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Roundup of the Illegals
The federal ¨gang crackdown¨ is just another way to round up undocumented immigrants, their supporters say

by Meir Rinde - May 4, 2006


This week´s pro-immigrant rallies in Hartford, New Haven, and other cities were meant to prod Congress into giving illegal immigrants a way to achieve legal status.

But they can also be seen as an act of defiance in the face of a recent government crackdown on the undocumented.

Among those swept up recently were six Salvadorans who lived in East Hartford, and who were detained in January and February as supposed members of a gang called MS-13 or Mara Salvatrucha, meaning ¨tough Salvadoran posse.¨

MS-13, which started in Los Angeles in the 1980s, is notorious in the U.S. and El Salvador for committing acts of brazen violence. It reportedly operates in 33 states and six countries, including Latin American countries where it was introduced by U.S. deportees.

Locally, immigration authorities are thought to have started paying attention to East Hartford after a melee between Hondurans and Salvadorans at a birthday party in October, in which some attendees identified several alleged assailants as gangsters. Seven people were arrested.

In November the Hartford Courant cited a leaked East Hartford police memo that said officers have had contact with members of MS-13, but Chief Mark Sirois claimed the town only had ¨gang wannabes¨ and gang members who pass through.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, reports that as part of an effort called Operation Community Shield, it has arrested 2,388 members of 239 different gangs across the country in the past year, including 922 from MS-13.

The raids in East Hartford have raised alarms in the immigrant community, in part because ICE agents were assisted by East Hartford police.

¨My understanding is that immigrants would allow officers in, and the officer would come in with an ICE agent behind them,¨ said Virginia Carstens, an immigration lawyer with Leete, Kosto & Wizner and a member of the National Lawyers Guild.

These were warrantless searches, conducted with the permission of the people who were trying to cooperate with the police, she said. ¨They´re basically tricking those people into giving themselves up.¨

Immigrants and their supporters say if people are afraid that police will detain them for not having proper papers, they will stop reporting crimes.

¨When you see a person who is a hard worker, who is a law-abiding resident, and then he´s taken away and disappear[s], all of sudden then everyone could be in the same [situation], and fear spreads out in the community,¨ said Marela Zacarias, who organized a demonstration supporting the Salvadorans in East Hartford last week. Zacarias, a Mexican-born artist, also helped put together Monday´s pro-immigrant rally in Bushnell Park.



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Some of the alarm over the raids also seems to stem from their mysteriousness. MS-13 members have shown up in many parts of the United States, but they don´t seem to have much of a presence in Connecticut.

At the time of last October´s birthday party melee, U.S. Attorney Kevin O´Connor said there had been no documented reports of MS-13 factions in the state.

Salvadorans in East Hartford insist those who were deported recently were quiet, hardworking people who showed none of the distinctive signs of gang membership. ¨We don´t have Salvatrucha gangs here,¨ said Carlos Martinez, whose brothers and cousin were among those detained. ¨They didn´t have any tattoos, they didn´t have anything, because they weren´t gang members.¨

Because alleged gang members are deported quickly, it´s been difficult to know whether they really are in MS-13, said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project in Boston, which assists detainees.

¨There´s really very little specific information about what they consider a gang member,¨ Shah said.

ICE spokesman Michael Gilhooly wouldn´t give any new details on the case. The Salvadorans, he said, ¨were arrested for being illegally present in the U.S., but ICE is confident they were either gang members or gang associates.¨



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The crackdown on the undocumented disrupts a long-standing status quo in which Latin American immigrants are allowed to remain in the U.S. because they do unpleasant work for little pay and because it is impossible to capture them all.

According to Carstens and Shah, the crackdown can be traced back at least to 1996, when Congress passed a tough immigration reform law.

The creation of Operation Community Shield might be easier to understand if gang violence were still a major problem in the United States. But Shah´s organization points out that violence by perceived gang members dropped 73 percent between 1994 and 2003, according to a study by the Justice Policy Institute.



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Among the several hundred immigrants from various Latin American countries who cheered at Monday´s ¨A Day Without Immigrants¨ rally in Bushnell Park, a few waved small Salvadoran flags.

Juan Cordoba, 22, a cook who said he works at Restaurant Bricco in West Hartford, stood with a few fellow Salvadorans. He´d heard about the deportations from East Hartford, but said he didn´t think there were any MS-13 members around Hartford. ¨I hear there´s a lot of those in Boston,¨ he said, in imperfect but understandable English.

Cordoba said the combination of a path toward citizenship and tighter border controls that President Bush is pushing for is ¨good and not good.¨ He has temporary protected status, which expires in two months. As the national debate over immigration policy rages, Cordoba said he just doesn´t want the immigrant population demonized by those skeptical of the immigrants´ demands.

¨The people around me, we try to work and show not to be criminals and parasites on this country,¨ he said. ¨Not everybody does bad things. I wish they could put [out] the good things we do too.¨


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