This is the most interesting thing I've read in a long time. The sad thing
about it, you can see it coming.
I have always heard about this democracy countdown. It is interesting to see
it in print. God help us, not that we deserve it.
How Long Do We Have?
About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution
in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of
Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some
2,000 years earlier:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a
permanent form of government."
"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover
they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."
"From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who
promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that
every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is
always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of
history, has been about 200 years"
"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the
following sequence:
1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. from dependence back into bondage"
Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul,
Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000
Presidential election:
Number of States won by: Democrats: 19 Republicans: 29
Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million Republicans: 143
million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2
Republicans: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won
was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country.
Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in
government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government
welfare..." Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the
"complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy,
with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached
the "governmental dependency" phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal
invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA
in fewer than five years.
If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message. If you
are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at
stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.
WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE,
ONLY BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE
Monday, June 23, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
On Singing OUR National Anthem In Spanish...
On singing OUR National Anthem in Spanish:
I'm sorry but after hearing they want to sing OUR National Anthem in Spanish---Enough is too much!
NEVER did they sing it in Italian, Japanese, Polish, Irish-Celtic, German, Portuguese, Greek, French, or ANY other language because of immigration.
It was written by Francis Scott Key and should be sung word for word the way it was written. The news broadcasts gave a translation that's NOT even close.
THIS IS MY COUNTRY!
Do YOU sing MY National Anthem in YOUR COUNTRY IN ENGLISH?!
And, because I make this statement DOES NOT mean I'm against immigration!!!
YOU ARE WELCOME HERE IN MY COUNTRY.
Welcome to come through like EVERYONE else has.
Get a sponsor!
Get a place to lay your head!
Get a job!
Live by OUR rules!
Pay your taxes!
AND
LEARN THE LANGUAGE
LIKE ALL OTHER IMMIGRANTS HAVE IN THE PAST!!!
ALSO, PLEASE DON'T DEMAND WE HAND OVER OUR LIFETIME SAVINGS OF SOCIAL SECURITY FUNDS TO MAKE UP FOR "YOUR" LOSSES.
If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone, then YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!
When will AMERICANS STOP giving away THEIR RIGHTS?!
We've gone so far the other way, bent over backwards not to offend anyone.
But, it seems no one cares about the AMERICAN being offended!
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!
I'm sorry but after hearing they want to sing OUR National Anthem in Spanish---Enough is too much!
NEVER did they sing it in Italian, Japanese, Polish, Irish-Celtic, German, Portuguese, Greek, French, or ANY other language because of immigration.
It was written by Francis Scott Key and should be sung word for word the way it was written. The news broadcasts gave a translation that's NOT even close.
THIS IS MY COUNTRY!
Do YOU sing MY National Anthem in YOUR COUNTRY IN ENGLISH?!
And, because I make this statement DOES NOT mean I'm against immigration!!!
YOU ARE WELCOME HERE IN MY COUNTRY.
Welcome to come through like EVERYONE else has.
Get a sponsor!
Get a place to lay your head!
Get a job!
Live by OUR rules!
Pay your taxes!
AND
LEARN THE LANGUAGE
LIKE ALL OTHER IMMIGRANTS HAVE IN THE PAST!!!
ALSO, PLEASE DON'T DEMAND WE HAND OVER OUR LIFETIME SAVINGS OF SOCIAL SECURITY FUNDS TO MAKE UP FOR "YOUR" LOSSES.
If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone, then YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!
When will AMERICANS STOP giving away THEIR RIGHTS?!
We've gone so far the other way, bent over backwards not to offend anyone.
But, it seems no one cares about the AMERICAN being offended!
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Human smugglers' money trail cuts across Arizona border...
Human smugglers' money trail cuts across Arizona border
By Mark Flatten
The Associated Press, May 25, 2008
A truck loaded with 10 illegal immigrants is worth about $25,000 to a human smuggling organization. A successful operation can move three or four truckloads of immigrants from the Mexican border to metro Phoenix every day.
A drop house with 50 immigrants locked inside represents about $125,000 worth of cargo.
With numbers like those, it doesn't take long to add up to the estimated $2.5 billion smugglers generate annually by moving human cargo through Arizona. That figure, which comes from court records, only counts the upfront costs to the immigrants, which typically run about $2,500 a head.
So much cash is generated by human smugglers that one of the toughest parts of running their business is moving the money, according to a series of police affidavits related to state efforts to seize the illicit profits.
Beyond prosecuting hundreds of people involved in human smuggling rings on criminal charges, police and prosecutors are going after the money generated by the criminal organizations.
The Arizona Financial Crimes Task Force, made up of agents from federal, state and local agencies, has seized about $17 million in wire transfers believed to be linked to the human smuggling trade since the force was created in 2000. The task force has also brought criminal charges against the owners and employees of several car dealerships and travel agencies that, according to the indictments, supplied smugglers with vehicles and airline tickets to move the migrants through Arizona.
'What you have is a situation where there is a great deal of money available and the competition becomes more fierce, and that leads to greater levels of sophistication,' said Mesa police Chief George Gascon. 'Anybody that thinks that we in policing are really going to be able to put a dent in this whole thing is not understanding the economic forces at work.'
Some of the seizures made by the task force are being challenged in a federal court case, which alleges state prosecutors have grabbed millions of dollars in legitimate transactions from innocent people trying to pay their bills or send cash to family members.
Matthew Piers, a Chicago lawyer who filed a federal lawsuit in 2006 on behalf of several people whose money transfers were impounded, said hundreds of such cases have been documented by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
'We fully acknowledge that human smuggling and drug smuggling on the Mexico-Arizona border is a very serious problem well worth the attention of law enforcement,' Piers said. 'Our concern is how you do it and whether innocent people are being injured in the process. We have little doubt that is happening.'
Smuggling fees are due when immigrants arrive at a drop house, a place in metro Phoenix where those who just crossed the border are temporarily stashed. The drop house operator will telephone the migrant's sponsor, someone who has agreed to come up with the smuggling fee, with instructions on how to pay. Once the money is received, the immigrant is let go or moved to his or her final destination.
The method favored by smugglers is to use legitimate wire services such as Western Union and other companies that transfer cash across state lines and international borders, according to Daniel Kelly of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Kelly is part of the financial crimes task force.
As recently as five years ago, the human smugglers openly collected their fees by showing up at a local Western Union office or another wire service outlet and simply picking up the money, according to Kelly.
Payments to a single collector sometimes reached $70,000 per day.
The smugglers adapted when police started blocking those transfers and seizing the payments.
The latest tactic used by human smugglers is called 'triangulation' by the financial crimes task force. Instead of sending the money directly to the drop house operators where the immigrants are being kept, the sponsors wire it directly to smugglers in northern Sonora.
When the payment is received in Mexico, the drop house operator is contacted by phone and the immigrant is released.
An analysis done in February 2006 showed that in a two-month period, about $28 million in wire transfers were sent from the United States to 201 Western Union stores in Sonora, Mexico.
When police interviewed the people sending the money, many admitted they were sponsors paying the smuggling debts of family or friends.
Western Union and other money transmitters have long cooperated with the state's efforts to identify and seize payments connected to human and drug smuggling in Arizona, said Sherry Johnson, a company spokeswoman.
But the company balked when Attorney General Terry Goddard began demanding detailed records of every wire transfer of $300 or more from anywhere in the world into Sonora. Last year, the Arizona Court of Appeals sided with the company, concluding Goddard's request was too broad, in part because it demanded information on money transfers neither sent nor received in Arizona.
'Western Union supports the legitimate law enforcement needs of the state of Arizona,' Johnson said. 'But at a certain point, they were requesting information about customers that didn't touch the state of Arizona. We started hearing from customers that their funds had been seized and that they were having difficulty getting any kind of resolution to it.'
With the money now going to Mexico, the challenge for human smugglers has become getting money into the United States so that people on the Arizona side of the operation can get paid, according to Goddard, whose office handles the legal work associated with the seizures of smuggling payments.
'We have made the process more difficult,' Goddard said. 'It was just dead easy in the past to simply walk into Western Union and pick up all the money you needed for all of the people that have been smuggled. Now you've got to get cash across the American border. And there are going to be misses in the process. There are going to be seizures and there is going to be disruption.'
http://www.examiner.com/a-1408353~Human_smugglers_
_money_trail_cuts_across_Arizona_border.html
By Mark Flatten
The Associated Press, May 25, 2008
A truck loaded with 10 illegal immigrants is worth about $25,000 to a human smuggling organization. A successful operation can move three or four truckloads of immigrants from the Mexican border to metro Phoenix every day.
A drop house with 50 immigrants locked inside represents about $125,000 worth of cargo.
With numbers like those, it doesn't take long to add up to the estimated $2.5 billion smugglers generate annually by moving human cargo through Arizona. That figure, which comes from court records, only counts the upfront costs to the immigrants, which typically run about $2,500 a head.
So much cash is generated by human smugglers that one of the toughest parts of running their business is moving the money, according to a series of police affidavits related to state efforts to seize the illicit profits.
Beyond prosecuting hundreds of people involved in human smuggling rings on criminal charges, police and prosecutors are going after the money generated by the criminal organizations.
The Arizona Financial Crimes Task Force, made up of agents from federal, state and local agencies, has seized about $17 million in wire transfers believed to be linked to the human smuggling trade since the force was created in 2000. The task force has also brought criminal charges against the owners and employees of several car dealerships and travel agencies that, according to the indictments, supplied smugglers with vehicles and airline tickets to move the migrants through Arizona.
'What you have is a situation where there is a great deal of money available and the competition becomes more fierce, and that leads to greater levels of sophistication,' said Mesa police Chief George Gascon. 'Anybody that thinks that we in policing are really going to be able to put a dent in this whole thing is not understanding the economic forces at work.'
Some of the seizures made by the task force are being challenged in a federal court case, which alleges state prosecutors have grabbed millions of dollars in legitimate transactions from innocent people trying to pay their bills or send cash to family members.
Matthew Piers, a Chicago lawyer who filed a federal lawsuit in 2006 on behalf of several people whose money transfers were impounded, said hundreds of such cases have been documented by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
'We fully acknowledge that human smuggling and drug smuggling on the Mexico-Arizona border is a very serious problem well worth the attention of law enforcement,' Piers said. 'Our concern is how you do it and whether innocent people are being injured in the process. We have little doubt that is happening.'
Smuggling fees are due when immigrants arrive at a drop house, a place in metro Phoenix where those who just crossed the border are temporarily stashed. The drop house operator will telephone the migrant's sponsor, someone who has agreed to come up with the smuggling fee, with instructions on how to pay. Once the money is received, the immigrant is let go or moved to his or her final destination.
The method favored by smugglers is to use legitimate wire services such as Western Union and other companies that transfer cash across state lines and international borders, according to Daniel Kelly of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Kelly is part of the financial crimes task force.
As recently as five years ago, the human smugglers openly collected their fees by showing up at a local Western Union office or another wire service outlet and simply picking up the money, according to Kelly.
Payments to a single collector sometimes reached $70,000 per day.
The smugglers adapted when police started blocking those transfers and seizing the payments.
The latest tactic used by human smugglers is called 'triangulation' by the financial crimes task force. Instead of sending the money directly to the drop house operators where the immigrants are being kept, the sponsors wire it directly to smugglers in northern Sonora.
When the payment is received in Mexico, the drop house operator is contacted by phone and the immigrant is released.
An analysis done in February 2006 showed that in a two-month period, about $28 million in wire transfers were sent from the United States to 201 Western Union stores in Sonora, Mexico.
When police interviewed the people sending the money, many admitted they were sponsors paying the smuggling debts of family or friends.
Western Union and other money transmitters have long cooperated with the state's efforts to identify and seize payments connected to human and drug smuggling in Arizona, said Sherry Johnson, a company spokeswoman.
But the company balked when Attorney General Terry Goddard began demanding detailed records of every wire transfer of $300 or more from anywhere in the world into Sonora. Last year, the Arizona Court of Appeals sided with the company, concluding Goddard's request was too broad, in part because it demanded information on money transfers neither sent nor received in Arizona.
'Western Union supports the legitimate law enforcement needs of the state of Arizona,' Johnson said. 'But at a certain point, they were requesting information about customers that didn't touch the state of Arizona. We started hearing from customers that their funds had been seized and that they were having difficulty getting any kind of resolution to it.'
With the money now going to Mexico, the challenge for human smugglers has become getting money into the United States so that people on the Arizona side of the operation can get paid, according to Goddard, whose office handles the legal work associated with the seizures of smuggling payments.
'We have made the process more difficult,' Goddard said. 'It was just dead easy in the past to simply walk into Western Union and pick up all the money you needed for all of the people that have been smuggled. Now you've got to get cash across the American border. And there are going to be misses in the process. There are going to be seizures and there is going to be disruption.'
http://www.examiner.com/a-1408353~Human_smugglers_
_money_trail_cuts_across_Arizona_border.html
Immigrants in uniform now citizens...
Immigrants in uniform now citizens
By Vanessa Bauza
The Chicago Tribune, May 24, 2008
Former Army Sgt. Kevin Cajas served two tours in Iraq, where half a dozen of his friends died in combat and countless others were wounded. Yet it never crossed his mind that he was risking his life for a country that had yet to embrace him as one of its own.
'What mattered was that I was a soldier,' Cajas, 27, said, 'and we had a mission.'
On Friday, Cajas, a native of Guatemala, was sworn in as a U.S. citizen alongside 29 other immigrant service members, known as 'green card warriors,' during a naturalization ceremony at Chicago's Pritzker Military Library.
'From this day forward you defend our Constitution not just as soldiers, but as citizens,' keynote speaker Brig. Gen. Darren McDew said.
'From the revolution onward, our military has been comprised of men and women, many of whom were not born here, who none the less felt allegiance to the values of the American spirit.'
They new citizens came from 14 countries and represented all five branches of the military. They wore Navy dress whites and Army camouflage fatigues. Some had enlisted to earn money for college or to secure a stable future. Others were compelled by patriotism.
For Cajas, who was honorably discharged from the Army in 2006 after enlisting in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the crisp, new naturalization certificate was the ticket to a political voice.
'That piece of paper is going to allow me to vote,' he said. 'That's probably the most exciting thing.'
Sgt. Isaura Guerrero-Perez, 25, wiped tears from her eyes after the ceremony. A Mexican immigrant, she grew up in Carpentersville and enlisted in the Army Reserve to help pay for college.
'I'm really proud of being here, of being a citizen, of wearing the uniform,' said Guerrero-Perez, who is working on a master's degree in accounting at Northern Illinois University.
Military citizenship ceremonies have taken place around the country and the world, with more than 39,000 immigrant service members naturalized since 2001. The government also has naturalized 115 immigrants who died in combat.
Immigrants must be permanent legal residents, or green card holders, to join the military. More than 65,000 foreign-born service members are in the armed forces. They represent about 5 percent of all active duty personnel, according to a report released this month by the Migration Policy Institute.
A 2002 executive order gave immigrants in the military a fast track to citizenship, allowing those who served after Sept. 11 to apply immediately, rather than waiting three years. They must still fulfill requirements such as background checks and fingerprinting, but military petitions are flagged and moved to the front of the line at a special processing center.
Military personnel are assigned to guide immigrants through the often unwieldy application process. Sgt. Daniel Perez, one of the organizers of Friday's ceremony, helped hundreds of soldiers in Iraq apply for their citizenship.
'They have grown up seeing their parents work hard to make a better life,' said Perez, 31, of Blue Island. 'One way to give back to the country that has accepted your family is to serve in the military.'
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi
-immig_militarymay24,0,5675703.story
By Vanessa Bauza
The Chicago Tribune, May 24, 2008
Former Army Sgt. Kevin Cajas served two tours in Iraq, where half a dozen of his friends died in combat and countless others were wounded. Yet it never crossed his mind that he was risking his life for a country that had yet to embrace him as one of its own.
