Thread: Increase In Immigration Arrests

Increase in immigration arrests

By Antonio Olivo | Tribune staff reporter
8:11 AM CDT, July 22, 2007
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Chertoff Immigration raid enforcement video ON LINK BELOW



ST. MICHAEL, Minn. - Breaking the silence in a middle-class enclave of tract homes and cul-de-sacs, federal immigration agents recently swooped in and grabbed Sara Munoz, carting away the illegal Mexican immigrant before her five crying U.S.-born children.

In nearby Minneapolis, community activist Juana Reyes was nabbed for her illegal status as she stepped out of her car, spurring a rapidly transforming neighborhood into action on behalf of her 9-year-old daughter, an American citizen.

And, 110 miles south in Austin, Minn., a divided community seethes after several recent deportation arrests. Latin American immigrants are afraid to open their doors, while longtime residents press the mayor to do more to stop the changes in a former union town built around the global headquarters of the Hormel Foods meatpacking operation.


Similar scenes nationwide are part of a ramping-up of federal arrests of illegal immigrants, activity that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently warned is "gonna get ugly" after immigration legislation failed in Washington last month.

Arrests from workplace raids have skyrocketed from about 845 in 2004 to nearly 4,000 already this year, federal records show. Arrests of illegal immigrants who have ignored court orders to leave the country have doubled since last year to a rate of about 685 per week.


"We're gonna do more enforcement actions," Chertoff said during a recent Chicago Tribune editorial board meeting where he lamented Congress' failure to move immigration reform forward and predicted extensive grief. "And, if they have kids at home, even if we make arrangements with social services to take care of the kids, the kids are gonna be scared because Mommy or Daddy is not coming home that day."

Though the arrests will be "as humane as possible," Chertoff said, "We do have to get control over this general problem of illegal immigration."

The heightened enforcement has fueled tensions in fast-changing areas of Minnesota, where jobs in meatpacking plants, factories and farms have made the state a magnet for new immigrants from Africa, Southeast Asia and, especially, Latin America.

As state legislatures and cities nationwide consider their own local measures for enforcement, a menacing cloud has swelled over America's immigrant landscape, advocates say.

"We have a tsunami coming at us in terms of enforcement measures," said Angela Kelly, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group in Washington. "That's pretty terrifying in terms of what it means for the 12 million undocumented immigrants and their families."

Both sides of the immigration debate, however, see advantages in the hardening climate.

"We want them ... looking over their shoulders all the time," said Marlene Nelson, 63, a member of the Minnesota Coalition for Immigration Reduction, among scores of such groups in the country pushing for even more enforcement.Advocates for undocumented immigrants characterize the arrests as a necessary "low" that could revive a legalization movement after the defeat in Washington.

"There are a lot of people who don't want to see people treated badly, but there's a need for them to see that," said Kelly, predicting it would strengthen citizenship drives and lead to street marches akin to those that swept through Chicago and other U.S. cities last year. "That kind of fear as a motivator, that needs to be ramped up and that needs to be tapped."

Feeling at home

Among the glistening Minnesota lakes that remind him of his native El Salvador, Nixon Munoz, 36, believed his family was safe from such anxiety.

In 1990, Munoz, an ex-government soldier who won political asylum after fleeing his civil war-ravaged country, moved from Los Angeles after learning there were plenty of jobs in Minnesota. Working as a machinist for a box manufacturer, he soon met a shy Mexican woman who was visiting on a tourist visa to attend a wedding.

The couple fell in love, and Sara Munoz's visa expired as they planned for a family and the home they eventually bought outside Minneapolis. After three daughters and a son, their youngest child, Edwin, 4, was born autistic. Sara Munoz cared for him between shifts at a local dry cleaning company.

"It was a nice life," Nixon Munoz said. "We were very content."

That changed last month. Arriving from the grocery store with his children, Munoz said he saw his terrified wife handcuffed in front of their two-story stucco home. With the family in tears, she was taken away and, eventually, deported to Mexico, where she tries to continue to parent her five children through long-distance calls.

Filling a void
ST. MICHAEL, Minn. - The couple's eldest daughter, Joanna Munoz, who turned 14 the day before her mother left, has stepped in as a mother figure. The hazel-eyed teen cooks, cleans and tries to comfort Edwin when he calls for his mother at night, sometimes in uncontrollable tantrums during which he hurls himself against walls.

"He still thinks my mom is visiting family," she said of her brother, unsure how all this will affect her dream of attending college and becoming a marine biologist.

The impact that such arrests and deportation have on the estimated 5 million children of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is troubling, said Randy Capps, a researcher at the Washington-based Urban Institute who has been studying the aftermath of raids in several states.




Chertoff pledges increased immigration enforcement Video
Many of these children are likely to grow up harboring resentment against law enforcement. Others will have psychological problems that stem from seeing their parents ripped from their lives, he said.

"If they stay in the country, they've been through this traumatic experience and will continue to be separated from their parents for some time," Capps said. "These are people that didn't choose to come over."

Such worries have fueled the reaction in South Minneapolis to the arrest of Juana Reyes, 52, a soft-spoken activist known as much for the opinionated daughter seemingly stuck to her hip as she was for her work helping new immigrants. Arrested this month, Reyes is inside a county jail in Elk River, Minn., one of about 26,500 illegal immigrants imprisoned nationwide on a given day, according to a recent report by the federal Government Accountability Office.

Betty Reyes, 9, tries to shrug off the experience with jokes or one-word replies. Occasionally, however, the facade crumbles in tears and she will not let anyone answer a door knock, friends and family members said.

Her experience has inspired plans for a "children's march" in the neighborhood clustered near a row of Mexican restaurants and shops that began sprouting along the Lake Street business corridor in the 1990s.

