman, said Metrobuses were not stopped by immigration agents.

AT A GABLES HOME

One operation that immigrant-rights activists said may have greatly contributed to the fears of random raids occurred April 17 at the Coral Gables home of Quintero, her husband and two daughters. The arrests were part of Operation Phoenix, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman in Miami.

The family told the immigrant advocacy center that ICE agents showed up at the home around 4 a.m., assisted by Coral Gables police. Mike Frevola, a Coral Gables police spokesman, said Homeland Security requested his department's presence. Gonzalez said police were there to provide security at the arrest scene, not to detain the foreign nationals.

''We work with our local law enforcement partners routinely to ensure the safety and security of everyone involved,'' Gonzalez said.