'What mattered was that I was a soldier,' Cajas, 27, said, 'and we had a mission.'
On Friday, Cajas, a native of Guatemala, was sworn in as a U.S. citizen alongside 29 other immigrant service members, known as 'green card warriors,' during a naturalization ceremony at Chicago's Pritzker Military Library.
'From this day forward you defend our Constitution not just as soldiers, but as citizens,' keynote speaker Brig. Gen. Darren McDew said.
'From the revolution onward, our military has been comprised of men and women, many of whom were not born here, who none the less felt allegiance to the values of the American spirit.'
They new citizens came from 14 countries and represented all five branches of the military. They wore Navy dress whites and Army camouflage fatigues. Some had enlisted to earn money for college or to secure a stable future. Others were compelled by patriotism.
For Cajas, who was honorably discharged from the Army in 2006 after enlisting in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the crisp, new naturalization certificate was the ticket to a political voice.
'That piece of paper is going to allow me to vote,' he said. 'That's probably the most exciting thing.'
Sgt. Isaura Guerrero-Perez, 25, wiped tears from her eyes after the ceremony. A Mexican immigrant, she grew up in Carpentersville and enlisted in the Army Reserve to help pay for college.
'I'm really proud of being here, of being a citizen, of wearing the uniform,' said Guerrero-Perez, who is working on a master's degree in accounting at Northern Illinois University.
Military citizenship ceremonies have taken place around the country and the world, with more than 39,000 immigrant service members naturalized since 2001. The government also has naturalized 115 immigrants who died in combat.
Immigrants must be permanent legal residents, or green card holders, to join the military. More than 65,000 foreign-born service members are in the armed forces. They represent about 5 percent of all active duty personnel, according to a report released this month by the Migration Policy Institute.
A 2002 executive order gave immigrants in the military a fast track to citizenship, allowing those who served after Sept. 11 to apply immediately, rather than waiting three years. They must still fulfill requirements such as background checks and fingerprinting, but military petitions are flagged and moved to the front of the line at a special processing center.
Military personnel are assigned to guide immigrants through the often unwieldy application process. Sgt. Daniel Perez, one of the organizers of Friday's ceremony, helped hundreds of soldiers in Iraq apply for their citizenship.
'They have grown up seeing their parents work hard to make a better life,' said Perez, 31, of Blue Island. 'One way to give back to the country that has accepted your family is to serve in the military.'
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi
-immig_militarymay24,0,5675703.story
Coping with threat of deportation...
Coping with threat of deportation
Advocates are urging illegal aliens to make plans for issues such as bail, lawyers and child caretakers.
By Paloma Esquivel
Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2008
Patricia Riso, a mother of two, has been in the United States illegally for more than 30 years. And although she has seen immigration authorities arrest co-workers at the factory where she sews garments, she has never been targeted and never dwelt on the possibility of deportation.
But after seeing TV reports of recent immigration raids, Riso is asking questions she previously avoided: Who would care for her children -- U.S. citizens -- if she were deported? And what about rent, bills and food for her children?
'We have to plan for these things so that a bad thing doesn't become worse,' she said after attending a workshop that helps parents make family plans in case of deportation.
Work-site arrests of illegal immigrants have increased tenfold nationwide to nearly 5,000 last year, according to the federal government. Images of the raids have been splashed on television news reports and on the front pages of Spanish-language newspapers around the country.
The jump has led some illegal immigrant parents such as Riso to reconsider lackadaisical attitudes toward deportation.
Some advocates are asking immigrant families, many of which include at least one U.S. citizen, to make emergency plans for rent, bail and lawyers. Others are asking them to write certified letters designating caretakers for their U.S.-born children.
'People don't want to think about these things; they think it's never going to happen to them, but they need to prepare,' said Antonio Bernabe of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. 'It's like having a disaster plan.
'We save money to buy a big-screen television, to send to our home countries or to build a house,' he said. 'But we never save money in case we are deported.'
Some people who favor more immigration controls say the fact that people are preparing for deportation proves that increased enforcement is a powerful deterrent.
'When you show that you're going to enforce the law, however minimally, people understand that,' said Rick Oltman, spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization, a group that favors sharp reductions in all immigration. 'The fact that they're making plans shows that they understand that . . . and hopefully will communicate that to family and friends in their home country.'
At an immigrant rights workshop at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church near USC, immigrant organizer Bernabe urged Riso and other parents to set aside money to be used in case they are picked up in an immigration raid.
Bail for illegal immigrants can cost about $1,500, payable in full, Bernabe said.
'There are no discounts.'
For those who fight deportation, attorney fees can run from $2,000 to $5,000, he said.
For Walter, a construction worker who attended the workshop with his wife, teenage daughter and 1-year-old son, the message was stark.
'The rent. Who is going to pay the rent?' he asked.
These are questions he would rather not think about, Walter said. He asked that his last name not be used because he is an illegal immigrant.
'If I thought about the possibility of being deported every day, it would make me sick,' Walter said. He also wondered what would happen to his children, the youngest of whom is a U.S. citizen.
In most cases, there are three options for dealing with children of deportees, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Parents can take children with them -- though the government usually will not pay for the trip. They can designate a caretaker in the United States; or, in the few cases in which a parent does not designate someone, the customs agency will call local social services.
But, after a few highly publicized work-site raids in which some adolescents were left to fend for themselves with little adult supervision while their parents were held in detention, some parents fear that their children might be left alone.
In a small community room behind Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights on a recent Friday, Matilde, 38, sat waiting to put her plan in writing. She asked that her last name not be published because she is an illegal immigrant. Her 5-year-old son, in a gray Spider-Man sweat shirt, fiddled with a pair of sunglasses next to her.
Organizer Rita Chairez called them into her office and showed Matilde a form letter. It asks parents to name a temporary guardian for their children in case they are arrested in a raid, she said. Parents should give a copy to their children's school, keep one at home and leave another with the designated guardian. Chairez compared it to having a will.
'In case of any emergency, I give temporary custody of my children to?' she paused. 'Who are you giving custody to?'
'My sister,' Matilde said.
After she answered all the questions on the form, Matilde returned to the community room and waited to sign it in front of a notary. She said she has been in the U.S. for 15 years. Her two children were born here and are 'accustomed to life in the United States.'
Matilde had never talked about the possibility of deportation with her children but she would share the plan with her 11-year-old daughter later that day, she said.
If anything happens, the children would stay indefinitely with an aunt who is in the country legally, she said.
'If one day I don't come back home, I don't want them to get scared,' Matilde said.
Walter, who attended the workshop near USC, hasn't decided what to do with his children. But he said he would start preparing, even if it's just by saving 'little by little, just in case that moment does come. Maybe $10, $15, $20 every paycheck.'
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-letters27-
2008may27,0,7438900.story
Advocates are urging illegal aliens to make plans for issues such as bail, lawyers and child caretakers.
By Paloma Esquivel
Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2008
Patricia Riso, a mother of two, has been in the United States illegally for more than 30 years. And although she has seen immigration authorities arrest co-workers at the factory where she sews garments, she has never been targeted and never dwelt on the possibility of deportation.
But after seeing TV reports of recent immigration raids, Riso is asking questions she previously avoided: Who would care for her children -- U.S. citizens -- if she were deported? And what about rent, bills and food for her children?
'We have to plan for these things so that a bad thing doesn't become worse,' she said after attending a workshop that helps parents make family plans in case of deportation.
Work-site arrests of illegal immigrants have increased tenfold nationwide to nearly 5,000 last year, according to the federal government. Images of the raids have been splashed on television news reports and on the front pages of Spanish-language newspapers around the country.
The jump has led some illegal immigrant parents such as Riso to reconsider lackadaisical attitudes toward deportation.
Some advocates are asking immigrant families, many of which include at least one U.S. citizen, to make emergency plans for rent, bail and lawyers. Others are asking them to write certified letters designating caretakers for their U.S.-born children.
'People don't want to think about these things; they think it's never going to happen to them, but they need to prepare,' said Antonio Bernabe of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. 'It's like having a disaster plan.
'We save money to buy a big-screen television, to send to our home countries or to build a house,' he said. 'But we never save money in case we are deported.'
Some people who favor more immigration controls say the fact that people are preparing for deportation proves that increased enforcement is a powerful deterrent.
'When you show that you're going to enforce the law, however minimally, people understand that,' said Rick Oltman, spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization, a group that favors sharp reductions in all immigration. 'The fact that they're making plans shows that they understand that . . . and hopefully will communicate that to family and friends in their home country.'
At an immigrant rights workshop at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church near USC, immigrant organizer Bernabe urged Riso and other parents to set aside money to be used in case they are picked up in an immigration raid.
Bail for illegal immigrants can cost about $1,500, payable in full, Bernabe said.
'There are no discounts.'
For those who fight deportation, attorney fees can run from $2,000 to $5,000, he said.
For Walter, a construction worker who attended the workshop with his wife, teenage daughter and 1-year-old son, the message was stark.
'The rent. Who is going to pay the rent?' he asked.
These are questions he would rather not think about, Walter said. He asked that his last name not be used because he is an illegal immigrant.
'If I thought about the possibility of being deported every day, it would make me sick,' Walter said. He also wondered what would happen to his children, the youngest of whom is a U.S. citizen.
In most cases, there are three options for dealing with children of deportees, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Parents can take children with them -- though the government usually will not pay for the trip. They can designate a caretaker in the United States; or, in the few cases in which a parent does not designate someone, the customs agency will call local social services.
But, after a few highly publicized work-site raids in which some adolescents were left to fend for themselves with little adult supervision while their parents were held in detention, some parents fear that their children might be left alone.
In a small community room behind Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights on a recent Friday, Matilde, 38, sat waiting to put her plan in writing. She asked that her last name not be published because she is an illegal immigrant. Her 5-year-old son, in a gray Spider-Man sweat shirt, fiddled with a pair of sunglasses next to her.
Organizer Rita Chairez called them into her office and showed Matilde a form letter. It asks parents to name a temporary guardian for their children in case they are arrested in a raid, she said. Parents should give a copy to their children's school, keep one at home and leave another with the designated guardian. Chairez compared it to having a will.
'In case of any emergency, I give temporary custody of my children to?' she paused. 'Who are you giving custody to?'
'My sister,' Matilde said.
After she answered all the questions on the form, Matilde returned to the community room and waited to sign it in front of a notary. She said she has been in the U.S. for 15 years. Her two children were born here and are 'accustomed to life in the United States.'
Matilde had never talked about the possibility of deportation with her children but she would share the plan with her 11-year-old daughter later that day, she said.
If anything happens, the children would stay indefinitely with an aunt who is in the country legally, she said.
'If one day I don't come back home, I don't want them to get scared,' Matilde said.
Walter, who attended the workshop near USC, hasn't decided what to do with his children. But he said he would start preparing, even if it's just by saving 'little by little, just in case that moment does come. Maybe $10, $15, $20 every paycheck.'
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-letters27-
2008may27,0,7438900.story
Deportation training lags...
Deportation training lags
Mayors in Waukegan, Carpentersville fume
By Deborah Horan
The Chicago Tribune, May 26, 2008
Months after applying for federal training to deport undocumented immigrants, the mayors of Waukegan and Carpentersville say they suspect the controversial program is plagued by such a lack of funding and political will in Washington that it might never come to their towns.
Neither municipality has heard from the federal agency charged with providing the training, the mayors said, though they applied more than 10 months ago. The Lake County sheriff's office, which applied in December, has received cameras to link the jail to federal immigration courts, but nothing else, Sheriff Mark Curran said.
The lack of action has left the towns in limbo months after they applied for the program and were gripped by protests -- and Waukegan by a brief boycott -- from pro-immigrant groups who feared that the program would discriminate against Latinos.
'It's dead,' Waukegan Mayor Richard Hyde said of the program that he favored, known as 287(g). 'My own personal opinion is the [federal authorities] are not going to implement it at all.'
Immigration officials say the program is moving along smoothly, if slowly. Three police forces in North Carolina are being trained this month, said Richard Rocha, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees the program.
So far, 47 law-enforcement agencies have implemented it in 17 states, Rocha said. Another 92 applications are pending, including five in Illinois, and proponents say they expect it eventually to be implemented in every town that applies.
'It's proven very successful,' Rocha said.
Touted as an important tool in the fight to curb illegal immigration, the program has been hailed in places such as Alabama, whose state police force received training in 2003. Since then, troopers have begun proceedings to deport 400 undocumented immigrants, said Haran Lowe, assistant attorney general with the Alabama Department of Public Safety.
Dwight D'Evelyn, spokesman for the Yavapai County sheriff's office in Arizona, said a similar program has been instrumental in deporting smugglers caught transporting illegal workers across the border.
The 287(g) certification changes the way local law enforcers handle deportation proceedings against an undocumented person. Without it, the police must call in an immigration official to start the process.
With it, local police can detain an illegal immigrant, start the paperwork to remove him from the country and house him in jail until he is transferred to federal custody -- effectively multiplying the immigration-enforcement force that in some places has been woefully understaffed.
U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) said he expects the program to be implemented in Illinois, citing broad support for empowering local police to begin the process of deporting convicted felons in the country illegally.
'You not only have support from American voters but also many within the Latino community,' Kirk said.
But some pro-immigration groups see the potential for discrimination and complain that the program creates an atmosphere of fear in towns that have voted for it. The idea that local police might deport illegal immigrants in Waukegan and Carpentersville was enough to send newcomers in search of other places to live, activists said.
'They don't want to even go near the area,' said Jackie Herrera of the Instituto del Progresso Latino, who is active in promoting immigrant causes in Waukegan.
Yolanda Torrez, an attorney, described a client who was afraid to attend traffic court because it was in Waukegan. Miriam Blanca, a homeowner, said the prospect of the police training compelled her to try to sell her house, though the slow housing market forced her to stay put. Herrera said she has had trouble placing Latino women in domestic-violence shelters in Lake County.
'They don't want to go there because of all the rumors they are hearing,' Herrera said.
Carpentersville Village President Bill Sarto said the irony is that the 287(g) program, originally passed by Congress as part of a 1996 immigration law, would not empower police to do much more than fill out a few papers when they detain a criminal who turns out to be undocumented.
'I think this is another one of those phony programs that the feds put up there to make people think they are doing something or make people think local government can do something to crack down on illegal immigration,' Sarto said. 'It's more window dressing than anything else.'
The program, however, is flexible in its execution, leaving each law-enforcement agency to decide the scope of enforcement, agency officials said. There are two main types of agreements -- one that empowers police on patrol and one that empowers jailers dealing with convicted criminals. Within those categories, the local agency can limit the circumstances under which a police officer or jailer could begin deportation proceedings -- applying it only to convicted criminals, for instance, or broadening it to include anyone found living in the country illegally.
Carpentersville and Waukegan appear to favor limiting the program to convicted criminals, though they will not make the decision until an agreement is signed with agency officials. Curran, the Lake County sheriff, said jailers there would start the deportation process only against criminals convicted of major felonies.
'We have no interest in deporting people strictly on their [illegal] status alone,' Curran said.
Curran, as well as officials in Waukegan and Carpentersville, said that ultimately, they are more frustrated by the lack of comprehensive immigration reform that has left states and small towns with the burden of enforcement.
'It's a big mess,' said Waukegan Ald. John Balen. 'Guys like me in a little bitty town are trying to solve the problem.'
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-immig
rationdeport,0,4175070.story
Mayors in Waukegan, Carpentersville fume
By Deborah Horan
The Chicago Tribune, May 26, 2008
Months after applying for federal training to deport undocumented immigrants, the mayors of Waukegan and Carpentersville say they suspect the controversial program is plagued by such a lack of funding and political will in Washington that it might never come to their towns.
