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Residents angry over immigrant roundups
Federal customs agents use questionable practices to gather and deport illegals in the area


By Tom Lochner
Article Last Updated: 01/29/2007 06:48:26 AM PST


RICHMOND RESIDENT Patricia Cadena gives an emotional testimony of when four people of her extended family were taken from their home in San Pablo and deported to Mexico. Several hundred people packed St. Mark's Church gymnasium in Richmond on Sunday for a forum on immigrants rights. (JOANNA JHANDA -- MediaNews staff)Several hundred immigrants and their supporters Sunday denounced a recent wave of arrests and deportations of immigrants in the East Bay as a violation of basic human rights.
"I do not want our residents to live under terror," said Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin. That's how "hundreds of thousands of families" have lived, she said, since Immigration and Customs Enforcement began a nationwide push in immigrant communities, including Richmond, San Pablo and Concord.

The National Fugitive Operations Program targets immigrants with deportation orders, especially those who have committed crimes, ICE spokeswoman Lori Haley has said.

Church leaders and immigrant advocacy groups say ICE violates its own rules by rounding up and swiftly deporting people who are not on the list. They complain ICE trawls for immigrants around schools and Latino markets. Haley said agents have the discretion to check out people not on the ICE list.

Critics also complain about ICE agents' use of the word "police" to gain access to homes, saying it undermines immigrants' trust in local police. Haley defended the practice, saying ICE agents are federal police.

McLaughlin spoke at an immigration forum at St. Mark Catholic Church hosted by Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization. Other speakers included Richmond council members Ludmyrna Lopez, John Marquez and Tony Thurmond; San Pablo council members Genoveva Garcia Calloway and Leonard McNeil; Pinole Mayor


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Maria Alegria; West Contra Costa schools official Kaye Burnside; an aide to Rep. George Miller, Barbara Johnson; lawyer Mark Silverman; and the Rev. Ramiro Flores, St. Mark's pastor, who prayed for respect for immigrants' dignity.
Several people testified about encounters with ICE, among them Maria "Chuy" Ramos, whose daughter, 17, and son, 21, were arrested at home by ICE agents ostensibly targeting someone else. Ramos saidimmigrants who do work no one else wants to do should not be denied human rights.

"For whom are the rights?" she asked. "For those who have the money? For those who have the power?"

Patricia Cadena said armed people shouting "police" took away her brother, niece, two nephews and a family friend from their San Pablo apartment Dec. 18. The niece, 17-year-old Richmond High School senior Montserrat Cadena, eventually was released and is seeking permission to stay in the country to complete her studies, her aunt said.

The others — Jesus Cadena and his sons Hugo, 28, and Jesus Jr., 27, and another man she knows only as Rogelio — were deported to Mexico two weeks later, Patricia Cadena said.

"They didn't take the mom because she had just left for work," Cadena said.

Her story resembles others around the East Bay, but with a twist: The officers who shouted "police" were just that, San Pablo police officers, according to Cadena.

No San Pablo police official could be reached for comment late Sunday.

Cadena said there previously had been some kind of dispute between her brother's family and some neighbors, and she believes that is what brought police to the apartment. The four men were taken to the county jail in Martinez but were never charged with any crime, Cadena said, and ICE eventually stepped in.

Details of Cadena's story could not be verified Sunday.

McNeil said he does not know if San Pablo has a policy similar to Richmond's that bars local police from acting in tandem with ICE in most cases, but that if not, he would work toward one.

Immigration is a sensitive topic in San Pablo, where Mayor Paul Morris takes a tough stand on illegal immigration. In the campaign leading to his re-election to the council in November, Morris said illegal immigration is among the most serious problems facing the nation and that San Pablo police should enforce federal immigration laws.

McNeil took the historical perspective, thanking Mexicans for opposing a spread of slavery to their country, which he cited as an issue in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. And during the 1930s, he noted, 2 million Mexicans were rounded up and deported, "much as is happening now."

McLaughlin blamed American economic and military policies for "a fair share" of the poverty and war in the world. "Our government shares in the responsibility for the forced migration for survival that has brought so many people here."

Richmond council members said they would introduce a resolution Feb. 6 for the city to write a letter to federal authorities seeking an end to ICE's current operation and its methods.

McNeil and Calloway urged residents to pressure the San Pablo council to do likewise. Pinole's Alegria said, "This is a struggle for basic human rights."

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