Thread: The ICE men cometh for illegal immigrants

http://www.dailyherald.com/story.asp?id=240718


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The ICE men cometh for illegal immigrants
Arrests and deportations quietly take place day by day in Chicago, suburbs

BY TARA MALONE
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Friday, October 20, 2006

They scatter around the home of an Aurora man considered armed, dangerous and adept at eluding arrest.

Federal officers slide into shadows as they inch closer.

The sleepy suburban street slowly wakes.

A light flicks on inside the white house where an American flag hangs in the window. Seconds become minutes. A back door opens.

A half-awake man heads to work, as he does every morning around this time - and walks into a federal net a year in the making.


U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials lead Marek Ludzia, 43, away from his Aurora home after he was arrested before dawn as part of a four-day deportation offensive. He will be sent home to Poland during the coming weeks. (Paul Beaty/Daily Herald)
View slide show



Just before 6 a.m., three officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement frisk him, handcuff him and - mindful of charges he illegally carried a gun - frisk him again.

Hours of investigation come down to mere minutes.

There are no raised voices.

There are no bright lights.

The fiancee showering for work and 7-year-old boy sleeping inside know nothing of what's happening in the driveway.

Rodolfo Lopez-Gonzalez - Rudy, to his friends - climbs into a government van taking him away from the town he came to as a child the same age as his U.S.-born son is now.

He doesn't look back.

Ten years after a federal judge first ordered his deportation, Lopez-Gonzalez is tired of running.

For all the furor surrounding immigrants who live here illegally, the effort to deport one of them on this rainy morning is strikingly silent.

Return to sender

Federal officials this week netted 16 immigrants living illegally in Chicago and the suburbs.

These are two of their stories. They shine a light on enforcement efforts that unfold across the region every day - discreetly, quietly and far away from the front page and nightly newscast.

The four-day raid that ended Thursday is the latest chapter in an ongoing national push to root out those who broke laws beyond the most obvious - coming here illegally and defying a judge's order to leave.

An estimated 17,000 such fugitives live in Illinois and the surrounding five states.

Efforts to find them occur 365 days a year. Yet twice during the past six months, federal deportation officials marshaled their manpower and resources for an intensive weeklong push.

They call the effort Operation Return to Sender.

"We're going after the ones who present the greatest threat to public safety," says Louie Zamora, who heads fugitive operations in the Chicago region.

Eight officers routinely handle deportations in the Chicago area. Together, they represent two of 50 such teams working nationwide since the U.S. Department of Homeland Security replaced Immigration and Naturalization Services in 2003 - a move that coupled immigration and customs enforcement.

This week's flexing of federal authority - the second local push since Operation Return to Sender began May 26 - recruits officers from all corners of immigration enforcement for a single purpose.

"We kind of shift our priorities for a few days and get everybody out to do this," Zamora says as he steers his SUV past payday loan shops, lavanderias and Aurora's Paramount Theatre en route to another early-morning arrest. "It's teams going out after individuals who have been ordered deported or who have criminal histories. They would be our priority."

From August through last October, 5,511 undocumented workers in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Kansas and Missouri were sent home. A reported 153,026 deportations occurred nationwide during the same 11 months.

Sharpened focus

They come from eight countries. They live in Chicago, Aurora, Mundelein, Naperville and Wheeling.

Twelve of the 16 illegal immigrants arrested this week committed crimes that range from retail theft to armed battery and fraud.

All dodged their deportation orders. In some cases, for years.

Such defiance landed them at the forefront of federal enforcement efforts. Basic math explains why.

An estimated 520,000 immigrants live illegally in Illinois, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Eight federal deportation officers are charged with determining who among them just in the Chicago region has had their day in court.

Illegal immigrants become immigrant fugitives - as federal officials term them - once they've come before a judge, gone through an appeal and defied a final order of deportation. Those who've committed crimes jump to the head of the priority line.

"I understand as far as this being the greatest country in the world and the reason they are coming here. I understand that," says Zamora, whose parents immigrated from Mexico as children. "But if you violate the laws of the country, I have no problem deporting somebody back to their home country."

Lopez-Gonzalez fits the bill.

His litany of charges spans eight years. He was arrested twice for illegally carrying a weapon, and once each for robbery, property damage and the charge that sent him to state prison for two years: aggravated battery with a weapon.

"He probably has one of the most extensive criminal histories in the whole operation, actually," deportation officer M. McKinney says, minutes after apprehending Lopez-Gonzalez.

Such a background blocked his door to U.S. citizenship. That he's spent 22 of his 30 years in this country matters little.

Lopez-Gonzalez left Mexico City with his family in January 1985, a year before Congress backed the Immigration and Control Act that granted citizenship to 2.7 million immigrants who'd settled here illegally.

In February 1996, Lopez-Gonzalez took the first step to becoming a citizen - he got his legal permanent residency. Six months later, he lost it.

An arrest for carrying a gun submarined his chance at legalization.

He then was introduced to federal immigration officials charged with deporting him and others who shortcut the legal system.

Years of legal jockeying ensued as Lopez-Gonzalez cycled through the federal immigration system.

In February 2002, it came to a head. The Board of Immigration Appeals denied his request. Nine months later, Lopez-Gonzalez again was ordered to be deported.

The demand went unanswered. Lopez-Gonzalez couldn't comply. He was sitting in Shawnee Correctional Facility at the time for aggravated battery with a weapon stemming from a bar fight.