Neither municipality has heard from the federal agency charged with providing the training, the mayors said, though they applied more than 10 months ago. The Lake County sheriff's office, which applied in December, has received cameras to link the jail to federal immigration courts, but nothing else, Sheriff Mark Curran said.
The lack of action has left the towns in limbo months after they applied for the program and were gripped by protests -- and Waukegan by a brief boycott -- from pro-immigrant groups who feared that the program would discriminate against Latinos.
'It's dead,' Waukegan Mayor Richard Hyde said of the program that he favored, known as 287(g). 'My own personal opinion is the [federal authorities] are not going to implement it at all.'
Immigration officials say the program is moving along smoothly, if slowly. Three police forces in North Carolina are being trained this month, said Richard Rocha, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees the program.
So far, 47 law-enforcement agencies have implemented it in 17 states, Rocha said. Another 92 applications are pending, including five in Illinois, and proponents say they expect it eventually to be implemented in every town that applies.
'It's proven very successful,' Rocha said.
Touted as an important tool in the fight to curb illegal immigration, the program has been hailed in places such as Alabama, whose state police force received training in 2003. Since then, troopers have begun proceedings to deport 400 undocumented immigrants, said Haran Lowe, assistant attorney general with the Alabama Department of Public Safety.
Dwight D'Evelyn, spokesman for the Yavapai County sheriff's office in Arizona, said a similar program has been instrumental in deporting smugglers caught transporting illegal workers across the border.
The 287(g) certification changes the way local law enforcers handle deportation proceedings against an undocumented person. Without it, the police must call in an immigration official to start the process.
With it, local police can detain an illegal immigrant, start the paperwork to remove him from the country and house him in jail until he is transferred to federal custody -- effectively multiplying the immigration-enforcement force that in some places has been woefully understaffed.
U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) said he expects the program to be implemented in Illinois, citing broad support for empowering local police to begin the process of deporting convicted felons in the country illegally.
'You not only have support from American voters but also many within the Latino community,' Kirk said.
But some pro-immigration groups see the potential for discrimination and complain that the program creates an atmosphere of fear in towns that have voted for it. The idea that local police might deport illegal immigrants in Waukegan and Carpentersville was enough to send newcomers in search of other places to live, activists said.
'They don't want to even go near the area,' said Jackie Herrera of the Instituto del Progresso Latino, who is active in promoting immigrant causes in Waukegan.
Yolanda Torrez, an attorney, described a client who was afraid to attend traffic court because it was in Waukegan. Miriam Blanca, a homeowner, said the prospect of the police training compelled her to try to sell her house, though the slow housing market forced her to stay put. Herrera said she has had trouble placing Latino women in domestic-violence shelters in Lake County.
'They don't want to go there because of all the rumors they are hearing,' Herrera said.
Carpentersville Village President Bill Sarto said the irony is that the 287(g) program, originally passed by Congress as part of a 1996 immigration law, would not empower police to do much more than fill out a few papers when they detain a criminal who turns out to be undocumented.
'I think this is another one of those phony programs that the feds put up there to make people think they are doing something or make people think local government can do something to crack down on illegal immigration,' Sarto said. 'It's more window dressing than anything else.'
The program, however, is flexible in its execution, leaving each law-enforcement agency to decide the scope of enforcement, agency officials said. There are two main types of agreements -- one that empowers police on patrol and one that empowers jailers dealing with convicted criminals. Within those categories, the local agency can limit the circumstances under which a police officer or jailer could begin deportation proceedings -- applying it only to convicted criminals, for instance, or broadening it to include anyone found living in the country illegally.
Carpentersville and Waukegan appear to favor limiting the program to convicted criminals, though they will not make the decision until an agreement is signed with agency officials. Curran, the Lake County sheriff, said jailers there would start the deportation process only against criminals convicted of major felonies.
'We have no interest in deporting people strictly on their [illegal] status alone,' Curran said.
Curran, as well as officials in Waukegan and Carpentersville, said that ultimately, they are more frustrated by the lack of comprehensive immigration reform that has left states and small towns with the burden of enforcement.
'It's a big mess,' said Waukegan Ald. John Balen. 'Guys like me in a little bitty town are trying to solve the problem.'
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-immig
rationdeport,0,4175070.story
N.C. county tightening up on public services for illegal aliens...
N.C. county tightening up on public services for illegal aliens
By Kristin Collins
The News & Observer (Raleigh), May 24, 2008
Raleigh -- Beaufort County in North Carolina, known for sweeping views of the Pamlico and Pungo rivers, is working toward a new distinction.
Leaders say they want to make their rural county in the eastern part of the state the toughest place in the country for illegal immigrants.
The county commissioners are meeting with a lawyer to help identify public services that can be denied to illegal immigrants. And in cases where it is not legal to exclude people, they say they may eliminate programs entirely - including federally funded prenatal care for poor women - in an attempt to drive illegal immigrants from the county.
'They're coming to the United States illegally and bringing their pregnant wife and children,' said Hood Richardson, the Beaufort commissioner who is leading the charge. 'Those families are falling on our social welfare systems. We can't afford that.'
Beaufort County, about 100 miles east of the state capital of Raleigh, has already become a leader in the state in discouraging undocumented Hispanic immigrants. The seven-member Board of Commissioners has declared English its official language, removed Spanish signs and bilingual automated phone answering systems and begun tracking the number of Spanish-speaking people who use social services.
In April, Richardson asked the health and social services departments to determine the number of illegal immigrant clients by counting Spanish surnames.
More than 60 people from across Eastern North Carolina, all legal residents with Spanish names, descended on the most recent commissioners' meeting to protest the move.
'It's just discrimination,' said Cipriano Moreno, pastor of Alpha and Omega, a Hispanic Baptist church in the county seat, Washington. 'They don't like Hispanics here. They think that all the Hispanics are here illegally, but they're not.'
County Manager Paul Spruill said the county does not plan to begin counting Spanish names. But the commissioners say they will continue to target illegal immigrants in other ways.
'A lot of people are unaware of the cost; they don't know what this is doing to our hospitals and our schools,' said Commissioner Stan Deatherage. 'We're working as a grass-roots effort to draw attention to the problem.'
Deatherage says he hopes the county will inspire a national effort to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that guarantees children public education regardless of their immigration status. He says he wants to see illegal immigrants barred from schools nationwide.
Deatherage said this week that he thinks Beaufort County has one of the highest proportions of illegal immigrants in the state. Census figures, however, show that about 4 percent of Beaufort's residents are Hispanic, compared with nearly 7 percent statewide.
The census does not track illegal immigrants, but advocates estimate that about half of Hispanic immigrants are in the country illegally. If that estimate holds true, about 930 of Beaufort County's 46,000 residents were illegal immigrants in 2006.
Commissioner Robert Cayton is among a minority who has opposed the board's efforts.
'Illegal immigration is a problem in the United States, and it's one that the federal government needs to address,' Cayton said.
He says the county has plenty of its own problems: lagging schools, a lack of economic development, the need for a better road system and persistent poverty.
Nearly 18 percent of Beaufort County's residents, and about a quarter of its children, live in poverty. Its economy is reliant on farming, manufacturing and tourism _ all industries that use immigrant labor.
The board's first action came in February 2007, when it required the removal of Spanish signs and informational materials from public buildings. The move was largely symbolic, because the county is barred from removing signs in health clinics, social services offices and other places that get federal or state funding.
But bilingual courthouse signs prohibiting firearms were replaced with wordless pictorial signs. The commissioners also scrapped an automated telephone answering system at the health department, after realizing it was illegal to remove its Spanish language option. Staff members now answer the phones.
In the past few months, board members met with a lawyer from the Washington-based Immigration Reform Law Institute, which advocates a crackdown on illegal immigrants. Spruill, the county manager, said he is working with the institute to determine what services can be denied to people who lack proof of legal residency.
Illegal immigrants are already barred nationally from programs such as welfare and food stamps, but they can use some public services such as libraries and health clinics. The county cannot ask residents for documentation to access programs that receive state or federal money. It also cannot deny federally defined essential services, such as public education or emergency medical care.
Spruill said he is scrutinizing services as basic as public water to see whether the county is legally required to provide them.
Beaufort County is following the lead of Prince William County, Va., which also sought the advice of the institute's lawyers. In 2007, the northern Virginia county made legal residency a requirement for programs including mortgage assistance and substance-abuse prevention. The county also created a police unit to root out illegal immigrants.
The actions drew strong opposition. Hundreds of people overflowed meeting chambers. An advocacy group sued, and Hispanic residents organized a boycott.
Richardson and Deatherage said they hope to go at least as far as Prince William County, if not further.
Rather than bow to state and federal rules, Richardson said, he wants to scrap some programs that receive federal and state money, including health clinics and prenatal care for the poor. He said he would continue vaccinations because they are important to public health.
'When you're a pregnant lady sitting there, that's a personal problem,' Richardson said. 'That's not a public problem.'
Efforts to reach the county health and social services directors were unsuccessful.
Richardson said he would keep interpreters at the health and social services departments, but he said he favors charging people to use them. A majority of the board voted down his motion to do that in April, but the county is logging the number of people who use interpreters in an attempt to count illegal immigrants.
In an interview, Richardson twice referred to illegal immigrants as '[...].' He said that they threaten to turn the United States into a bilingual nation and that he fears they will foment political and social dissent.
So far, he has faced only muted opposition from a minority of board members. A spokesman for the N.C. Association of County Commissioners said that group has not taken a position on immigration ordinances such as Beaufort County's.
County Commissioner Jerry Langley said he sees the effort to punish illegal immigrants as 'political' - Richardson is up for election in November - and considers many of the proposed measures, such as limiting access to health care, counterproductive.
'It wasn't too long ago that African Americans were treated the same way,' said Langley, who is black. 'So I find it hard to stereotype a race of people and attack.'
But Langley was among those who voted for removing Spanish signs and disabling the telephone answering system.
http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1084641
.html
By Kristin Collins
The News & Observer (Raleigh), May 24, 2008
Raleigh -- Beaufort County in North Carolina, known for sweeping views of the Pamlico and Pungo rivers, is working toward a new distinction.
Leaders say they want to make their rural county in the eastern part of the state the toughest place in the country for illegal immigrants.
The county commissioners are meeting with a lawyer to help identify public services that can be denied to illegal immigrants. And in cases where it is not legal to exclude people, they say they may eliminate programs entirely - including federally funded prenatal care for poor women - in an attempt to drive illegal immigrants from the county.
'They're coming to the United States illegally and bringing their pregnant wife and children,' said Hood Richardson, the Beaufort commissioner who is leading the charge. 'Those families are falling on our social welfare systems. We can't afford that.'
Beaufort County, about 100 miles east of the state capital of Raleigh, has already become a leader in the state in discouraging undocumented Hispanic immigrants. The seven-member Board of Commissioners has declared English its official language, removed Spanish signs and bilingual automated phone answering systems and begun tracking the number of Spanish-speaking people who use social services.
In April, Richardson asked the health and social services departments to determine the number of illegal immigrant clients by counting Spanish surnames.
More than 60 people from across Eastern North Carolina, all legal residents with Spanish names, descended on the most recent commissioners' meeting to protest the move.
'It's just discrimination,' said Cipriano Moreno, pastor of Alpha and Omega, a Hispanic Baptist church in the county seat, Washington. 'They don't like Hispanics here. They think that all the Hispanics are here illegally, but they're not.'
County Manager Paul Spruill said the county does not plan to begin counting Spanish names. But the commissioners say they will continue to target illegal immigrants in other ways.
'A lot of people are unaware of the cost; they don't know what this is doing to our hospitals and our schools,' said Commissioner Stan Deatherage. 'We're working as a grass-roots effort to draw attention to the problem.'
Deatherage says he hopes the county will inspire a national effort to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that guarantees children public education regardless of their immigration status. He says he wants to see illegal immigrants barred from schools nationwide.
Deatherage said this week that he thinks Beaufort County has one of the highest proportions of illegal immigrants in the state. Census figures, however, show that about 4 percent of Beaufort's residents are Hispanic, compared with nearly 7 percent statewide.
The census does not track illegal immigrants, but advocates estimate that about half of Hispanic immigrants are in the country illegally. If that estimate holds true, about 930 of Beaufort County's 46,000 residents were illegal immigrants in 2006.
Commissioner Robert Cayton is among a minority who has opposed the board's efforts.
'Illegal immigration is a problem in the United States, and it's one that the federal government needs to address,' Cayton said.
He says the county has plenty of its own problems: lagging schools, a lack of economic development, the need for a better road system and persistent poverty.
Nearly 18 percent of Beaufort County's residents, and about a quarter of its children, live in poverty. Its economy is reliant on farming, manufacturing and tourism _ all industries that use immigrant labor.
The board's first action came in February 2007, when it required the removal of Spanish signs and informational materials from public buildings. The move was largely symbolic, because the county is barred from removing signs in health clinics, social services offices and other places that get federal or state funding.
But bilingual courthouse signs prohibiting firearms were replaced with wordless pictorial signs. The commissioners also scrapped an automated telephone answering system at the health department, after realizing it was illegal to remove its Spanish language option. Staff members now answer the phones.
In the past few months, board members met with a lawyer from the Washington-based Immigration Reform Law Institute, which advocates a crackdown on illegal immigrants. Spruill, the county manager, said he is working with the institute to determine what services can be denied to people who lack proof of legal residency.
Illegal immigrants are already barred nationally from programs such as welfare and food stamps, but they can use some public services such as libraries and health clinics. The county cannot ask residents for documentation to access programs that receive state or federal money. It also cannot deny federally defined essential services, such as public education or emergency medical care.
Spruill said he is scrutinizing services as basic as public water to see whether the county is legally required to provide them.
Beaufort County is following the lead of Prince William County, Va., which also sought the advice of the institute's lawyers. In 2007, the northern Virginia county made legal residency a requirement for programs including mortgage assistance and substance-abuse prevention. The county also created a police unit to root out illegal immigrants.
The actions drew strong opposition. Hundreds of people overflowed meeting chambers. An advocacy group sued, and Hispanic residents organized a boycott.
Richardson and Deatherage said they hope to go at least as far as Prince William County, if not further.
Rather than bow to state and federal rules, Richardson said, he wants to scrap some programs that receive federal and state money, including health clinics and prenatal care for the poor. He said he would continue vaccinations because they are important to public health.
'When you're a pregnant lady sitting there, that's a personal problem,' Richardson said. 'That's not a public problem.'
Efforts to reach the county health and social services directors were unsuccessful.
Richardson said he would keep interpreters at the health and social services departments, but he said he favors charging people to use them. A majority of the board voted down his motion to do that in April, but the county is logging the number of people who use interpreters in an attempt to count illegal immigrants.
In an interview, Richardson twice referred to illegal immigrants as '[...].' He said that they threaten to turn the United States into a bilingual nation and that he fears they will foment political and social dissent.
So far, he has faced only muted opposition from a minority of board members. A spokesman for the N.C. Association of County Commissioners said that group has not taken a position on immigration ordinances such as Beaufort County's.
County Commissioner Jerry Langley said he sees the effort to punish illegal immigrants as 'political' - Richardson is up for election in November - and considers many of the proposed measures, such as limiting access to health care, counterproductive.
'It wasn't too long ago that African Americans were treated the same way,' said Langley, who is black. 'So I find it hard to stereotype a race of people and attack.'
But Langley was among those who voted for removing Spanish signs and disabling the telephone answering system.
http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1084641
.html
No. Va. county sees signs of change amid crackdown...
