Thread: CA: 17 illegal immigrants arrested in Canal raids

17 illegal immigrants arrested in Canal raids
Nancy Isles Nation
Article Launched: 05/22/2008 12:21:26 PM PDT


Federal immigration agents arrested 17 illegal immigrants in the Canal area of San Rafael in raids that began early Thursday morning, putting residents on edge and angering parents who worried about the impact on children.
Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement department, said enforcement teams removed 16 men and one woman. Detainees are generally taken to a center in San Francisco and dispersed to other facilities from there.

Three of those arrested had failed to comply with deportation orders and one had been deported and illegally returned to the United States, she said. The group included nationals from three countries, including 10 from Mexico, six from Guatemala and one from El Salvador.

One man who had been taken into custody based on a final deportation order was released on his own recognizance because he is undergoing cancer treatment.

Tom Wilson, executive director of the Canal Alliance, labeled the ICE tactics "terrorist" actions. "It's like an assault," Wilson said. "These people are terrified."

Wilson said children watched while their parents and other adults were taken away by authorities. Some were removed while accompanying children to the school bus, he said.

"They are taking parents of citizen children," Wilson said. "Most people are just dealing with the shock and the loss and trying to find their loved ones."

Kice said the majority of immigrants arrested have had their day in court and have chosen to ignore court orders. "They don't have a right to be here," Kice said. "Our responsibility is to enforce the law."

ICE has arrested more than 1,600 illegal immigrants in Northern California since Oct. 1, Kice said. Of those, 1,000 had previously been ordered deported and more than 300 had criminal records.

The raid comes two days after San Pedro Elementary School Principal Kathryn Gibney testified at a congressional hearing on the continuing emotional and social trauma of last year's federal immigration raids, calling the crackdown "devastating" to her students.

Gibney told the Workforce Protections Subcommittee that she is still seeing rising absenteeism and falling test scores as a result of those raids.

U.S. Rep. Lynn Woolsey said it is sad to see the children traumatized again.

"Due process was not made for those children," said Woolsey, D-Petaluma. "They need to realize they are dealing with human beings."

Margo Rohrbacher, spokeswoman for the San Rafael Police Department, which did not participate in the sweep, said the department was notified at 5 a.m. that ICE agents would be attempting to serve federal deportation warrants in the city.

Wilson said the warrants were administrative and did not give agents the authority to break down doors as a judicial order does. Instead, they could knock on doors early in the morning and identify themselves as police. If residents allowed them to enter, the agents could ask everyone inside for documentation and detain anyone who could not provide it.

"That is a house raid," Wilson said, adding that ICE agents began to get more zealous in their sweeps in March 2007, when they arrested 65 illegal immigrants in the Canal over three days.

More than 125 immigrants in the Canal have been placed in deportation proceedings after enforcement actions since then, Wilson said.

Federal fugitive operations teams have stepped up efforts to remove illegal immigrants since ICE was formed by the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

The nation's fugitive immigrant population declined for the first time in U.S. history to its current level at 573,000, or 59,000 fewer than in October 2006, Kice said.

Students at Bahia Vista Elementary School in the Canal were afraid that their parents would be gone when they returned home, according to Jessica Potter, director of the Bahia Vista Family Center. She said 79 students were absent, and children who did go to school were asking if they should be at school if their parents had been taken away by immigration police.

San Pedro School, which also serves the Canal, reportedly had 65 absentees, but school officials were not available for comment to confirm that figure.

http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_934 ... id=1009022

Tom Wilson, executive director of the Canal Alliance, labeled the ICE tactics "terrorist" actions. "It's like an assault," Wilson said. "These people are terrified."

Was Tom Wilson ever a drama coach?
Tom Wilson needs to spend a week in Iraq or Juarez, Mexico and perhaps he will realize how utterly idiotic his descriptive words of an ICE raid are--"terrorist", "Assault", "terrified"

"They are taking parents of citizen children," Wilson said. "Most people are just dealing with the shock and the loss and trying to find their loved ones."

Many arrested citizens have citizen children too.

".....trying to find their loved ones." The 'loved ones' are not lost or missing--they know exactly where the person is.........in custody.

So true MyAmerica.

Children often suffer because of the crimes their parents commit, no matter what the crime or whether they are a citizen or not.

"They are taking parents of citizen children," Wilson said.

Get it straight Wilson, coming in here illegaly, having babies doesn't give them a free pass. If an American citizen took their children along with them to rob a bank or did drugs in front of their children we would hear such an outcry from the MSM against the parents. If these children are traumatized, put the blame where it belongs - on the parents, not ICE.