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29 illegal immigrants arrested in federal push

By Tara Malone
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Tuesday, March 06, 2007



More than two-dozen immigrants living and working illegally in Chicago and the suburbs were netted in a four-day sting, federal officials said Monday.

Five of the 29 immigrants detained and slated for deportation lived in suburbs such as Hanover Park, Prospect Heights, Niles, Waukegan and Cicero.

Eighteen had been convicted of everything from drug possession to domestic battery and drunken driving, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Gail Montenegro said.

The enforcement push targeted individuals who were ordered deported after committing a crime and then went on the lam. When a federal immigration judge ordered them sent home and the board of immigration appeals agreed, they never showed up at the designated site for transportation.

Take Yakov Raytsin, one of the immigrants picked up in the sting.

The 36-year-old Niles resident served more than two years’ probation for a forgery conviction in 2000. The offense triggered a deportation order back to Raytsin’s native Russia a year later. He avoided arrest during the ensuing six years, officials said.

“They [the immigrants] were ordered deported, and they did not comply, so they are an immigration fugitive,” Montenegro said.

Three of the 29 arrested were deported Friday to Mexico. Two-dozen others remain in federal custody and will be sent home during the coming weeks, Montenegro said.

Together, they come from Albania, Bulgaria, China, Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Poland and Russia.

The arrests come less than a week after 17 undocumented workers were arrested at an Arlington Heights packaging company.

Unlike the enforcement push at Cano Packaging, these arrests occurred at the immigrants’ homes.