No. Va. county sees signs of change amid crackdown
By Karen Mahabir
The Associated Press, May 26, 2008
Woodbridge, VA (AP) -- Business at Pedro Vargas' store, Club Video Mexico, has slid so steeply that only eight people walked through the door one day last month.
One thing he has been selling, however, are one-way bus tickets from northern Virginia to Texas and Mexico. Soon he'll be getting his own ticket out of town - seeking a friendlier and more lucrative place to do business.
'The last few months have been very, very bad for us,' said Vargas, who plans to move this summer from Prince William County, about 25 miles southwest of Washington, to Utah, where he recently opened another store.
Many say Prince William's new crackdown on illegal immigrants has created an environment so unfriendly that Hispanic people are leaving the county of more than 350,000, which according to the U.S. Census Bureau was nearly 15 percent Hispanic in 2006.
The county's policy, which has drawn heated debate and national attention, directs police officers to check the immigration status of everyone they arrest. Beginning July 1, illegal immigrants also will be denied certain services, such as business licenses and mortgage and rental assistance.
'That's like a smack in the face to me,' said Vargas, a 24-year-old Mexican immigrant who is living in the U.S. legally. 'I've been living here my whole life, and now they pass this law?'
It is difficult to measure how many Hispanic people have left and their exact reasons for leaving. In addition to immigrants' fears over the new policy, the souring economy and mortgage crisis may be contributing to the departures. But anecdotal evidence increasingly points to a sudden cultural and economic shift in the county's Hispanic community.
Several Hispanic business owners say their sales have plummeted. Prince William school officials say enrollment in English for speakers of other languages classes fell nearly 6 percent to 12,645 students between Sept. 30 and March 31. Other northern Virginia counties had increases.
Salvador Caballero, pastor of Trono de Jehova Pentecostal Church in Woodbridge, said attendance at his Spanish services has shrunk to about 130 people from 200 in recent months. Some people, he said, have stopped coming because they're afraid to be out in public, and others have moved to other states or back to their home countries.
One family of seven packed up and went to Texas. 'All they told me is they were going because they were afraid here,' Caballero said. 'We're losing a lot of people here in Prince William. I hope they're not going to be sorry later.'
Stephen Fuller, director for the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., said the policy could end up tainting the county's image and scaring off investors.
'I think this will affect the county for several years even if they reverse the policy tonight,' Fuller said. 'The damage has been done. It's like personal reputation; it's hard to build that back.'
Supporters of the changes, however, say the crackdown is working as intended. Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart said it already has had a 'tremendous positive effect on the quality of life.'
County supervisors recently approved spending $2.6 million for the initiative. Prince William also has incurred higher-than-expected costs at the local jail due to overcrowding. Authorities were taking weeks to pick up suspected illegal immigrants rather than the 72 hours mandated under a partnership between the county and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. County officials were forced to pay to house inmates in other jails in the state.
A policy that went into effect in March directed police to check the residency status of anyone who is detained, no matter how minor the offense, if they believed the person might in the United States illegally. Prince William County supervisors changed the policy last month; now police check the immigration status of all suspects, but only after they are arrested.
Stewart says the change will reduce the possibility of racial-profiling accusations because everyone will now be checked.
But Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the organization still opposes the policy.
'This is an ordinance that through and through sends the message to police that they ought to be stopping and detaining people that speak a foreign language and appear to be from another country,' he said.
Nancy Lyall, of the immigrant advocacy group Mexicans Without Borders, says she doesn't know what effect the policy change will have, but that it appears to have already damaged the Hispanic community.
'The community is still completely devastated,' she said. 'And for those obviously that have left, there's certainly no reason for them to go back.'
At the taco restaurant Ricos Tacos Moya, business has dropped by about 50 percent, and owner Salvador Moya said he doesn't know how much longer he'll be able to hold on. He was already forced to shut the doors this year on a second, much larger location in nearby Dumfries, where the bar and dance floor drew some 200 customers each weekend.
'We don't know what we're going to do,' said the Mexican native, who moved to the area 20 years ago and has worked his way up from being a dishwasher. 'When the law started, business went down, down, down.'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic
le/2008/05/26/AR2008052601381_pf.html
By Karen Mahabir
The Associated Press, May 26, 2008
Woodbridge, VA (AP) -- Business at Pedro Vargas' store, Club Video Mexico, has slid so steeply that only eight people walked through the door one day last month.
One thing he has been selling, however, are one-way bus tickets from northern Virginia to Texas and Mexico. Soon he'll be getting his own ticket out of town - seeking a friendlier and more lucrative place to do business.
'The last few months have been very, very bad for us,' said Vargas, who plans to move this summer from Prince William County, about 25 miles southwest of Washington, to Utah, where he recently opened another store.
Many say Prince William's new crackdown on illegal immigrants has created an environment so unfriendly that Hispanic people are leaving the county of more than 350,000, which according to the U.S. Census Bureau was nearly 15 percent Hispanic in 2006.
The county's policy, which has drawn heated debate and national attention, directs police officers to check the immigration status of everyone they arrest. Beginning July 1, illegal immigrants also will be denied certain services, such as business licenses and mortgage and rental assistance.
'That's like a smack in the face to me,' said Vargas, a 24-year-old Mexican immigrant who is living in the U.S. legally. 'I've been living here my whole life, and now they pass this law?'
It is difficult to measure how many Hispanic people have left and their exact reasons for leaving. In addition to immigrants' fears over the new policy, the souring economy and mortgage crisis may be contributing to the departures. But anecdotal evidence increasingly points to a sudden cultural and economic shift in the county's Hispanic community.
Several Hispanic business owners say their sales have plummeted. Prince William school officials say enrollment in English for speakers of other languages classes fell nearly 6 percent to 12,645 students between Sept. 30 and March 31. Other northern Virginia counties had increases.
Salvador Caballero, pastor of Trono de Jehova Pentecostal Church in Woodbridge, said attendance at his Spanish services has shrunk to about 130 people from 200 in recent months. Some people, he said, have stopped coming because they're afraid to be out in public, and others have moved to other states or back to their home countries.
One family of seven packed up and went to Texas. 'All they told me is they were going because they were afraid here,' Caballero said. 'We're losing a lot of people here in Prince William. I hope they're not going to be sorry later.'
Stephen Fuller, director for the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., said the policy could end up tainting the county's image and scaring off investors.
'I think this will affect the county for several years even if they reverse the policy tonight,' Fuller said. 'The damage has been done. It's like personal reputation; it's hard to build that back.'
Supporters of the changes, however, say the crackdown is working as intended. Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart said it already has had a 'tremendous positive effect on the quality of life.'
County supervisors recently approved spending $2.6 million for the initiative. Prince William also has incurred higher-than-expected costs at the local jail due to overcrowding. Authorities were taking weeks to pick up suspected illegal immigrants rather than the 72 hours mandated under a partnership between the county and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. County officials were forced to pay to house inmates in other jails in the state.
A policy that went into effect in March directed police to check the residency status of anyone who is detained, no matter how minor the offense, if they believed the person might in the United States illegally. Prince William County supervisors changed the policy last month; now police check the immigration status of all suspects, but only after they are arrested.
Stewart says the change will reduce the possibility of racial-profiling accusations because everyone will now be checked.
But Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the organization still opposes the policy.
'This is an ordinance that through and through sends the message to police that they ought to be stopping and detaining people that speak a foreign language and appear to be from another country,' he said.
Nancy Lyall, of the immigrant advocacy group Mexicans Without Borders, says she doesn't know what effect the policy change will have, but that it appears to have already damaged the Hispanic community.
'The community is still completely devastated,' she said. 'And for those obviously that have left, there's certainly no reason for them to go back.'
At the taco restaurant Ricos Tacos Moya, business has dropped by about 50 percent, and owner Salvador Moya said he doesn't know how much longer he'll be able to hold on. He was already forced to shut the doors this year on a second, much larger location in nearby Dumfries, where the bar and dance floor drew some 200 customers each weekend.
'We don't know what we're going to do,' said the Mexican native, who moved to the area 20 years ago and has worked his way up from being a dishwasher. 'When the law started, business went down, down, down.'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic
le/2008/05/26/AR2008052601381_pf.html
Does crackdown cross line?...This Should Be Done EVERYWHERE In The USA!!!
Does crackdown cross line?
Arizona efforts stir racial profiling claims
By Howard Witt
The Chicago Tribune, May 26, 2008
Phoenix -- The newest tactic in America's quickening effort to gain control of its porous southern border starts with a cracked windshield, a broken taillight or even a failure to signal a right or left turn.
That's all the probable cause sheriff's deputies here in sprawling Maricopa County say they need to pull over a vehicle they suspect might be carrying illegal immigrants.
If the driver or the passengers fail to produce a U.S. driver's license or a proper immigration visa, if they speak only Spanish, or if they can't otherwise convince the officer they are in the country legally, they are likely to be arrested, jailed and handed off to federal immigration authorities for deportation.
To Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, these zero-tolerance traffic sweeps, which he recently stepped up in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods across the Phoenix metropolitan area, are a successful tool to root out the undocumented workers that many conservative leaders say have overwhelmed America's fifth-most-populous city just a three-hour drive north of the Mexican border. Arpaio's deputies have arrested more than 500 illegal immigrants so far this year.
'We're hitting this illegal immigration on all aspects of it,' said Arpaio, the elected Republican sheriff for the last 16 years. 'We know how to determine whether these guys are illegal, the way the situation looks, how they are dressed, where they are coming from.'
But to a growing chorus of Hispanic activists, civil rights leaders and Democratic politicians, Arpaio's policy represents a blatant case of racial profiling. It is an extreme example, they say, of anecdotes that have begun surfacing across the country in which local police agencies respond to the national backlash against illegal immigrants by aggressively targeting Spanish-speakers for the offense of 'driving while brown.'
As a result, Phoenix has surfaced as the latest fault line scarring America's long-troubled racial map.
'We're absolutely seeing a rise in racial profiling,' said Cynthia Valenzuela, litigation director for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. 'It's simply not legal to use a minor traffic offense as a pretext for investigating immigration status.'
Indiscriminate sweeps
Arpaio's critics allege that both U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent and Mexican visitors with valid visas have been caught up in the sheriff's sweeps and held for hours in special immigration jails until they could prove their right to be in the country. And they say the sheriff's tactics are provoking fear throughout Phoenix's Hispanic community, as well as reluctance on the part of Spanish-speaking crime victims or witnesses to cooperate with police.
One class-action lawsuit already has been filed against the sheriff, and civil rights groups say they are collecting evidence for more.
'If you are of Mexican-American heritage, if you have brown skin, there is nothing you can do not to be stopped,' said Mary Rose Wilcox, the only member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors who has criticized Arpaio's immigration sweeps and the only Hispanic on the board.
'Deputies are asking for birth certificates. Do you carry a birth certificate with you? Should you have to?' she added.
Arizona's Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano, pulled $1.6 million in state funding for Arpaio's office this month because she said the sheriff's actions 'were causing trepidation in the immigration community.'
Last month, Phil Gordon, the Democratic mayor of Phoenix, formally asked the U.S. Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into Arpaio's tactics, which Gordon said included 'discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests.'
'I understand these are serious allegations,' Gordon wrote to Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey. 'As mayor of the city of Phoenix, I must speak out when the rights of our residents are violated and the safety of our neighborhoods threatened.'
Under a new city policy, Phoenix police also question anyone they arrest about their immigration status and refer suspected illegal immigrants to federal authorities, but Gordon has expressly prohibited such questioning during routine traffic stops.
Arpaio, who styles himself as 'America's toughest sheriff' and is famous for confining criminals in tented prisons and issuing them pink underwear, scoffs at all the criticism, which he dismisses as politically inspired.
'We don't racial-profile. That's all garbage. Everything [Gordon] has said is a lie,' Arpaio said during an interview last week. 'The politicians fear the Hispanic vote. They want to stay right on that fence; they don't want to aggravate the Hispanic community.'
As training spreads
Controversies like the one in Phoenix are likely to surface with greater frequency across the country as more local police departments take advantage of a federal program run by the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to cross-train state and local officers to make immigration arrests.
Nearly 50 police agencies have signed on to the program so far, and Arpaio's office ranks as the most enthusiastic participant, with 160 sheriff's deputies trained as immigration enforcers.
The cross-training is attractive to federal immigration officials because it means frontline local police can now sift every suspect they arrest for immigration violations.
But because ordinary traffic stops have long been a bedrock anti-crime tool for local police agencies across the country -- felons and others wanted on outstanding warrants are discovered this way every day -- the issue is whether such traffic enforcement can now be used as the legal basis for an inquiry into a suspect's immigration status.
'This is a clearly impermissible use of race as a factor in law enforcement,' said Dan Pochoda, legal director of the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is among the groups challenging Arpaio's immigration sweeps.
'The cars that get stopped are drivers of color, period. And since Arpaio's claiming they are stopped because of traffic violations, he has no individualized suspicion to stop people on the grounds of immigration violations. There's no way you can know by looking at a person if they are legal or illegal,' Pochoda said.
But Arpaio and his defenders -- he's got stacks of supportive letters and e-mails on his desk, and a box filled with $5,000 in checks donated to help replace the funding cut off by the governor -- strongly disagree.
Just doing their job
The sheriff says that his deputies are not only making arrests for federal immigration violations but also are pursuing charges under a new state anti-smuggling law that makes it a felony for both human smugglers and their customers to enter Arizona.
'We're enforcing the state laws,' the sheriff said. 'If we come across any illegals, we take action. But we're not going on the street looking for illegals per se.'
On a ride-along last week, during which a Tribune reporter was permitted to observe members of the sheriff's Human Smuggling Unit out on a patrol, there seemed to be evidence for both sides in the debate.
On the one hand, the officers plainly admitted they were choosing vehicles to pull over based on telltale signs that they might contain illegal immigrants, such as low-riding axles indicating a large load of passengers.
But the officers also refrained from making a stop until they had developed legal probable cause, such as one case in which a license plate did not properly match the van to which it was affixed. Inside the van, the officers found a driver and seven passengers, none of whom spoke English or could produce any kind of license, visa or U.S.-issued identification. They gave conflicting stories about their destination, and all were arrested and charged under the state's human-smuggling law.
For their part, federal officials overseeing the immigration arrests being made by the Maricopa County sheriff's office say they have received no complaints alleging racial profiling. And they say Arpaio's officers are operating within the boundaries of their federal training during their traffic stops.
Yet the federal immigration department's Web site states that the cooperative law-enforcement program 'is not designed to allow state and local agencies to perform random street operations' and 'does not impact traffic offenses such as driving without a license unless the offense leads to an arrest.'
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi
-profiling_wittmay26,0,4678882.story
Arizona efforts stir racial profiling claims
By Howard Witt
The Chicago Tribune, May 26, 2008
Phoenix -- The newest tactic in America's quickening effort to gain control of its porous southern border starts with a cracked windshield, a broken taillight or even a failure to signal a right or left turn.
That's all the probable cause sheriff's deputies here in sprawling Maricopa County say they need to pull over a vehicle they suspect might be carrying illegal immigrants.
If the driver or the passengers fail to produce a U.S. driver's license or a proper immigration visa, if they speak only Spanish, or if they can't otherwise convince the officer they are in the country legally, they are likely to be arrested, jailed and handed off to federal immigration authorities for deportation.
To Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, these zero-tolerance traffic sweeps, which he recently stepped up in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods across the Phoenix metropolitan area, are a successful tool to root out the undocumented workers that many conservative leaders say have overwhelmed America's fifth-most-populous city just a three-hour drive north of the Mexican border. Arpaio's deputies have arrested more than 500 illegal immigrants so far this year.
'We're hitting this illegal immigration on all aspects of it,' said Arpaio, the elected Republican sheriff for the last 16 years. 'We know how to determine whether these guys are illegal, the way the situation looks, how they are dressed, where they are coming from.'