"We're training the children now to become activists," said Mariano Espinoza, director of the Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network. "They are going to take this movement to the next level."

Inside his tiny office in Austin, organizer Victor Contreras longed for such optimism.

Since a raid last month when federal agents pulled some 20 immigrants from their homes, plus others capturing hundreds more in neighboring towns nestled between drought-singed corn fields, "the community is consumed by fear," Contreras said. "Nobody wants to open their doors. We are up against a great force."

Some evidence of that could be heard two doors away, at the public library.

Inside a meeting room, about 20 long-time residents harangued Austin Mayor Tom Stiehm, a retired police officer who won his job last fall on an immigration-enforcement platform.

Many in the room pinned the steady arrival of mostly Mexican immigrants to Austin during the past decade on a yearlong strike at Hormel during the mid-1980s, when the company known best for making Spam canned meat busted the local union after a wage dispute.

Well-paying union jobs were given to immigrants willing to work cheaply, the residents said. That sparked a demographic transformation now seen along Main Street, where Hormel's Spam Museum sits a short distance from the Mi Tierra restaurant and several other Mexican businesses.

"What are you going to do about it, Tom?" one resident shouted, complaining with others about crime, overcrowded housing and the formation of a separate non-English-speaking society.

The resentment illustrated the pressure even small-town officials like Stiehm are under.

Shrugging, Stiehm promised to make arrests in cases of welfare fraud and other crimes.

"I'm going to go after the law-breakers and leave the families alone, the ones that want to be a part of Austin," the mayor vowed. "You can't just get rid of them all. If you did, we'd lose 7,000 people, we'd be closing down our schools."

That answer sparked more protests, with angry voices echoing through the small, recently built library.ST. MICHAEL, Minn. - - - -

Arrests increase

By increasing work-site raids and other arrests related to illegal immigration, the Homeland Security Department will likely force renewed discussion of immigration in the coming months.


Chertoff pledges increased immigration enforcement Video
Secretary Michael Chertoff called a backlash to the arrests inevitable, predicting federal immigration agents would be portrayed as "mean and nasty" and that businesses would condemn the economic effects.

Here are federal figures showing how immigration enforcement has increased in recent years:

Work-site enforcement arrests:

*Fiscal year 2002: 510

*2003: 517

*2004: 845

*2005: 1,292

*2006: 4,383

*2007/through May: 3,839

Fugitive arrests per week (There are more than 600,000 fugitive immigrants in the U.S.):

*Fiscal year 2006: about 343

*2007: about 685
Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... 4942.story

This video is nauseating.

Does Chertoff or any other law enforcement officer in our country worry,to this extent, when they arrest Americans who break the law?

I don't see the sympathy wagon when it's Americans being arrested for breaking the U.S. law.

The children of illegals can accompany their parents back to their home countries or visit them in their home countries it they want to be with them. In the meantime, illegal parents can get in the visa line while their in their home countries. The price you pay for breaking the law.

"
"I'm going to go after the law-breakers and leave the families alone, the ones that want to be a part of Austin," the mayor vowed. "You can't just get rid of them all. If you did, we'd lose 7,000 people, we'd be closing down our schools.""


Ummn, that's part of the point. We are paying big bucks to educate their children.

related article:

The "Ugly" Gambit*

Chertoff Moves to Arouse Compassion




Monstrosity Man
American Patrol
Selective Enforcement to Create "Monstrosities"
Hoping to create a groundswell of opposition to immigration enforcement, DHS Secretary Chertoff has embarked on a program of selective enforcement that he describes as "gonna get ugly." "And, if they have kids at home... the kids are gonna get scared because Mommy or Daddy is not coming home," Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board. ARTICLE POSTED ABOVE
"Chertoff is selectively enforcing immigration law to create monstrosities," said Glenn Spencer of American Patrol. "He is doing this to evoke outrage and, ultimately, support for Bush's amnesty program."
Spencer said that Chertoff's promise to build 150 miles of border fence was intended to gain support for amnesty. "Chertoff will stop at nothing, including telling bald-faced lies

http://www.americanpatrol.com/07-FEATUR ... ature.html

, to get amnesty and the American People should be prepared to respond accordingly," Spencer said.

*"opening move meant to gain advantage"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambit


http://www.americanpatrol.com/

I've got to say that the numbers cited in the article are pathetic.
4,383 arrests in an entire year?!!!! Are they forgetting two zeros?


Look, if a federal officer sees a recent Hispanic (why does have have to be capitalized) immigrant, chances are 70% the person is illegally here. That's just a simple factual statistic based on publicly available DHS data and data from the Pew Hispanic center. There is, therefore, probable cause to arrest the person. Now, recent Hispanic persons who are legally present will get angry and offended. Sorry. The actions of others have made life harder for you. You will have to carry full identification with you.

If things were done as I explain above, we could get the illegal Hispanics out of here very quickly. Then we move onto the illegal Chinese, Irish, Russians et cetera. All have to go, otherwise it is racist.


Fiscal year 2002: 510

*2003: 517

*2004: 845

*2005: 1,292

*2006: 4,383

*2007/through May: 3,839

Fugitive arrests per week (There are more than 600,000 fugitive immigrants in the U.S.):

*Fiscal year 2006: about 343

*2007: about 685
Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

I agree Hosay. Illegal aliens across the board have to leave.

There are no excuses for being here illegally. Illegal is illegal wherever your country of origin.

Chertoff's makes his position of supporting illegal amnesty clear at every opportunity. Since when did making political statements and pushing Bush's personal agenda written into his job description? He seems to think he was elected to public office, not appointed. His job is not to make policy or push anyones personal agenda, it's to enforce our laws!

Your agenda is paper thin, Secretary Chertoff - the American people can see right through it!