Thread: Border Patrol van prompts rumors of impending raids

http://www.gallupindependent.com/2006/m ... bpvan.html

Border Patrol van prompts rumors of impending raids

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — A U.S. Border Patrol van's visit to Gallup earlier this week could be the source of rampant rumors that immigration officials have been raiding local businesses lately.

That's Under Sheriff John Yearley's guess at what's behind recent talk that illegal immigrants across Gallup are being rounded up and shipped out. According to other reports, however, the talk is more than idle.

What Yearley did confirm was that the Sheriff's Office captured 17 undocumented aliens driving east on Interstate 40 Monday morning a few miles past Miyamura Overpass and that a Border Patrol van arrived a few hours later to pick them up. He suspects some imaginative locals saw the van and assumed a full-blown immigration sweep was under way.

A few local restaurant owners and managers said they heard the same story, but received no visits to their own establishments and saw nothing personally. Earl's Restaurant owner Ralph Richards said he received calls from three or four other restaurants in one day warning him of the sweep.

"They said they were going to come raid me. Well, hell, they can come raid me all they want," he said. "I've got nothing to hide."

The raid, he said, never arrived.

"This is a multi-million dollar business," said Richards. "Why would I risk it?"

The Gallup Police Department, New Mexico State Police and McKinley County Sheriff's Office all said they had no knowledge of any recent immigration sweeps, and according to Yearley they would have had to.

Whenever federal officers conduct official business within in a community, he said, "they are required under the general rules of federal law that they have to notify local authorities."

The last time Yearley can remember that happening was some 16 years ago.

Littie Zamarripa, public information officer for the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in El Paso, also insisted that immigration officers have conducted no recent raids in Gallup.

Diana Joe and Barbara Radcliff aren't convinced.

Camped out at the intersection of Highway 66 and Boardman drive for a four-day hunger strike earlier this week to protest Proposition 4437 a federal bill that proposes tightening both immigration laws and border security between the United States and Mexico the pair lead marches through Gallup each day. Joe said she heard from a half-dozen participants that relatives of theirs had been picked up by immigration officials around Gallup within the past few weeks.

Radcliff doubts their protest had anything to do with the sweep or reports of a sweep. Joe believes they may have challenged the federal government to act.

But none of that, not the 17 undocumented aliens picked up Monday nor the hunger strike that started Sunday, explains why the reports would have started as early as last Saturday. That's the day Richards said he received the calls from fellow restaurant owners.

Whatever happened or didn't happen in Gallup this week, there's no doubt, said Yearley, that the city is a major thoroughfare for undocumented alien thanks to Interstate 40, most of them heading from Arizona to various points east.

"We know that (Interstate) 40 is a major corridor for illegal alien smuggling," he said, although the Sheriff's Office hasn't the money or manpower to do much about it.

The ones they do find are usually incidental, hiding out in a van pulled over for a minor traffic violation, for example. Such finds happen roughly once a month, Yearly guessed, although ones as large as Monday's happen maybe twice a year.

Darn if I had the Money i would buy a used Van from the border Patrol and just drive it through some of my neighbor hoods. :P

Originally Posted by BldHnd

Darn if I had the Money i would buy a used Van from the border Patrol and just drive it through some of my neighbor hoods. :P

You can make a sign and put it on a van...

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