But to a growing chorus of Hispanic activists, civil rights leaders and Democratic politicians, Arpaio's policy represents a blatant case of racial profiling. It is an extreme example, they say, of anecdotes that have begun surfacing across the country in which local police agencies respond to the national backlash against illegal immigrants by aggressively targeting Spanish-speakers for the offense of 'driving while brown.'
As a result, Phoenix has surfaced as the latest fault line scarring America's long-troubled racial map.
'We're absolutely seeing a rise in racial profiling,' said Cynthia Valenzuela, litigation director for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. 'It's simply not legal to use a minor traffic offense as a pretext for investigating immigration status.'
Indiscriminate sweeps
Arpaio's critics allege that both U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent and Mexican visitors with valid visas have been caught up in the sheriff's sweeps and held for hours in special immigration jails until they could prove their right to be in the country. And they say the sheriff's tactics are provoking fear throughout Phoenix's Hispanic community, as well as reluctance on the part of Spanish-speaking crime victims or witnesses to cooperate with police.
One class-action lawsuit already has been filed against the sheriff, and civil rights groups say they are collecting evidence for more.
'If you are of Mexican-American heritage, if you have brown skin, there is nothing you can do not to be stopped,' said Mary Rose Wilcox, the only member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors who has criticized Arpaio's immigration sweeps and the only Hispanic on the board.
'Deputies are asking for birth certificates. Do you carry a birth certificate with you? Should you have to?' she added.
Arizona's Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano, pulled $1.6 million in state funding for Arpaio's office this month because she said the sheriff's actions 'were causing trepidation in the immigration community.'
Last month, Phil Gordon, the Democratic mayor of Phoenix, formally asked the U.S. Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into Arpaio's tactics, which Gordon said included 'discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests.'
'I understand these are serious allegations,' Gordon wrote to Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey. 'As mayor of the city of Phoenix, I must speak out when the rights of our residents are violated and the safety of our neighborhoods threatened.'
Under a new city policy, Phoenix police also question anyone they arrest about their immigration status and refer suspected illegal immigrants to federal authorities, but Gordon has expressly prohibited such questioning during routine traffic stops.
Arpaio, who styles himself as 'America's toughest sheriff' and is famous for confining criminals in tented prisons and issuing them pink underwear, scoffs at all the criticism, which he dismisses as politically inspired.
'We don't racial-profile. That's all garbage. Everything [Gordon] has said is a lie,' Arpaio said during an interview last week. 'The politicians fear the Hispanic vote. They want to stay right on that fence; they don't want to aggravate the Hispanic community.'
As training spreads
Controversies like the one in Phoenix are likely to surface with greater frequency across the country as more local police departments take advantage of a federal program run by the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to cross-train state and local officers to make immigration arrests.
Nearly 50 police agencies have signed on to the program so far, and Arpaio's office ranks as the most enthusiastic participant, with 160 sheriff's deputies trained as immigration enforcers.
The cross-training is attractive to federal immigration officials because it means frontline local police can now sift every suspect they arrest for immigration violations.
But because ordinary traffic stops have long been a bedrock anti-crime tool for local police agencies across the country -- felons and others wanted on outstanding warrants are discovered this way every day -- the issue is whether such traffic enforcement can now be used as the legal basis for an inquiry into a suspect's immigration status.
'This is a clearly impermissible use of race as a factor in law enforcement,' said Dan Pochoda, legal director of the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is among the groups challenging Arpaio's immigration sweeps.
'The cars that get stopped are drivers of color, period. And since Arpaio's claiming they are stopped because of traffic violations, he has no individualized suspicion to stop people on the grounds of immigration violations. There's no way you can know by looking at a person if they are legal or illegal,' Pochoda said.
But Arpaio and his defenders -- he's got stacks of supportive letters and e-mails on his desk, and a box filled with $5,000 in checks donated to help replace the funding cut off by the governor -- strongly disagree.
Just doing their job
The sheriff says that his deputies are not only making arrests for federal immigration violations but also are pursuing charges under a new state anti-smuggling law that makes it a felony for both human smugglers and their customers to enter Arizona.
'We're enforcing the state laws,' the sheriff said. 'If we come across any illegals, we take action. But we're not going on the street looking for illegals per se.'
On a ride-along last week, during which a Tribune reporter was permitted to observe members of the sheriff's Human Smuggling Unit out on a patrol, there seemed to be evidence for both sides in the debate.
On the one hand, the officers plainly admitted they were choosing vehicles to pull over based on telltale signs that they might contain illegal immigrants, such as low-riding axles indicating a large load of passengers.
But the officers also refrained from making a stop until they had developed legal probable cause, such as one case in which a license plate did not properly match the van to which it was affixed. Inside the van, the officers found a driver and seven passengers, none of whom spoke English or could produce any kind of license, visa or U.S.-issued identification. They gave conflicting stories about their destination, and all were arrested and charged under the state's human-smuggling law.
For their part, federal officials overseeing the immigration arrests being made by the Maricopa County sheriff's office say they have received no complaints alleging racial profiling. And they say Arpaio's officers are operating within the boundaries of their federal training during their traffic stops.
Yet the federal immigration department's Web site states that the cooperative law-enforcement program 'is not designed to allow state and local agencies to perform random street operations' and 'does not impact traffic offenses such as driving without a license unless the offense leads to an arrest.'
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi
-profiling_wittmay26,0,4678882.story
McCain balances Latino voters, GOP base...
McCain balances Latino voters, GOP base
By Wayne Slater
The Dallas Morning News, May 27, 2008
Denver -- With Barack Obama his likely opponent in the fall, John McCain sees an opportunity to make inroads among Hispanic voters by touting himself as a different kind of Republican.
But in doing so, Mr. McCain runs a considerable risk: further alienating the GOP base, which already mistrusts him on immigration issues.
'It's a tightrope,' said Celia Muñoz of the National Council of La Raza, a nonpartisan Hispanic advocacy group. 'How does he convince Latinos that you're on their side while convincing the rabidly anti-immigration faction of his own party?'
Nowhere is that tightrope more evident than Colorado, one of a handful of fall battleground states where the Hispanic vote could be crucial to winning the White House.
President Bush won Colorado in 2000 and 2004, in part by wooing Latinos. He got 35 percent of the Hispanic vote nationally eight years ago and 44 percent in 2004, according to exit polls.
Colorado has been trending Democratic, with the party winning the governor's office, a U.S. Senate seat and control of the Legislature.
Mr. Obama, who is close to clinching the Democratic nomination, has struggled to win Hispanic support in his primary duel with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The McCain campaign sees that as a political opening for the Arizona Republican, who in recent weeks has sharpened his appeal to Hispanics.
Mr. McCain has launched a Spanish-language Web site, aired TV spots in Spanish emphasizing his military service and, at a Cinco de Mayo event in Phoenix, declared 'everything about our Hispanic voters is tailor-made to the Republican message.'
Gil Cisneros of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Colorado, who is vice chairman of the McCain campaign in the state, said the Arizona senator has a reputation among Hispanics as patriotic, family-oriented and moderate on immigration.
He said Mr. McCain's sponsorship of last year's failed legislation to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants will be a strong selling point.
'He stood up for immigration when that was not popular, so a lot of Hispanics are remembering that,' Mr. Cisneros said. 'He'll probably reach the high-water mark that George Bush set.'
Mr. McCain has since backed away from his immigration bill, which drew fierce opposition among conservatives. He now says the first priority must be to secure the borders.
State Sen. David Schultheis of Colorado Springs said that mixed message on immigration is one reason Mr. McCain has struggled to generate enthusiasm in the GOP base.
'There's a lot of Republicans on the fence right now as to whether they're even going to vote for McCain as president,' Mr. Schultheis said.
He cited reasons to vote for Mr. McCain: his military service, support of the war in Iraq, tax policies and promise to appoint conservative judges, but he added: 'How can you say you are strong on national security and yet you're willing to let our borders be porous? It doesn't compute. It throws a question in your mind: Who is this guy? What does he really believe?'
Mr. Schultheis, who joined the anti-illegal immigrant Minutemen on the Arizona border two years ago, calls illegal immigration 'an infection' that 'starts small and before long takes the body over.'
The immigration debate has cost the GOP Hispanic support, say Republican analysts, including former White House political adviser Karl Rove.
In the 2006 midterm elections, Republicans received only 30 percent of the Hispanic vote – down 10 percentage points from two years earlier. A Pew Hispanic Center study in December found that 57 percent of Hispanic registered voters called themselves Democrats, while just 23 percent considered themselves Republicans.
Polly Baca, the first Latina elected to the Colorado Senate and a long-time Democratic activist, said that 'the anti-Latino rhetoric' has created an inhospitable political environment in the Hispanic-rich swing states of Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, which Mr. Bush won in 2004.
Ms. Baca said Mr. McCain's retreat on the immigration bill and his support of the Iraq war – 'which has caused the deaths of a lot of young Hispanics' – will hurt him in November.
Veteran South Texas political organizer Billy Leo agreed, but cautioned that long-running tensions between black and Hispanic voters could accrue to Mr. McCain's favor in the fall.
'Right now, Obama has a problem with the Latino vote, a very serious problem,' said Mr. Leo. 'If any Republican ever had a chance to get the Mexicano vote, it would be McCain.'
David Hardt, an uncommitted Democratic super-delegate from Dallas, said Democrats must unite behind the eventual nominee.
'There's a real divide between the black community and the Hispanic community, and that's unfortunate,' he said. 'The Democratic leadership is aware of this and wants to see how Obama is going to cross that bridge.'
Pat Waak, chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party, dismissed fears that Hispanics won't vote for Mr. Obama, though – or conversely, that blacks would stay home if Mrs. Clinton were to head the ticket.
As a measure of the McCain camp's hopes of capitalizing on Mr. Obama's perceived weakness with Hispanics, the presumptive GOP nominee has accepted an invitation to speak to La Raza's annual convention in July. The Democrats also have been invited.
The decision to speak to the group has sparked protest on conservative and anti-immigration Web sites. Inside the McCain camp, the political calculus is that he can match Mr. Bush's success with Hispanics.
'Clearly the majority of Latino voters preferred Senator Clinton,' said Ms. Muñoz, senior vice president of La Raza. 'The question is, where do those voters go in an Obama-McCain race? And we don't know the answer to that yet.'
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/p
olitics/national/stories/DN-mccain_27pol.ART.State.Edit
ion2.4636204.html
By Wayne Slater
The Dallas Morning News, May 27, 2008
Denver -- With Barack Obama his likely opponent in the fall, John McCain sees an opportunity to make inroads among Hispanic voters by touting himself as a different kind of Republican.
But in doing so, Mr. McCain runs a considerable risk: further alienating the GOP base, which already mistrusts him on immigration issues.
'It's a tightrope,' said Celia Muñoz of the National Council of La Raza, a nonpartisan Hispanic advocacy group. 'How does he convince Latinos that you're on their side while convincing the rabidly anti-immigration faction of his own party?'
Nowhere is that tightrope more evident than Colorado, one of a handful of fall battleground states where the Hispanic vote could be crucial to winning the White House.
President Bush won Colorado in 2000 and 2004, in part by wooing Latinos. He got 35 percent of the Hispanic vote nationally eight years ago and 44 percent in 2004, according to exit polls.
Colorado has been trending Democratic, with the party winning the governor's office, a U.S. Senate seat and control of the Legislature.
Mr. Obama, who is close to clinching the Democratic nomination, has struggled to win Hispanic support in his primary duel with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The McCain campaign sees that as a political opening for the Arizona Republican, who in recent weeks has sharpened his appeal to Hispanics.
Mr. McCain has launched a Spanish-language Web site, aired TV spots in Spanish emphasizing his military service and, at a Cinco de Mayo event in Phoenix, declared 'everything about our Hispanic voters is tailor-made to the Republican message.'
Gil Cisneros of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Colorado, who is vice chairman of the McCain campaign in the state, said the Arizona senator has a reputation among Hispanics as patriotic, family-oriented and moderate on immigration.
He said Mr. McCain's sponsorship of last year's failed legislation to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants will be a strong selling point.
'He stood up for immigration when that was not popular, so a lot of Hispanics are remembering that,' Mr. Cisneros said. 'He'll probably reach the high-water mark that George Bush set.'
Mr. McCain has since backed away from his immigration bill, which drew fierce opposition among conservatives. He now says the first priority must be to secure the borders.
State Sen. David Schultheis of Colorado Springs said that mixed message on immigration is one reason Mr. McCain has struggled to generate enthusiasm in the GOP base.
'There's a lot of Republicans on the fence right now as to whether they're even going to vote for McCain as president,' Mr. Schultheis said.
He cited reasons to vote for Mr. McCain: his military service, support of the war in Iraq, tax policies and promise to appoint conservative judges, but he added: 'How can you say you are strong on national security and yet you're willing to let our borders be porous? It doesn't compute. It throws a question in your mind: Who is this guy? What does he really believe?'
Mr. Schultheis, who joined the anti-illegal immigrant Minutemen on the Arizona border two years ago, calls illegal immigration 'an infection' that 'starts small and before long takes the body over.'
The immigration debate has cost the GOP Hispanic support, say Republican analysts, including former White House political adviser Karl Rove.
In the 2006 midterm elections, Republicans received only 30 percent of the Hispanic vote – down 10 percentage points from two years earlier. A Pew Hispanic Center study in December found that 57 percent of Hispanic registered voters called themselves Democrats, while just 23 percent considered themselves Republicans.
Polly Baca, the first Latina elected to the Colorado Senate and a long-time Democratic activist, said that 'the anti-Latino rhetoric' has created an inhospitable political environment in the Hispanic-rich swing states of Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, which Mr. Bush won in 2004.
Ms. Baca said Mr. McCain's retreat on the immigration bill and his support of the Iraq war – 'which has caused the deaths of a lot of young Hispanics' – will hurt him in November.
Veteran South Texas political organizer Billy Leo agreed, but cautioned that long-running tensions between black and Hispanic voters could accrue to Mr. McCain's favor in the fall.
'Right now, Obama has a problem with the Latino vote, a very serious problem,' said Mr. Leo. 'If any Republican ever had a chance to get the Mexicano vote, it would be McCain.'
David Hardt, an uncommitted Democratic super-delegate from Dallas, said Democrats must unite behind the eventual nominee.
'There's a real divide between the black community and the Hispanic community, and that's unfortunate,' he said. 'The Democratic leadership is aware of this and wants to see how Obama is going to cross that bridge.'
Pat Waak, chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party, dismissed fears that Hispanics won't vote for Mr. Obama, though – or conversely, that blacks would stay home if Mrs. Clinton were to head the ticket.
As a measure of the McCain camp's hopes of capitalizing on Mr. Obama's perceived weakness with Hispanics, the presumptive GOP nominee has accepted an invitation to speak to La Raza's annual convention in July. The Democrats also have been invited.
The decision to speak to the group has sparked protest on conservative and anti-immigration Web sites. Inside the McCain camp, the political calculus is that he can match Mr. Bush's success with Hispanics.
'Clearly the majority of Latino voters preferred Senator Clinton,' said Ms. Muñoz, senior vice president of La Raza. 'The question is, where do those voters go in an Obama-McCain race? And we don't know the answer to that yet.'
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/p
olitics/national/stories/DN-mccain_27pol.ART.State.Edit
ion2.4636204.html
Border patrol employs zero-tolerance approach in Del Rio, TX,,,
Border patrol employs zero-tolerance approach in Del Rio
By Jay Root
The Fort Worth Star Telegram (TX), May 25, 2008
Del Rio, TX -- Many enforcement hawks in Congress are counting on border walls to discourage illegal immigration and drug smuggling. In Del Rio, authorities are using prison walls instead.
