Thread: Bridgeton,NJ Aliens scared,worried about immigration sweeps

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news ... 2677c.html -



Bridgeton Hispanics scared, worried after immigration sweep




By JOHN MARTINS Staff Writer, (856) 794-5114
Published: Friday, February 2, 2007
Luria Hernandes Escobar has been ordered to go to Marlton ICE office Feb. 12.

BRIDGETON — In her bare Cohansey Street home Thursday afternoon, Luria Hernandez Escobar sat bewildered with her swathed 15-day-old son in her arms, wondering just when she would see her baby's father again.
Lazaro Perez Velazces, 25, was one of more than a dozen city residents taken early Monday morning in a federal immigration sweep, and Escobar, 26, has not heard from him since he and her brother Beltran, 23, were handcuffed and escorted into a white van by federal agents.

The first of the month was upon her, and she had no way of paying the $1,200 rent. Even more worrisome was the notice she was given the morning her household was roused from sleep by federal agents, ordering her to appear Feb. 12 at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, office in Marlton.

“To be honest, I don't know what I'm going to do,” she said in Spanish, adding that other women whose family members were taken were also given the same notice. “I'm scared to be here.”

The weeklong federal sweep, which officials have dubbed Operation Return to Sender, seeks to capture immigrant fugitives who have ignored court orders to leave the country.




Hispanic leaders have described Bridgeton's community of undocumented immigrants as sizable, with some estimating the population at 9,000.
According to census data collected in 2000, however, the city's Hispanic population was about 5,500, or a quarter of the city's total number of residents.

In Cumberland County, the enforcement actions have taken place primarily in Bridgeton, although activity in Vineland has also been reported.

It has prompted Hispanic residents to withdraw from civic life, staying in at night and not leaving the house unless it's absolutely necessary. Various reports of other home raids and on-street detentions circulate wildly, and men who are in this country illegally are looking over their shoulder, fearing that they, too, will be taken.

Virgilio Soto, 25, a city resident who works at a fruit-packing plant in Vineland, said he was picking up co-workers in the city's Milltown section at 5 a.m. Thursday when he saw men being escorted into a white van parked outside a house on Walnut Street.

Although there were still some more men who needed to be picked up for work, he said, he opted to get out of the neighborhood and keep driving to Vineland.

“When I saw them, I just left,” Soto said. “We're afraid to go out, we're afraid to open the door. I still work, but I'm afraid that I'll leave and never come back.”

The only person awake when Escobar's brother and fiance were taken was her 68-year-old mother, Bernarda Escobar Roblero.

Roblero said she heard a knock on the front door at 4:30 a.m., and since she was expecting a neighbor to drop off his son for the workday, she opened the door.

As she was receiving the baby boy, named Alexis, from his father, agents came up to the porch and asked for someone with the last name of Olegario, she said.

According to Roblero, she said there was no one there by that name, but they came inside anyway.

“He has no record,” Roblero said of her daughter's fiance as she was sitting on her sofa, flanked by images of the Virgin Mary on fabrics used as window coverings. “He doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke. He's a good man.”

Gilbert Hernandez, the pastor of the Pentecostal and Missionary Church on Irving Avenue, described the raids as illegal, saying that agents entered under false pretenses and disregarded the law.

“You're supposed to have a warrant,” Hernandez said Thursday. “They don't come with nothing. They just break the door down.”

Hernandez also said agents had no right to enter a home if an occupant tells them the person they are after is not there.

Spokesman Michael Gilhooly was quick to contradict her Thursday, saying there is nothing illegal about the way in which ICE agents conduct their arrests.

“They have not broken any doors,” he said. “They don't break down doors. These are administrative warrants we're serving.”

While Gilhooly said he would not talk about ICE's operational details, he did say that federal law, which he referenced specifically as Section 287 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, gives them the power to investigate without a warrant.

“If we develop information on people who are fugitives, we go to that location and try to find them,” he said. “We're not breaking the law. If we have an opportunity to arrest someone who's here illegally, we're going to take it.”


To e-mail John Martins at The Press:

JMartins@pressofac.com

Stop acting like you'll never see them again. Go back to Mexico or South America or Europe or Asia where the rest of your family lives and meet their again.

To jog your memories Illegals, meet up where all the money you have been sending out of the country is and I'm sure you'll have a happy reunion.

They can post thousands or millions of stories like this and I still won't be able to squeeze out a tear. Just go home! They knew when they entered this country illegally they could be deported.

I can't wait for them to get so scared that they start running for the border. I don't care if they are scared. They are criminals.

Boooooooo! The ICEman's comming!

Hey lady, when you husband writes from the homeland, go to him and never come back. Tell you what, don't waste any time. Just leave now and hang out at his mother's house until he shows up.

Dixie

Well, I'm scared their going to stop enforcing the laws, so I guress were even.
KEEP ENFORCEING THE LAWS.
come in legally, if there is any room left, if not suck it up, and try to make some thing out of your own country!!

The one woman said she didn't know what to do. I have a suggestion: Go back to where you came from.
I am sick of them always screaming how afraid they are yet they aren't in any hurry to run back home.

Dixie wrote:

Boooooooo! The ICEman's comming!

How can arrests and deportations come as such a surprise to them? They know enough to be scared of ICE when they show up, but it almost sounds like they thought it would never happen. I guess for a long time they were right.