Thread: Immigration Raids in N. Indiana Latino Community

Immigration raid sends shock through N. Indiana Latino community
Thursday, March 8, 2007 12:15 PM CST
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By The Associated Press

MISHAWAKA, Ind. | Juan Ruiz de Leon knew there might be an immigration raid on Janco Composites after another worker was arrested for allegedly using someone else's Social Security number to get her job.

His 20-year-old daughter, Carmen Ruiz, said he thought about quitting.

"He'd been there so long. He decided to take a chance," she said.

Her father was one of 36 workers arrested during a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the factory Tuesday where Fiberglas-reinforced plastic products are made.

One of the men was released Tuesday, said Gail Montenegro, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Before the arrest, someone had already petitioned for the man to gain legal status, she said. The documents of the others arrested were still being investigated.

The arrests sent shock waves through the Latino community in northern Indiana. The Rev. Jose Ortiz, interim pastor of La Iglesia Menonita del Buen Pastor in Goshen, describes the aftermath of the raid as a "silent captivity." He said people will be staying out of sight out of fear.

Jose Botello, president of Mi Casa Community Center in Elkhart, noticed it first at the Bible study he attends. Attendance was down, as people stayed home because they were scared, Botello said.

"Remember, these people need to work. My gut-level feeling is that they might work, but they will be cautious," he said.

Sending families into hiding disrupts family life, Ortiz continued, and leads to feelings of worthlessness.

Goshen's Latino radio station WKAM received a flood of calls from listeners asking whether to go to work.

Station owner Jesus Alvarez said, "We've been telling people to go to work. Keep their lives normal. Unless we hear something, we can't say anything. There's a lot of questions about what's going on."

Callers to the station talked about their fears. One caller described herself tearfully as "the mother of three children. If they arrest me, what do I do with my kids?"

A second mother pointed out that two of her five children were born in the U.S., making them citizens.

"If they take me, what happens to them? Going to work is my biggest fear," she said. "I have tried to get all my papers in order, but I just can't. When we go out, we have the fear of being grabbed."

The youngest caller was a 14-year-old girl who spoke of her fears for her parents and for herself as well.

"If they deport my parents, who will I stay with?"

Carmen Ruiz said her father hid a little extra money on himself when his co-worker was arrested because he knew that, if the immigration officials deported him, they'd drop him just across the Mexican border. Then he'd have to buy a bus ticket to his homeland and family in a little pueblito called Mezquitic in the state of Jalisco, deep in the middle of Mexico.

http://www.nwitimes.com/

Immigration raid sends shock through N. Indiana Latino community

When and the sam hill did Indiana get a Latin community?

"If they deport my parents, who will I stay with?"

Hum, free trip to Mexico and all points south. What more could this child want?

Sending families into hiding disrupts family life, Ortiz continued, and leads to feelings of worthlessness.

Didn’t the Ma Parker gang feel worthy and happy all the time? they where criminals and had to hide. "Same thing right?"

A second mother pointed out that two of her five children were born in the U.S., making them citizens.

Now how long has she been illegally in the states to have five children. What a bunch of Bull "Beeeeeep," this ain’t right. It just ain’t right.
Ill be "Beeeep" if my children have to have state aid cause this women had five children illegally in the US, that’s five more future jobs stolen. If they even get a job when they grow up. I’m about to boycott the IRS so they cant sponge off Americans any more.

I am so sick of the sad stories, when do I get to read some stories about how my family was robbed and my jobs were stolen and my men are put out, along with their children., My family has to suffer ten times what these people have yet to prove. They are enduring nothing like what the rest of this country has to put up with.

How can Indiana have a Latino community? I was perusing the Prairie Home Companion website on NPR and there was an item in 'Post to the Host' about persons of the far southward persuasion showing up in small Minnesota towns. Keillor's take was that time would absorb and assimilate them (as it did the Germans and Norwegians) but I'm not sure he understands the magnitude and the motivation of this latest movement.

Sometimes there are historically significant oddities to be found in the heartland. Back in the 40's, a highly anti-American Islamist, Sayyid Qutb, who was one of the scholarly inspirations for the line of thought that led to 9/11, spent a little time in Greeley, CO. NPR did a story on it, contrasting his impressions of the town and it's all-American culture, with the memories of people who were there at the time as well. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=1253796

If they deport my parents, who will I stay with?"

You will stay w/ your parents. There's no reason you can't go with them.