The ever-expanding Val Verde County Jail is filled with illegal immigrants ranging from would-be yard workers and maids to hardened gang members. They've been caught in a law enforcement dragnet known as Operation Streamline, a zero-tolerance program that began here and has spread east and west along the border.
The lock-'em-up approach has its share of critics. They question the skyrocketing costs, complain of poor conditions in the detention facilities and predict that it ultimately won't stop immigrants and drugs from making their way north.
But supporters here say the long arm of the law is reducing crime and pushing the numbers of illegal immigrants caught in the Border Patrol's Del Rio sector down to their lowest levels since the early 1970s.
'Enforcement works,' Val Verde County Sheriff D'Wayne Jernigan said. 'We're definitely seeing a reduction in crime throughout the border area and a reduction in the number of aliens running loose in our community.'
Though federal authorities plan to build a small section of border fence near the bridge linking Del Rio and Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, Jernigan, who prefers boots on the ground to physical barriers, says the illegal traffic has slowed without a wall.
In 2007, 22,920 people were caught in the Del Rio sector, many of whom passed through the Val Verde jail. In 1974, the earliest year-end figures available, almost twice that many -- 44,806 --were caught. Authorities believe that fewer captures mean fewer illegal crossings.
As recently as 2000, 157,178 illegal immigrants were caught in the sector, which stretches along 210 miles of the Rio Grande and encompasses 41 counties. Then, in late 2005, after an outcry from the sheriff and other local officials, the Border Patrol started Operation Streamline in the Del Rio sector. It was later expanded to Yuma, Ariz., and most recently to Laredo.
The new approach does away with the practice of 'catch and release.' For years, thousands of undocumented foreign nationals caught along the border were released for lack of jail space and given a notice to appear in court. Most simply vanished into the underground economy.
Now the buzz phrase is 'catch and detain,' meaning virtually everybody who gets caught is sent to federal court or returned to their home country immediately. As a result, the Justice Department has dramatically increased prosecutions, creating a logistical and financial burden that Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently called 'staggering.'
Along with it has come an almost insatiable demand for jail space.
Eight years ago, the Val Verde County Jail had 180 beds. This year, after a second 600-bed expansion, the maximum-security jail has room for 1,425 prisoners, an increase of almost 700 percent. While the state prisoner population in Val Verde has remained about 70 to 80 a day on average, the number serving time for federal immigration and drug offenses has skyrocketed, officials say.
'If it wasn't for federal prisoners, we wouldn't need any of this. It just wouldn't be necessary,' Jernigan said while giving a tour of the huge facility he oversees in Del Rio. 'This is a federal court city, and there's a need to house federal prisoners here.'
Two prisons specializing in federal detainees are going up along the Texas-Mexico border southeast of here -- a 654-bed unit in Eagle Pass and a 1,500-bed jail nearing completion in Laredo. Like the Val Verde lockup, these facilities are run by the Geo Group, formerly known as Wackenhut, which last year posted its best financial results ever, the company said.
Even the largest jail for illegal immigrants, the Willacy County Jail, is too small to accommodate federal demands. Located in Raymondville -- nicknamed 'Prisonville' -- it is expanding capacity from 2,000 to 3,000 beds this year, officials say.
The detention boom hasn't been done on the cheap.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it costs $88 a day to house a prisoner in privately run jails.
Nationwide, the average number of prisoners the agency holds daily has increased 44 percent since 2001, figures show. Meanwhile, its budget for detention and removal operations has more than doubled in the past four years, rising from $959 million in fiscal 2004 to $2.4 billion in 2008, according to agency data.
Securing the porous southern border became an urgent national priority after the 9-11 attacks. The number of Border Patrol agents on duty, for example, will have doubled by the time President Bush leaves office, to 18,000, according to federal officials.
But Bush's proposed immigration overhaul, which would have given guest worker permits to certain Mexican laborers, collapsed in Congress last year. That paved the way for workplace raids, an increase in fines for people caught hiring illegal migrants, an expansion of electronic worker verification programs and a series of anti-immigrant measures enacted by state legislatures.
Critics say the get-tough policies have been extraordinarily costly, both in financial and human terms. The U.S. already locks up far more people than any other country per capita, according to the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies. And a recent Washington Post investigation revealed medical negligence and substandard healthcare in detention facilities that hold foreign nationals, prompting congressional inquiries.
Judy Greene, an analyst at Justice Strategies, a nonprofit group that studies incarceration alternatives, compared the repressive measures to the war on drugs. She said other approaches, including supervised release and electronic monitoring, are effective, more humane and far less expensive.
'Throwing money at the problem and then claiming that temporary gains are total victories is futile,' she said. 'I think Americans will come to see this over time, just like they did with the drug war, which didn't have the advertised effect.'
Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, which provides legal aid to many undocumented workers, said the crackdown is doomed to fail because it doesn't address the root causes of illegal immigration. He blamed a massive 'economic dislocation' in Mexico, where he said free-trade policies have devastated rural agriculture and sent field hands fleeing.
'I think we could lean on Mexico and tell them there's no financial aid, reciprocity, any of that stuff, unless Mexico makes progress toward democratizing its own economy,' Harrington said. 'Without that, we're going to continue what we're doing now, and that's investing an endless amount of money into a Band-Aid that's just not going to hold.'
Ricardo Ahuja, the Mexican consul in Del Rio, said migrants are already breaking through the physical and legal barriers.
'They're finding other routes,' Ahuja said. 'It's a question of supply and demand. If there weren't jobs waiting for them in the U.S., they wouldn't cross.'
But supporters of the crackdown say that the data prove it's working and that the alternative is to suspend the rule of law on the border. U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, is pushing Congress to expand the zero-tolerance polices along the entire border.
'This has an unbelievable deterrent effect,' Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said during a recent news conference. 'When people who cross the border illegally are brought to face the reality that they were committing a crime, even if it's just a misdemeanor, that has a huge impact on their willingness to try again.'
http://www.star-telegram.com/national_news/story/6
62631.html
By Jay Root
The Fort Worth Star Telegram (TX), May 25, 2008
Del Rio, TX -- Many enforcement hawks in Congress are counting on border walls to discourage illegal immigration and drug smuggling. In Del Rio, authorities are using prison walls instead.
The ever-expanding Val Verde County Jail is filled with illegal immigrants ranging from would-be yard workers and maids to hardened gang members. They've been caught in a law enforcement dragnet known as Operation Streamline, a zero-tolerance program that began here and has spread east and west along the border.
The lock-'em-up approach has its share of critics. They question the skyrocketing costs, complain of poor conditions in the detention facilities and predict that it ultimately won't stop immigrants and drugs from making their way north.
But supporters here say the long arm of the law is reducing crime and pushing the numbers of illegal immigrants caught in the Border Patrol's Del Rio sector down to their lowest levels since the early 1970s.
'Enforcement works,' Val Verde County Sheriff D'Wayne Jernigan said. 'We're definitely seeing a reduction in crime throughout the border area and a reduction in the number of aliens running loose in our community.'
Though federal authorities plan to build a small section of border fence near the bridge linking Del Rio and Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, Jernigan, who prefers boots on the ground to physical barriers, says the illegal traffic has slowed without a wall.
In 2007, 22,920 people were caught in the Del Rio sector, many of whom passed through the Val Verde jail. In 1974, the earliest year-end figures available, almost twice that many -- 44,806 --were caught. Authorities believe that fewer captures mean fewer illegal crossings.
As recently as 2000, 157,178 illegal immigrants were caught in the sector, which stretches along 210 miles of the Rio Grande and encompasses 41 counties. Then, in late 2005, after an outcry from the sheriff and other local officials, the Border Patrol started Operation Streamline in the Del Rio sector. It was later expanded to Yuma, Ariz., and most recently to Laredo.
The new approach does away with the practice of 'catch and release.' For years, thousands of undocumented foreign nationals caught along the border were released for lack of jail space and given a notice to appear in court. Most simply vanished into the underground economy.
Now the buzz phrase is 'catch and detain,' meaning virtually everybody who gets caught is sent to federal court or returned to their home country immediately. As a result, the Justice Department has dramatically increased prosecutions, creating a logistical and financial burden that Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently called 'staggering.'
Along with it has come an almost insatiable demand for jail space.
Eight years ago, the Val Verde County Jail had 180 beds. This year, after a second 600-bed expansion, the maximum-security jail has room for 1,425 prisoners, an increase of almost 700 percent. While the state prisoner population in Val Verde has remained about 70 to 80 a day on average, the number serving time for federal immigration and drug offenses has skyrocketed, officials say.
'If it wasn't for federal prisoners, we wouldn't need any of this. It just wouldn't be necessary,' Jernigan said while giving a tour of the huge facility he oversees in Del Rio. 'This is a federal court city, and there's a need to house federal prisoners here.'
Two prisons specializing in federal detainees are going up along the Texas-Mexico border southeast of here -- a 654-bed unit in Eagle Pass and a 1,500-bed jail nearing completion in Laredo. Like the Val Verde lockup, these facilities are run by the Geo Group, formerly known as Wackenhut, which last year posted its best financial results ever, the company said.
Even the largest jail for illegal immigrants, the Willacy County Jail, is too small to accommodate federal demands. Located in Raymondville -- nicknamed 'Prisonville' -- it is expanding capacity from 2,000 to 3,000 beds this year, officials say.
The detention boom hasn't been done on the cheap.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it costs $88 a day to house a prisoner in privately run jails.
Nationwide, the average number of prisoners the agency holds daily has increased 44 percent since 2001, figures show. Meanwhile, its budget for detention and removal operations has more than doubled in the past four years, rising from $959 million in fiscal 2004 to $2.4 billion in 2008, according to agency data.
Securing the porous southern border became an urgent national priority after the 9-11 attacks. The number of Border Patrol agents on duty, for example, will have doubled by the time President Bush leaves office, to 18,000, according to federal officials.
But Bush's proposed immigration overhaul, which would have given guest worker permits to certain Mexican laborers, collapsed in Congress last year. That paved the way for workplace raids, an increase in fines for people caught hiring illegal migrants, an expansion of electronic worker verification programs and a series of anti-immigrant measures enacted by state legislatures.
Critics say the get-tough policies have been extraordinarily costly, both in financial and human terms. The U.S. already locks up far more people than any other country per capita, according to the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies. And a recent Washington Post investigation revealed medical negligence and substandard healthcare in detention facilities that hold foreign nationals, prompting congressional inquiries.
Judy Greene, an analyst at Justice Strategies, a nonprofit group that studies incarceration alternatives, compared the repressive measures to the war on drugs. She said other approaches, including supervised release and electronic monitoring, are effective, more humane and far less expensive.
'Throwing money at the problem and then claiming that temporary gains are total victories is futile,' she said. 'I think Americans will come to see this over time, just like they did with the drug war, which didn't have the advertised effect.'
Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, which provides legal aid to many undocumented workers, said the crackdown is doomed to fail because it doesn't address the root causes of illegal immigration. He blamed a massive 'economic dislocation' in Mexico, where he said free-trade policies have devastated rural agriculture and sent field hands fleeing.
'I think we could lean on Mexico and tell them there's no financial aid, reciprocity, any of that stuff, unless Mexico makes progress toward democratizing its own economy,' Harrington said. 'Without that, we're going to continue what we're doing now, and that's investing an endless amount of money into a Band-Aid that's just not going to hold.'
Ricardo Ahuja, the Mexican consul in Del Rio, said migrants are already breaking through the physical and legal barriers.
'They're finding other routes,' Ahuja said. 'It's a question of supply and demand. If there weren't jobs waiting for them in the U.S., they wouldn't cross.'
But supporters of the crackdown say that the data prove it's working and that the alternative is to suspend the rule of law on the border. U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, is pushing Congress to expand the zero-tolerance polices along the entire border.
'This has an unbelievable deterrent effect,' Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said during a recent news conference. 'When people who cross the border illegally are brought to face the reality that they were committing a crime, even if it's just a misdemeanor, that has a huge impact on their willingness to try again.'
http://www.star-telegram.com/national_news/story/6
62631.html
Federal sweeps target immigration violators...
Federal sweeps target immigration violators
By Anna Gorman
Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2008
In an ongoing push to deport immigration violators, federal officers have arrested more than 300 immigrants in the Los Angeles area in the last three weeks.
The statewide operation resulted in the arrests of more than 900 immigrants, most of whom committed crimes, ignored deportation orders or returned to the U.S. after being removed, according to federal authorities. Half of those arrested have since been deported to their native countries, authorities said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has regularly sent out 'fugitive operations' teams since the program's inception in 2003, but this was the first time all 13 teams in California had traveled the state together, said Brian DeMore, acting field office director of detention and removal operations in Los Angeles. A total of 905 immigrants were arrested, including 327 in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. 'Overall it was a great success,' DeMore said. Immigrants rights advocates criticized the operation, saying that many non-criminals were swept up. During the operation, from May 5 through Friday, arrestees included dozens who did not have criminal records or outstanding deportation orders.
'This is one of the most shameful things our government is doing,' said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. 'In many instances they don't get the people they are looking for, so one of the things they do to up their numbers is arrest bystanders.'
Advocates also say that the immigrants' criminal records may be from decades earlier and that they are now working, paying taxes and contributing to society. Some were green card holders whose residence was revoked because of the crimes.
DeMore said the arrests are not random, but based on investigation. The teams target immigrants who may be a threat to national security or public safety. In the Los Angeles area, 244 of the people arrested had criminal records, ignored judges' orders or illegally reentered the country after deportation, according to the agency.
Immigration officials said among those arrested was a previously deported Mexican who was convicted in the 1990s of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14, and a Briton with convictions for burglary, robbery and forgery who had been ordered deported.
'The officers in the field are focused on arresting fugitives and criminals and use discretion during their operations,' DeMore said.
Some of those who had returned to the U.S. after being deported will be referred to the U.S. attorney's office for possible prosecution, he said. The people arrested were from throughout Mexico and Central America, as well as from countries in Europe and Asia.
There are 75 fugitive operations teams in the nation, and Congress has authorized adding 29 for fiscal year 2008-2009. Locally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to add a team in the San Fernando Valley and one in the Inland Empire.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immig27-20
08may27,0,2592588.story
By Anna Gorman
Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2008
In an ongoing push to deport immigration violators, federal officers have arrested more than 300 immigrants in the Los Angeles area in the last three weeks.
The statewide operation resulted in the arrests of more than 900 immigrants, most of whom committed crimes, ignored deportation orders or returned to the U.S. after being removed, according to federal authorities. Half of those arrested have since been deported to their native countries, authorities said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has regularly sent out 'fugitive operations' teams since the program's inception in 2003, but this was the first time all 13 teams in California had traveled the state together, said Brian DeMore, acting field office director of detention and removal operations in Los Angeles. A total of 905 immigrants were arrested, including 327 in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. 'Overall it was a great success,' DeMore said. Immigrants rights advocates criticized the operation, saying that many non-criminals were swept up. During the operation, from May 5 through Friday, arrestees included dozens who did not have criminal records or outstanding deportation orders.
'This is one of the most shameful things our government is doing,' said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. 'In many instances they don't get the people they are looking for, so one of the things they do to up their numbers is arrest bystanders.'
Advocates also say that the immigrants' criminal records may be from decades earlier and that they are now working, paying taxes and contributing to society. Some were green card holders whose residence was revoked because of the crimes.
DeMore said the arrests are not random, but based on investigation. The teams target immigrants who may be a threat to national security or public safety. In the Los Angeles area, 244 of the people arrested had criminal records, ignored judges' orders or illegally reentered the country after deportation, according to the agency.
Immigration officials said among those arrested was a previously deported Mexican who was convicted in the 1990s of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14, and a Briton with convictions for burglary, robbery and forgery who had been ordered deported.
