http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cf ... -05&cat=AN

Hispanic immigrants targeted in home invasions
By LISA HOFFMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
October 19, 2005

- A recent spate of home-invasion robberies in at least four states has authorities and immigrant advocates worried that undocumented Hispanics increasingly could be in the bull's-eye of predatory thieves across the country.

This year alone, Georgia, Tennessee and Oklahoma have been the scenes of a string of home invasions - a particularly frightening crime in which robbers force their way into a home, often tying up and beating the residents and demanding cash and valuables.

Latinos illegally in the United States make prime targets for such crimes, according to the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group for Hispanic Americans and immigrants.

For one thing, they are far less likely to report crimes to the police because of fears the police will discover their illegal-immigration status. For another, they tend to have cash because many banks will not open accounts without proper identification that many illegal workers lack.

"They are a vulnerable population," said Liany Arroyo, a program manager for the National Council of La Raza.

In some cases, the robbers have been members of Latino gangs. Nearly 50 members of the Almighty Latin King Nation - a gang with chapters in Connecticut, Florida and New York, among other areas - were indicted last week in Milwaukee on charges that included committing home invasions.

Mara Salvatrucha - a fast-growing and violent gang made up of Salvadoran and other Central American members that is active in California and the Washington, D.C., area - also favors the invasion method, police say.

But in a particularly brutal series of home invasions in Georgia, the perpetrators were not Latinos. In late September in two south Georgia counties, several attackers stormed into four trailers in which Mexican immigrant workers were asleep. The assailants beat five Hispanic men to death with baseball bats, and fatally shot a fifth. Four other victims were injured.

Police in Georgia's Tift, Colquitt and Cook counties said there had been another dozen or so less-violent home invasions against Hispanics in the past three months. Three non-Latino residents of the area have been charged in connection with some of the crimes.

In Shelbyville, Tenn., three men were arrested this summer as the alleged thieves who committed a string of home-invasion robberies that targeted Hispanics in the spring.

And last week alone in Tulsa, Okla., assailants kicked in the front doors of four Hispanic families and robbed them.

Dan Kesselbrenner, director of the immigration project of the National Lawyer's Guild, said that police in some communities around the country have tackled the problem of crime against illegal workers by pledging publicly not to inquire about or report the immigration status of any victims. Local police do not enforce federal immigration laws.

"That reassures people," Kesselbrenner said.

In Memphis, where six people were charged in January in connection with as many as 200 home invasions of Hispanic residents in Memphis, Jackson, Tenn., and north Mississippi, the district attorney's office in Memphis is urging Latino victims to come forward.

Shelby County District Attorney Bill Gibbons said that without their cooperation in prosecutions, the robbers will remain on the loose.

"The victim's testimony is often crucial to successfully prosecute defendants," Gibbons said in a March statement.