When he had completed his sentence, he walked free, illustrating a disconnect in the overlap between enforcement agencies.

Local jails routinely notify deportation officials about foreign criminals doing time. When they know. Some prisons do not probe inmates' immigration status. And illegal immigrants raised and educated in this country don't always trigger an alarm, authorities say.

"They could pass through the system and no one would know it," ICE spokeswoman Gail Montenegro says. "We can't be at every single jail in a six-state area. ... We focus on the choke points, the larger intakes."

This week's operation takes a similar tact.

Seven federal agents wearing Kevlar vests, guns and radios pinpointed Aurora for one reason: Lopez-Gonzalez.

They knew his history.

They knew his routine.

Despite two failed attempts, they knew he was within reach.

And so they broadened the target. They checked for others in the neighborhood who also had disregarded deportation orders. Over four days, three more Aurora residents were taken.

Marek Ludzia was one of them.

When the time comes

A knock shatters the predawn silence.

"Police, we need to talk to you. Police, open the door."

The white ranch house doesn't stir as federal officers surround a home on Aurora's far-southeast side.

It's not yet 5 a.m.

Ludzia hasn't left for work. His van is parked outside.

Another knock sounds.

An officer calls Ludzia's phone: "Marek, you need to open the door. We're outside the residence and we need to talk to you."

Another knock.

Shuttered windows remain dark.

"Open the door. Police. Open the door."

A light flashes in the foyer. The front door opens slowly.

A tired-looking Ludzia peers out. The 43-year-old Polish man arrested last year for shoplifting in South Elgin and Bolingbrook wears rumpled black boxer shorts and a tank top.

"Marek, we have a warrant for your arrest. Is Margaret here?" McKinney asks, referring to Ludzia's wife. "She's going to have to get you pants, a shirt and some shoes."

Seconds later, Ludzia is handcuffed and put on a bench near the front door.

"Immigration?" Ludzia asks in stilted English.

"Yes, immigration," McKinney says, speaking slowly now. "We have a warrant for your arrest."

Ludzia's first deportation order came in September 2004. He appealed, to no avail. And in July - nine years after he came here on a visitor's visa - Ludzia was told to surrender to federal officials. He didn't.

And so, five armed officers now crowd his front door.

Wearing a pink robe, Margaret Ludzia hustles from the bedroom with clothes for her husband. An officer loops a belt through the jeans and guides a handcuffed Ludzia into them.

"Do you have any medication?" McKinney asks.

Margaret brings his prescription for high blood pressure.

Minutes after federal officials first knocked, Ludzia leaves his suburban home in the same van Lopez-Gonzalez climbed into a day earlier.

They pull away. Silence blankets the neighborhood once more.

'Tired of running'

He'd been waiting.

Lopez-Gonzalez knew they'd come for him. He just hoped it wouldn't be today.

Little signs warned him. An unfamiliar Durango parked outside. A clean-shaven man he'd spotted watching him days before.

He talks of his suspicions during an interview in a Broadview booking station shortly after his arrest. He's traded jeans and a black-hooded coat for a standard-issue jumpsuit stamped "INS."

"Oh yeah, I knew they were coming," Lopez-Gonzalez says quietly with a shrug and a shake of his head. "In a way, I was tired of running."

The race left him exhausted, more than bitter. He knows he's to blame.

A brother who crossed with him in 1985 now is a U.S. citizen. His mother is next in line.

"Maybe if I hadn't gotten into trouble, I would have been a citizen, too. It's kind of my fault too," Lopez-Gonzalez says.

That he soon will board a government-chartered flight for Mexico - a country he left more than two decades ago - unsettles him.

He worries about paying the mortgage on his home.

He fears leaving his fiancee and son, young Rudy.

And he wonders how to survive in a country where his only connection is a handful of uncles and cousins he's never met.

"I'll be lost, I guess," Lopez-Gonzalez says.

That he could turn around and slip into the country illegally is a possibility he's considered - along with the up to 20-year jail term if he's caught.

"I'm not that young. I can't be sitting in jail for five years. And if they give you more ...," he says, again shaking his head with a smile.

Three hours after federal officials nabbed him, his mood slides from regret to shock to chagrin. The shift mirrors a philosophy tattooed on his right biceps: Smile now. Cry later.

"If I want to come back, I'll come back," Lopez-Gonzalez says in the end. "But I want to come back the right way. I don't want to be running the rest of my life."

But the odds he'll gain legal entry are extremely slim. And if he does try to outrun official channels, federal authorities will be waiting.

"They know," Zamora says. "They know why we are there."


View slide show




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

dailyherald.com

Shame they didn't get Elvira while they were in this neck of the woods.

ICE is on the job? It's about time!

I've been waiting until I saw some action before I called ICE about my illegal mexican neighbors but now that I know ICE is actually working in the Chicago area I will get my facts written down and give them a jingle.

Very cool to see some of them heading back from whence they came.

Enforce our Laws!

Originally Posted by Nomoremex

I've been waiting until I saw some action before I called ICE about my illegal mexican neighbors but now that I know ICE is actually working in the Chicago area I will get my facts written down and give them a jingle.

Very cool to see some of them heading back from whence they came.

Enforce our Laws!

Go for it Nomoremex and let us know what happens please

Wish they would cometh to Magnolia, Texas !!!!!!!!