'The officers in the field are focused on arresting fugitives and criminals and use discretion during their operations,' DeMore said.
Some of those who had returned to the U.S. after being deported will be referred to the U.S. attorney's office for possible prosecution, he said. The people arrested were from throughout Mexico and Central America, as well as from countries in Europe and Asia.
There are 75 fugitive operations teams in the nation, and Congress has authorized adding 29 for fiscal year 2008-2009. Locally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to add a team in the San Fernando Valley and one in the Inland Empire.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immig27-20
08may27,0,2592588.story
270 Illegal Aliens Sent to Prison in Federal Push...
270 Illegal Aliens Sent to Prison in Federal Push
By Julia Preston
The New York Times, May 24, 2008
Waterloo, IA -- In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.
The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.
The convicted immigrants were among 389 workers detained at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in nearby Postville in a raid that federal officials called the largest criminal enforcement operation ever carried out by immigration authorities at a workplace.
Matt M. Dummermuth, the United States attorney for northern Iowa, who oversaw the prosecutions, called the operation an ''astonishing success.''
Claude Arnold, a special agent in charge of investigations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said it showed that federal officials were ''committed to enforcing the nation's immigration laws in the workplace to maintain the integrity of the immigration system.''
The unusually swift proceedings, in which 297 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced in four days, were criticized by criminal defense lawyers, who warned of violations of due process. Twenty-seven immigrants received probation. The American Immigration Lawyers Association protested that the workers had been denied meetings with immigration lawyers and that their claims under immigration law had been swept aside in unusual and speedy plea agreements.
The illegal immigrants, most from Guatemala, filed into the courtrooms in groups of 10, their hands and feet shackled. One by one, they entered guilty pleas through a Spanish interpreter, admitting they had taken jobs using fraudulent Social Security cards or immigration documents. Moments later, they moved to another courtroom for sentencing.
The pleas were part of a deal worked out with prosecutors to avoid even more serious charges. Most immigrants agreed to immediate deportation after they serve five months in prison.
The hearings took place on the grounds of the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, in mobile trailers and in a dance hall modified with black curtains, beginning at 8 a.m. and continuing several nights until 10. On Wednesday alone, 94 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced, the most sentences in a single day in this northern Iowa district, according to Robert L. Phelps, the clerk of court.
Mr. Arnold, the immigration agent, said the criticism of the proceedings was ''the usual spate of false allegations and baseless rumors.''
The large number of criminal cases was remarkable because immigration violations generally fall under civil statutes. Until now, relatively few immigrants caught in raids have been charged with federal crimes like identity theft or document fraud.
''To my knowledge, the magnitude of these indictments is completely unprecedented,'' said Juliet Stumpf, an immigration law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., who was formerly a senior civil rights lawyer at the Justice Department. ''It's the reliance on criminal process here as part of an immigration enforcement action that takes this out of the ordinary, a startling intensification of the criminalization of immigration law.''
Defense lawyers, who were appointed by the court, said most of the immigrants were ready to accept the plea deals because of the hard bargain driven by the prosecutors.
If the immigrants did not plead guilty, Mr. Dummermuth said he would try them on felony identity theft charges that carry a mandatory two-year minimum jail sentence. In many cases, court documents show, the immigrants were working under real Social Security numbers or immigration visas, known as green cards, that belonged to other people.
All but a handful of the workers here had no criminal record, court documents showed.
''My family is worried in Guatemala,'' one defendant, Erick Tajtaj, entreated the federal district judge who sentenced him, Mark W. Bennett. ''I ask that you deport us as soon as possible, that you do us that kindness so we can be together again with our families.''
No charges have been brought against managers or owners at Agriprocessors, but there were indications that prosecutors were also preparing a case against the company. In pleading guilty, immigrants had to agree to cooperate with any investigation.
Chaim Abrahams, a representative of Agriprocessors, said in a statement that he could not comment about specific accusations but that the company was cooperating with the government.
Aaron Rubashkin, the owner of Agriprocessors, announced Friday that he had begun a search to replace his son Sholom as the chief executive of the company. Agriprocessors is the country's largest producer of kosher meat, sold under brands like Aaron's Best. The plant is in Postville, a farmland town about 70 miles northeast of Waterloo. Normally it employs about 800 workers, and in recent years the majority of them have come from rural Guatemala.
Since 2004, the plant has faced repeated sanctions for environmental and worker safety violations. It was the focus of a 2006 expose in The Jewish Daily Forward and a commission of inquiry that year by Conservative Jewish leaders.
In Postville, workers from the plant, still feeling aftershocks from the raid, said conditions there were often harsh. In interviews, they said they were often required to work overtime and night shifts, sometimes up to 14 hours a day, but were not consistently paid for the overtime.
''We knew what time we would start work but we did not know what time we would finish,'' said Elida, 29, a Guatemalan who was arrested in the raid and then released to care for her two children. She asked that her last name not be published because she is in this country illegally.
A 16-year-old Guatemalan girl, who asked to be identified only as G.O. because she is illegal and a minor and was not involved in the raid, said she had been working the night shift plucking chickens. ''When you start, you can't stay awake,'' she said. ''But after a while you get used to it.''
The workers said that supervisors and managers were well aware that the immigrants were working under false documents.
Defense lawyers, who each agreed to represent as many as 30 immigrants, said they were satisfied that they had sufficient time to question them and prepare their cases. But some lawyers said they were troubled by the severity of the charges.
At one sentencing hearing, David Nadler, a defense lawyer, said he was ''honored to represent such good and brave people,'' saying the immigrants' only purpose had been to provide for their families in Guatemala.
''I want the court to know that these people are the kings of family values,'' Mr. Nadler said.
Judge Bennett appeared moved by Mr. Nadler's remarks. ''I don't doubt for a moment that you are good, hard-working people who have done what you did to help your families,'' Judge Bennett told the immigrants. ''Unfortunately for you, you committed a violation of federal law.''
After the hearing, Mr. Nadler said the plea agreements were the best deal available for his clients. But he was dismayed that prosecutors had denied them probation and insisted the immigrants serve prison time and agree to a rarely used judicial order for immediate deportation upon their release, signing away their rights to go to immigration court.
''That's not the defense of justice,'' Mr. Nadler said. ''That's just politics.''
Christopher Clausen, a lawyer who represented 21 Guatemalans, said he was certain they all understood their options and rights. Mainly they wanted to get home to Guatemala as quickly as possible, he said.
''The government is not bashful about the fact that they are trying to send a message,'' Mr. Clausen said, ''that if you get caught working illegally here you will pay a criminal penalty.''
Robert Rigg, a Drake University law professor who is president of the Iowa Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said his group was not consulted when prosecutors and court officials began to make plans, starting in December, for the mass proceedings.
''You really are force feeding the system just to churn these people out,'' Mr. Rigg said.
Kathleen Campbell Walker, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that intricate issues could arise in some cases, for example where immigrants had children and spouses who were legal residents or United States citizens. Those issues ''could not be even cursorily addressed in the time frame being forced upon these individuals and their overburdened counsel.''
Linda R. Reade, the chief judge who approved the emergency court setup, said she was confident there had been no rush to justice. In an interview, Judge Reade said prosecutors had organized the immigrants' detention to make it easy for their lawyers to meet with them. The prosecutors, she said, ''have tried to be fair in their charging.''
The immigration lawyers, Judge Reade said, ''do not understand the federal criminal process as it relates to immigration charges.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/us/24immig.html
By Julia Preston
The New York Times, May 24, 2008
Waterloo, IA -- In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.
The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.
The convicted immigrants were among 389 workers detained at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in nearby Postville in a raid that federal officials called the largest criminal enforcement operation ever carried out by immigration authorities at a workplace.
Matt M. Dummermuth, the United States attorney for northern Iowa, who oversaw the prosecutions, called the operation an ''astonishing success.''
Claude Arnold, a special agent in charge of investigations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said it showed that federal officials were ''committed to enforcing the nation's immigration laws in the workplace to maintain the integrity of the immigration system.''
The unusually swift proceedings, in which 297 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced in four days, were criticized by criminal defense lawyers, who warned of violations of due process. Twenty-seven immigrants received probation. The American Immigration Lawyers Association protested that the workers had been denied meetings with immigration lawyers and that their claims under immigration law had been swept aside in unusual and speedy plea agreements.
The illegal immigrants, most from Guatemala, filed into the courtrooms in groups of 10, their hands and feet shackled. One by one, they entered guilty pleas through a Spanish interpreter, admitting they had taken jobs using fraudulent Social Security cards or immigration documents. Moments later, they moved to another courtroom for sentencing.
The pleas were part of a deal worked out with prosecutors to avoid even more serious charges. Most immigrants agreed to immediate deportation after they serve five months in prison.
The hearings took place on the grounds of the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, in mobile trailers and in a dance hall modified with black curtains, beginning at 8 a.m. and continuing several nights until 10. On Wednesday alone, 94 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced, the most sentences in a single day in this northern Iowa district, according to Robert L. Phelps, the clerk of court.
Mr. Arnold, the immigration agent, said the criticism of the proceedings was ''the usual spate of false allegations and baseless rumors.''
The large number of criminal cases was remarkable because immigration violations generally fall under civil statutes. Until now, relatively few immigrants caught in raids have been charged with federal crimes like identity theft or document fraud.
''To my knowledge, the magnitude of these indictments is completely unprecedented,'' said Juliet Stumpf, an immigration law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., who was formerly a senior civil rights lawyer at the Justice Department. ''It's the reliance on criminal process here as part of an immigration enforcement action that takes this out of the ordinary, a startling intensification of the criminalization of immigration law.''
Defense lawyers, who were appointed by the court, said most of the immigrants were ready to accept the plea deals because of the hard bargain driven by the prosecutors.
If the immigrants did not plead guilty, Mr. Dummermuth said he would try them on felony identity theft charges that carry a mandatory two-year minimum jail sentence. In many cases, court documents show, the immigrants were working under real Social Security numbers or immigration visas, known as green cards, that belonged to other people.
All but a handful of the workers here had no criminal record, court documents showed.
''My family is worried in Guatemala,'' one defendant, Erick Tajtaj, entreated the federal district judge who sentenced him, Mark W. Bennett. ''I ask that you deport us as soon as possible, that you do us that kindness so we can be together again with our families.''
No charges have been brought against managers or owners at Agriprocessors, but there were indications that prosecutors were also preparing a case against the company. In pleading guilty, immigrants had to agree to cooperate with any investigation.
Chaim Abrahams, a representative of Agriprocessors, said in a statement that he could not comment about specific accusations but that the company was cooperating with the government.
Aaron Rubashkin, the owner of Agriprocessors, announced Friday that he had begun a search to replace his son Sholom as the chief executive of the company. Agriprocessors is the country's largest producer of kosher meat, sold under brands like Aaron's Best. The plant is in Postville, a farmland town about 70 miles northeast of Waterloo. Normally it employs about 800 workers, and in recent years the majority of them have come from rural Guatemala.
Since 2004, the plant has faced repeated sanctions for environmental and worker safety violations. It was the focus of a 2006 expose in The Jewish Daily Forward and a commission of inquiry that year by Conservative Jewish leaders.
In Postville, workers from the plant, still feeling aftershocks from the raid, said conditions there were often harsh. In interviews, they said they were often required to work overtime and night shifts, sometimes up to 14 hours a day, but were not consistently paid for the overtime.
''We knew what time we would start work but we did not know what time we would finish,'' said Elida, 29, a Guatemalan who was arrested in the raid and then released to care for her two children. She asked that her last name not be published because she is in this country illegally.
A 16-year-old Guatemalan girl, who asked to be identified only as G.O. because she is illegal and a minor and was not involved in the raid, said she had been working the night shift plucking chickens. ''When you start, you can't stay awake,'' she said. ''But after a while you get used to it.''
The workers said that supervisors and managers were well aware that the immigrants were working under false documents.
Defense lawyers, who each agreed to represent as many as 30 immigrants, said they were satisfied that they had sufficient time to question them and prepare their cases. But some lawyers said they were troubled by the severity of the charges.
At one sentencing hearing, David Nadler, a defense lawyer, said he was ''honored to represent such good and brave people,'' saying the immigrants' only purpose had been to provide for their families in Guatemala.
''I want the court to know that these people are the kings of family values,'' Mr. Nadler said.
Judge Bennett appeared moved by Mr. Nadler's remarks. ''I don't doubt for a moment that you are good, hard-working people who have done what you did to help your families,'' Judge Bennett told the immigrants. ''Unfortunately for you, you committed a violation of federal law.''
After the hearing, Mr. Nadler said the plea agreements were the best deal available for his clients. But he was dismayed that prosecutors had denied them probation and insisted the immigrants serve prison time and agree to a rarely used judicial order for immediate deportation upon their release, signing away their rights to go to immigration court.
''That's not the defense of justice,'' Mr. Nadler said. ''That's just politics.''
Christopher Clausen, a lawyer who represented 21 Guatemalans, said he was certain they all understood their options and rights. Mainly they wanted to get home to Guatemala as quickly as possible, he said.
''The government is not bashful about the fact that they are trying to send a message,'' Mr. Clausen said, ''that if you get caught working illegally here you will pay a criminal penalty.''
Robert Rigg, a Drake University law professor who is president of the Iowa Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said his group was not consulted when prosecutors and court officials began to make plans, starting in December, for the mass proceedings.
''You really are force feeding the system just to churn these people out,'' Mr. Rigg said.
Kathleen Campbell Walker, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that intricate issues could arise in some cases, for example where immigrants had children and spouses who were legal residents or United States citizens. Those issues ''could not be even cursorily addressed in the time frame being forced upon these individuals and their overburdened counsel.''
Linda R. Reade, the chief judge who approved the emergency court setup, said she was confident there had been no rush to justice. In an interview, Judge Reade said prosecutors had organized the immigrants' detention to make it easy for their lawyers to meet with them. The prosecutors, she said, ''have tried to be fair in their charging.''
The immigration lawyers, Judge Reade said, ''do not understand the federal criminal process as it relates to immigration charges.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/us/24immig.html
Immigration case puts focus on landlords...
Immigration case puts focus on landlords
It's the first time feds have tried to prosecute property owners for renting to illegal residents
By Brandon Ortiz
The Houston Chronicle, May 25, 2008
Lexington, KY -- Four illegal immigrants who rented from Lexington landlords have testified they showed only Mexican identification when they applied for apartments.
The immigrants, who are to be deported, testified in depositions that they did not present American driver's licenses or Social Security cards. One, Adnan Ramirez-Jimenez, even showed a Mexican voter registration card, indicating Mexican citizenship, and a manager wrote on his rental application, 'first time in USA.'
Ramirez-Jimenez testified that he did not show apartment management at Cross Keys Apartments any proof he was in the country legally.
The depositions were filed in U.S. District Court in Lexington in the criminal case against William Jerry Hadden, 69, and his son Jamey, who are charged with 24 counts of harboring illegal immigrants and 24 counts of encouraging illegal immigrants to remain in the country.
The case appears to be the first time the federal government has tried to prosecute landlords for renting to illegal immigrants, defense attorneys say.
The testimony could bolster the government's contention that the Haddens knew 60 tenants were in the country illegally yet rented to them anyway. Whether that's enough to win a conviction for harboring remains to be seen.
The immigrants were deposed so they would not have to remain in jail until the June 23 trial. A fifth witness was called to testify, but he refused to answer in the deposition.
Harboring laws
The Kentucky American Civil Liberties Union, immigration activists and Jerry Hadden's attorneys have contended that the federal government is stretching the intent of the law.
