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Mysteries surround NH’s illegal aliens
By KATHRYN MARCHOCKI
Union Leader Staff
1 hour, 52 minutes ago

Manchester – Cooling off with a couple of cold ones on a hot summer night landed three Mexican nationals in federal custody for immigration violations and led police to their West Side apartment where four others are accused of being here illegally.

Four days earlier, a police tactical unit swarmed through an east side apartment building after gunshots rang out July 7. No one was hurt, but Edilberto Soto, an illegal alien from Mexico, later was charged with firing a stolen handgun in his apartment, then tossing the weapon when he fled.

Manchester police said the incidents were unrelated police responses to community calls for help, not the result of any organized effort to target illegal aliens.

“This is totally happenstance. This is not something where we had a detail going on that was looking for this type of thing or where we were working in conjunction with (federal immigration officers),” Sgt. Lloyd S. Doughty II said.

While police assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, when the agency asks for help, “to say that is happening on a regular basis wouldn’t be a true statement. I think occasional would be an appropriate term,” Doughty explained.

Those who work with the immigrant community agree they have seen no evidence of an organized crackdown on illegal aliens.

“The police in general here in Manchester, they do not really target unless they have a reason to go after somebody, like when they do something wrong,” said Eva Castillo, staff member at the Latin American Center in Manchester.

Soto, 24, who said he fired the gun into the air after an angry, drunken man pounding on his apartment door threatened him, faces state and federal charges for his alleged role in the 416 Belmont St. shooting. Federal authorities said Soto previously was unknown to them.

Two of the seven men detained in the July 10 incident at Log Street later were arrested by ICE officers on deportation warrants. The other five were charged with immigration violations and will have a hearing before an immigration judge, said Paula M. Grenier, ICE spokesman in Boston.

Police said they went to Log Street after neighbors complained the men were drinking in the parking lot and causing a nuisance.

Fingerprint checks showed none of the seven, ranging in age from 22 to 45, had any criminal history in New Hampshire or elsewhere in the United States, said Mark J. Furtado, ICE resident agent-in-charge for New Hampshire.

The men apparently were here for one purpose: jobs that paid better than anything they could get at home.

“They were all employed,” Furtado said.

“A lot do come . . . not just to New Hampshire, but to the United States, to earn wages to send money back home,” he said.

New Hampshire, he added, “has a strong economy and the construction field offers a potential for them to have a decent wage — long hours, but a decent wage.”

How many?
In many ways, it’s an old story.

Most immigrants Furtado has encountered during his 19 years in immigration and customs enforcement arrive with the same motives as their mostly European predecessors did a century ago, even if some lack necessary documents.

“I think the reasons people came in 1906 are the same reasons they come today. They are looking for a better life. They are looking for an opportunity,” Furtado explained.

Grenier said ICE does not keep statistics on the number of immigrants who are in the country illegally. Neither she nor Furtado would offer estimates.

Immigrant advocates say there is no way anyone can know how many illegal aliens live in New Hampshire.

“How would we know? We don’t have a system for documenting who is here and that’s a reason for a sane system of immigration reform to get more of these people here legally,” said Judy Elliott, director of the New Hampshire Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health and member of the New Hampshire Immigrant Rights Task Force.

Castillo, who also serves on the New Hampshire Immigrant Rights Task Force, said the number of illegal aliens has declined in the past year because of the “anti-immigration wave” that has manifested itself among the general public.

“Some people have left the state . . . There is an anti-immigration feeling. It is getting to be very uncomfortable,” Castillo said.

Brazil, Guatemala
Asked whether he has seen an increase in illegal immigration in New Hampshire, Furtado said his agency noticed a sharp increase in the number of Brazilian nationals who have moved here since 2000.

“They come in trends,” he said.

“Generally, what I can safely say is the number of Brazilian nationals that we have been encountering, not just in New Hampshire but the northeast New England area, has increased,” Furtado said.

Most Brazilian nationals in New Hampshire live in the Nashua area; few settle in Manchester, immigrant advocates said.

Furtado said ICE officers also have seen more Guatemalans moving to New Hampshire in recent years and “quite a few” from Indonesia, most of whom settled on the Seacoast.

While many Brazilian nationals moved to New England since 2000, their numbers have decreased in the last few months, said Eduardo de Oliveira, a Nashua resident and editor of two Brazilian newspapers, “Metropolitan” and “A Noticia.”

He attributes this in part to the Brazilian government’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

It also has been the result of ICE officers targeting illegal aliens who were arrested coming through the border and later failed to appear at their court hearings, instead migrating elsewhere in the country, de Oliveira said.

“In past interviews, they (ICE officials) have said . . . these are the main people they are going after. But even if they are going after only those people, it spreads fear all throughout our community. People are leaving under fear. Nobody knows what they are looking for,” he added.

Calls roll in
De Oliveira noted two organized initiatives ICE launched since 2005 — Operation Flash and Operation Return to Sender — saying, “we just know about those operations after they happen.”

Operation Return to Sender, a nationwide crackdown on illegal aliens with criminal records and deportation orders against them resulted in nearly 2,100 arrests this spring, including 14 in New Hampshire, Grenier said.

The 14 arrests occurred mostly in Manchester and Nashua and involved 11 who illegally reentered the country after deportation and three who were here illegally, Grenier said. Some of the 14 also had criminal convictions in the United States that ranged from assault, sale of cocaine, rape, burglary and shoplifting, she said.

Last year, ICE officers arrested 189 fugitive immigrants — including 15 in New Hampshire — during Operation Flash, an initiative targeting those who failed to comply with a judge’s order to leave the country. Some of the 15 arrested here also had U.S. convictions for rape, robbery, larceny, counterfeiting and forgery, she said.

One indicator of police contact with foreign nationals — both those here legally and illegally — is the number of inquiries they place to the ICE Law Enforcement Support Center in Williston, Vt.

The center provides 24-hour information to state, local and federal law enforcement agencies and court officials across the country on the identity and immigration status of foreign nationals suspected or arrested and convicted of criminal activity.

Its most frequent users are state and local police who request information on immigrants they encounter during “daily enforcement activities,” according to ICE’s Web site.

New Hampshire authorities logged 950 inquiries to the LESC in federal fiscal year 2004; 970 in 2005; and 600 so far this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, Grenier said. They resulted in the center issuing a total 26 detainers for immigration violations in New Hampshire during the last 18 months, Grenier said.

Ongoing ICE initiatives include Operation Predator, which targets child pornography and those convicted of sexual offenses against children, and Operation Community Shield, which targets foreign nationals involved in violent criminal street gangs.

While ICE officers made a few arrests in New Hampshire under Operation Predator, Furtado said he is unaware of any foreign nationals involved in criminal gangs in New Hampshire.

ICE officers also continue to train employers on how to determine whether immigrant workers have their proper documents and cracking down on those who sell counterfeit Social Security and alien registration cards and fraudulent birth certificates.