I am surprised that the Homestead Police did thi as the city was looking into becoming a sanctuary city. It is nice to see them do the right thing.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breakin ... 74903.html


Boy, 11, left behind as parents are deported
Posted on Wed, Oct. 17, 2007Digg del.icio.us AIM reprint print email
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@MiamiHerald.com
In an extraordinary move, Miami's Mexican Consulate has gained custody of an 11-year-old boy left behind in Homestead when immigration officials deported his parents recently after police stopped them for driving a vehicle with an expired tag.

Mexican consul-in-charge Beatriz Navarro told The Miami Herald Wednesday that the consulate was working quickly to reunite the boy with his parents, who are now back in their hometown of Morelia.

The consul said the boy's parents were detained after police checked an expired tag on their vehicle -- and then called the Border Patrol when it turned out the parents were in the country illegally. The boy apparently was at school.

It's unclear which police agency handled the case, but the Border Patrol confirmed that the agency arrested the couple and turned them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for detention. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it would release a statement later Wednesday.

A friend of the family took the boy to the Krome detention center in Southwest Miami-Dade immigration advocates said, in an effort to reunite the 11-year-old with his family, but guards turned them away last month.

Hermán MartÃ*nez of the American Friends Service Committee and Elvira Carvajal of the Asociación Campesina, said Wednesday that the child was never totally alone because an uncle was living at the house with the deported couple. However, Carvajal said, early on the child was left alone in the house while the uncle went to work. Since then, she said, she and others have cared for the child while the uncle works.

The case, first reported by WTVJ-NBC 6, upset South Florida's immigrant community because it seemed to confirm what they perceive to be the callousness of immigration officials after raids in New Bedford, Mass., when hundreds of illegal workers were detained at a factory and some children were left stranded at home or daycare.

''The police have given us assurances that they don't do the work of immigration agents,'' MartÃ*nez said. ``If they did this it was due to discrimination and racism. They destroyed a family. They destroyed the dreams of these people. They left an employer without employees, a landlord without tenants and a child abandoned.''

In the past, immigration officials have insisted that if a child is involved in a deportation arrest, one parent is allowed to remain free to care for the child -- or at the very least the Department of Children and Families is called to pick up the child and hold him while the couple is in deportation proceedings.

It's unclear whether ICE officials knew the boy existed when they detained the parents.

Navarro said she was unable to verify whether the parents advised immigration officials about their child.

Victor Colón, the Border Patrol spokesman in Pembroke Pines, said Border Patrol officers responded and arrested the couple, but later turned them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for detention.

The Mexican child's case came to the attention of immigrant rights activists in Homestead when a friend of the deported couple approached them a few days ago with the story that a child had been left behind.

MartÃ*nez said the couple and their child arrived in the United States two years ago, and lived in the Chicago area. They arrived in Homestead about three months ago, he said.

While the couple went to work in a nursery, MartÃ*nez and Carvajal said, the child went to school in the Homestead area. Apparently he was in class when his parents were detained.

MartÃ*nez and Carvajal said they contacted the Mexican consulate for help.