Advocates protest immigration raids that ne42

01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, June 14, 2008

By Karen Lee Ziner

Journal Staff Writer

NEWPORT — Community advocates yesterday denounced a two-day immigration sweep on Aquidneck Island as an inhumane and deliberate effort to spread fear, and they said the raids on Wednesday and Thursday had already pushed people into hiding.

At a news conference in Washington Square, half a dozen speakers said agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement had gone into restaurants, stores and apartments during the sweep, but in some cases appeared to be targeting people because they appeared foreign and were driving landscaping trucks.

“This is nothing less than Gestapo tactics, and it has to stop,â€