Thread: Federal sweep targeting illegal immigrants snares 1,150 stat

Federal sweep targeting illegal immigrants snares 1,150 statewide

10:00 PM PDT on Monday, September 29, 2008
By DAVID OLSON
The Press-Enterprise

In the biggest action of its kind, federal immigration agents have arrested more than 1,150 people statewide in raids targeting illegal immigrants who ignored deportation orders.

The 3-week sweep, which ended Saturday, netted 420 people in Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange counties. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not break down arrests by county.

The arrests are the latest part of a crackdown the government launched in 2003 against illegal immigrants who violate deportation orders or similar mandates. Nationwide, arrests of "immigration fugitives" have surged seventeenfold in the past five years. More than 30,000 people were apprehended in the crackdown in fiscal year 2007, almost 2,500 in the four-county Los Angeles area.

Eric Saldana, assistant director of ICE's Los Angeles field office and former head of a ICE fugitive operations team, said the sweep is a warning to other illegal immigrants.

"The expectation is that anyone who has a deportation order against them might receive a knock at the door one day," he said.

Joseph Turner, executive director of the anti-illegal-immigration group Save Our State, said he was encouraged by the arrests because they occurred during a time when pressure on the government by anti-illegal-immigration activists is not as intense as a year or two ago.

"Continued action on the part of the federal government with respect to raids and going after fugitives is a testament to past activism," he said.

Even so, Turner said, "There's a long way to go before we get to even a tolerable level of immigration, if it can be called that."

But Danny Morales, an activist with the Riverside-based National Alliance for Human Rights, which supports the legalization of millions of illegal immigrants, called the arrests "deplorable."

"It's so inhumane that they're doing this," he said. "Many of them have families and young children here, and many of those people are U.S. citizens."

In addition to taking away parents from their children, the raids often disrupt businesses that rely on immigrant workers, Morales said.

The highest-priority cases in the sweep were illegal immigrants who are criminals or threats to national security, Saldana said. Nearly a third of those arrested in the Inland area and Los Angeles and Orange counties had criminal histories.

About three-quarters of the people arrested in the four-county area had violated deportation orders. The rest were family members or other illegal immigrants who were discovered during those arrests, or people who illegally returned to the United States after deportation and lived nearby, Saldana said.

Saldana said the arrests help instill integrity in the immigration-law process. Some of the people who ignored deportation orders had spent years appealing their cases.

"They had their day in court, and they had the opportunity to present all their information to an immigration judge," he said.
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stor ... 86be8.html

Related thread:
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-133658.html

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Glad to see Joe Turner of Save Our State quoted in this article

added to the homepage

http://www.alipac.us/article3611.html

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