They say harboring laws were intended to target human traffickers or employers who are trying to hide their work forces. They note it is not illegal to rent to illegal immigrants. The Haddens had no legal obligation to check any tenant's immigration status. And laws passed in other cities prohibiting landlords from renting to illegal immigrants have been challenged in court.
The case could have wide-ranging implications, said Josh Santana, president of the Lexington Hispanic Association. If the government wins a conviction, landlords will be less willing to rent to Hispanics, even those with legal status, he said.
'There are sometimes problems for people of color; we don't need to give excuses to people who are predisposed to not rent to them,' Santana said.
Lawyer Tucker Richardson, who represents Jerry Hadden, declined to comment. But his law partner, Russ Baldani, wrote in court papers that the government is pushing a ridiculous interpretation of the law.
Jamey Hadden, who lives in Vietnam, has not been served with the indictment, court records indicate.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5800328
.html
It's the first time feds have tried to prosecute property owners for renting to illegal residents
By Brandon Ortiz
The Houston Chronicle, May 25, 2008
Lexington, KY -- Four illegal immigrants who rented from Lexington landlords have testified they showed only Mexican identification when they applied for apartments.
The immigrants, who are to be deported, testified in depositions that they did not present American driver's licenses or Social Security cards. One, Adnan Ramirez-Jimenez, even showed a Mexican voter registration card, indicating Mexican citizenship, and a manager wrote on his rental application, 'first time in USA.'
Ramirez-Jimenez testified that he did not show apartment management at Cross Keys Apartments any proof he was in the country legally.
The depositions were filed in U.S. District Court in Lexington in the criminal case against William Jerry Hadden, 69, and his son Jamey, who are charged with 24 counts of harboring illegal immigrants and 24 counts of encouraging illegal immigrants to remain in the country.
The case appears to be the first time the federal government has tried to prosecute landlords for renting to illegal immigrants, defense attorneys say.
The testimony could bolster the government's contention that the Haddens knew 60 tenants were in the country illegally yet rented to them anyway. Whether that's enough to win a conviction for harboring remains to be seen.
The immigrants were deposed so they would not have to remain in jail until the June 23 trial. A fifth witness was called to testify, but he refused to answer in the deposition.
Harboring laws
The Kentucky American Civil Liberties Union, immigration activists and Jerry Hadden's attorneys have contended that the federal government is stretching the intent of the law.
They say harboring laws were intended to target human traffickers or employers who are trying to hide their work forces. They note it is not illegal to rent to illegal immigrants. The Haddens had no legal obligation to check any tenant's immigration status. And laws passed in other cities prohibiting landlords from renting to illegal immigrants have been challenged in court.
The case could have wide-ranging implications, said Josh Santana, president of the Lexington Hispanic Association. If the government wins a conviction, landlords will be less willing to rent to Hispanics, even those with legal status, he said.
'There are sometimes problems for people of color; we don't need to give excuses to people who are predisposed to not rent to them,' Santana said.
Lawyer Tucker Richardson, who represents Jerry Hadden, declined to comment. But his law partner, Russ Baldani, wrote in court papers that the government is pushing a ridiculous interpretation of the law.
Jamey Hadden, who lives in Vietnam, has not been served with the indictment, court records indicate.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5800328
.html
Border Agents, Lured by the Other Side...
Border Agents, Lured by the Other Side
Border Agents, Lured by the Other Side
By Randal C. Archibold and Andrew Becker
The New York Times, May 27, 2008
San Diego -- The smuggler in the public service announcement sat handcuffed in prison garb, full of bravado and shrugging off the danger of bringing illegal immigrants across the border.
''Sometimes they die in the desert, or the cars crash, or they drown,'' he said. ''But it's not my fault.''
The smuggler in the commercial, produced by the Mexican government several years ago, was played by an American named Raul Villarreal, who at the time was a United States Border Patrol agent and a spokesman for the agency here.
Now, federal investigators are asking: Was he really acting?
Mr. Villarreal and a brother, Fidel, also a former Border Patrol agent, are suspected of helping to smuggle an untold number of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Brazil across the border. The brothers quit the Border Patrol two years ago and are believed to have fled to Mexico.
The Villarreal investigation is among scores of corruption cases in recent years that have alarmed officials in the Homeland Security Department just as it is hiring thousands of border agents to stem the flow of illegal immigration.
The pattern has become familiar: Customs officers wave in vehicles filled with illegal immigrants, drugs or other contraband. A Border Patrol agent acts as a scout for smugglers. Trusted officers fall prey to temptation and begin taking bribes.
Increased corruption is linked, in part, to tougher enforcement, driving smugglers to recruit federal employees as accomplices. It has grown so worrisome that job applicants will soon be subject to lie detector tests to ensure that they are not already working for smuggling organizations. In addition, homeland security officials have reconstituted an internal affairs unit at Customs and Border Protection, one of the largest federal law enforcement agencies, overseeing both border agents and customs officers.
When the Homeland Security Department was created in 2003, the internal affairs unit was dissolved and its functions spread among other agencies. Since the unit was reborn last year, it has grown from five investigators to a projected 200 by the end of the year.
Altogether, there are about 200 open cases pending against law enforcement employees who work the border. In the latest arrests, four employees in Arizona, Texas and California were charged this month with helping to smuggle illegal immigrants into the country.
While the corruption investigations involve a small fraction of the overall security workforce on the border, the numbers are growing. In the 2007 fiscal year, the Homeland Security Department's main anticorruption arm, the inspector general's office, had 79 investigations under way in the four states bordering Mexico, compared with 31 in 2003. Officials at other federal law enforcement agencies investigating border corruption also said their caseloads had risen.
Some of the recent cases involve border guards who had worked for their agencies for a short time, including the arrest this month of a recruit at the Border Patrol academy in New Mexico on gun smuggling charges.
The federal government says it carefully screens applicants, but some internal affairs investigators say they have been unable to keep up with the increased workload.
''It's going to get worse before it gets better,'' said James Wong, an internal affairs agent with Customs and Border Protection. ''It's very difficult for us to get out and vet each and every one of the applicants as well as we should.''
The Border Patrol alone is expected to grow to more than 20,000 agents by the end of 2009, more than double from 2001, when the agency began to expand in response to concerns about national security. There has also been a large increase in the number of customs officers.
James Tomsheck, the assistant commissioner for internal affairs at Customs and Border Protection, said the agency was ''deeply concerned'' that smugglers were sending operatives to take jobs with the Border Patrol and at ports.
Mr. Tomsheck said the agency intended to administer random lie-detector tests to 10 percent of new hires this year, with the goal of eventually testing all applicants. His office has contracts with 155 retired criminal investigators, adding 36 since last fall, to do background checks.
In one of the new corruption cases this month, at a border crossing east of San Diego, a customs officer allowed numerous cars with dozens of illegal immigrants and hundreds of pounds of drugs to pass through his inspection lane, investigators said.
The officer, Luis Alarid, 31, had worked at the crossing less than a year, and the loads included a vehicle driven by Mr. Alarid's uncle, the authorities said. Mr. Alarid has pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to smuggle. Investigators found about $175,000 in cash in his house, according to court records.
In another recent case, Margarita Crispin, a customs inspector in El Paso, Tex., began helping drug smugglers just a few months after she was hired in 2003, according to prosecutors. She helped the smugglers for four years before she was arrested last year and sentenced in April to 20 years in prison and ordered to forfeit up to $5 million.
Although bad apples turn up in almost every law enforcement agency, the corruption cases expose a worrisome vulnerability for national and border security. The concern, several officials said, is that corrupt agents let people into the country whose intentions may be less innocent than finding work.
''If you can get a corrupt inspector, you have the keys to the kingdom,'' said Andrew P. Black, an F.B.I. agent who supervises a multiagency task force focused on corruption on the San Diego border.
Comparing corruption among police agencies is difficult because of the varying standards and procedures for handling internal investigations, said Lawrence W. Sherman, the director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania and an authority on corruption.
But he described policing the border as ''potentially one of the most corruptible tasks in law enforcement'' because of the solitary nature of much of the work and the desperation of people seeking to cross.
Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, declined an interview. But in response to questions at a recent news conference, he suggested that the breadth and depth of border security improvements would inevitably produce problem officers.
''There is an old expression among prosecutors,'' he said. ''Big cases, big problems. Little cases, little problems. No cases, no problems. Some people take the view we ought to make no cases and then we would have no problems. I think that is a head-in-the-sand view, which I do not endorse.''
A Veteran Gone Bad
The customs inspector stands just outside his booth, his hand waving a stream of cars through the Otay Mesa crossing just east of San Diego. They zip past, one after another, no questions asked, an unusually easy welcome into the United States where inspectors are known to grill citizens about their travels before allowing them through.
But time was running short for this Customs and Border Protection officer, Michael Gilliland, a revered veteran on the late shift expecting a special delivery -- a vehicle with several illegal immigrants -- in his crossing lane.
Rather than intercept them, he had arranged for their safe passage through his lane, federal prosecutors said.
Mr. Black, the F.B.I. agent from San Diego, shook his head as he watched a surveillance videotape of Mr. Gilliland.
''You're basically giving that smuggling organization an opportunity to conceal whatever else they want in that vehicle,'' he said, ''whether its drugs, weapons, terrorists.''
The smugglers use any ruse available to lure border workers but seem to favor deploying attractive women as bait. They flirt and charm and beg the officers, often middle-aged men, to ''just this once'' let an unauthorized relative or friend through. And then another and another.
Prosecutors believe this is how smugglers ensnared Mr. Gilliland, who eventually pleaded guilty to taking $70,000 to $120,000 in exchange for letting hundreds of illegal immigrants pass through his lane. He was sentenced last year to five years in federal prison. Two women he had befriended also pleaded guilty.
The case against Mr. Gilliland, 46, stands out for the number of immigrants he helped and the shock of a respected veteran gone bad.
To young inspectors, Mr. Gilliland was a mentor, quick with advice, even an embrace, a burly go-to type with 16 years under his belt.
''He knew the laws backward and forward,'' said Edward Archuleta, an internal affairs agent with Customs and Border Protection who once worked with Mr. Gilliland and eventually helped bring him down.
A tip steered F.B.I. agents to Mr. Gilliland's illegal activities, but it took agents two years to build the case. The evidence against him included secretly recorded phone conversations in which Mr. Gilliland coordinated with Mexican smugglers when to drive their cargo of illegal immigrants through inspection lanes.
One morning, while Mr. Gilliland was taking a break from his shift, agents called him over and told him he was under arrest. They had braced for Mr. Gilliland to become belligerent, but instead he collapsed into a chair, weak-kneed.
''My grandfather always told me that when you're born, the only thing you're born with is your word, and only you can give that away, your integrity,'' Mr. Gilliland said at his sentencing hearing. ''And I'm sorry.''
A Breach of Trust
The case against the Villarreal brothers -- the former Border Patrol agents in San Diego -- illustrates how hard it has been for investigators to hunt for and root out corrupt officers, many of whom know how to game the system.
The Villarreals would meet illegal immigrants near the border. The doors of their government-issue truck would swing open and Mexicans and Brazilians would climb in. Off they drove, Border Patrol agents at the wheel, but not to a station or jail, investigators said.
Instead, they said, the migrants were taken to a drop house in San Diego and later transported by others in the smuggling ring to cities and towns far from the border.
The case against the Villarreals had shock value, even to those on the inside.
''Just really brazen, broad daylight,'' said an investigator, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss a continuing investigation. ''They could say, 'We picked these guys up, we're taking them in.' ''
As they closed in on the brothers, a squad of agents from several federal agencies met. Some had qualms about speaking openly in front of such a large group, fearing internal leaks.
Their fears were apparently borne out when, a couple of weeks after the meeting, the brothers quit their posts, left their badges at their family's home in National City, Calif., and have not been seen publicly since.
A lawyer for the family, Jon Ronis, declined to say where the brothers were and said neither they nor family members would comment. Mr. Ronis said Raul and Fidel Villarreal were ready to defend themselves if the government brought a case.
Federal officials declined to comment because the case was still open. But investigators described some aspects of it on condition of anonymity. When the public service announcement was being made for Mexico, for example, Raul Villarreal spoke excitedly about his role in producing it, even suggesting camera angles and lighting, said a person familiar with its production.
Just when and why the brothers turned against the Border Patrol is unclear, even to the investigators. There is speculation that Raul had grown disgruntled with the work, chafing at having been moved back into the field from his public affairs job, considered a comfortable, high-profile position.
The Villarreal case is especially alarming for the level of trust the brothers had earned within the Border Patrol. Their betrayal has had the effect, at least in some investigations, of leading the authorities to move in more quickly when agents are suspected of wrongdoing.
In the case of Jose Olivas Jr., a Border Patrol agent in San Diego who was discovered serving as a scout for smugglers, an arrest was made within a year. Mr. Olivas, an agent for 10 years who had worked as a liaison between the agency and the United States attorney's office, was sentenced in January to three years in prison.
The drawback to moving in fast, investigators said later, is that they probably will never know how deep Mr. Olivas's ties were to the smuggling organization. He suggested to a judge that he had been drawn to smuggling to help pay his bills.
Policing the Police
An internal Web site at Customs and Border Protection features a page devoted to a rogue's gallery of agents and officers recently convicted of corruption-related charges.
The intention, homeland security officials say, is to send the message that corruption will not be tolerated. That message has taken other forms, as well. When Mr. Olivas, the San Diego border agent, was sentenced to prison, several agents attended the court hearing at the behest of homeland security officials to shame him publicly.
''I am truly embarrassed just looking at them,'' Mr. Olivas told the judge. ''I am truly sorry for the breach of trust that was given to me.''
But if the department is serious about catching wrongdoers, investigators of corruption cases say it also needs to make fundamental changes in the way it polices the border police.
One result of the awkward marriage of agencies that begat the Homeland Security Department is that three internal affairs units, in addition to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have a hand in corruption investigations. In the best case, having more than one unit investigate corruption can be a ''force multiplier,'' in the words of one investigator, but more often, it can slow cases down and lead to confusion over who should take the lead, several investigators said.
The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general has nearly 170 investigators to police 208,000 department employees -- including other large agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Administration, the Secret Service -- and gets first crack at cases. When it passes on an investigation, the case is picked up by either the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's office of professional responsibility or the Customs and Border Protection internal affairs unit.
The F.B.I. also develops its own cases. Don Allen, a retired agent who until 2005 supervised a multiagency task force in San Diego investigating corruption among border officers, said internal affairs units did not always readily share information and often resented any sense of being big-footed by an outside agency. He said law enforcement agencies often ''had a negative impression of the bureau.''
Thomas Frost, an assistant inspector general with the Homeland Security Department, said the limited number of investigators meant his office focused on ''those most important cases and what resources we can bring to bear.''
He suggested it would be ''more efficient'' if his office had more investigative resources under its control so that it could better track ''everything going on.''
''Let's face it,'' Mr. Frost said, ''part of the issue of the border is it is kind of a balloon. When you squeeze one part, another bulges.''
Some Recent Cases
Jose Ramiro Arredondo, 33, a Customs and Border Protection officer in Laredo, Tex., was arrested in March after a smuggler who had been detained told the authorities that Mr. Arredondo had helped bring illegal immigrants across the border.
Miguel Angel Avina, a trainee at the Border Patrol academy in Artesia, N.M., was arrested in May on fraud and conspiracy charges related to his participation last year in a ring that smuggled at least 110 guns into Mexico, the government said. He has been dismissed from the academy.
Juan Luis Sanchez, 31, a Border Patrol agent, pleaded guilty May 20 to drug, bribery and fraud charges. He admitted transporting at least 3,000 pounds of marijuana in his Border Patrol truck from summer 2002 to January 2004 in exchange for $45,000 in bribes.
Jose Magana, 44, a Customs and Border Protection officer at the San Luis, Ariz., border crossing, was arrested May 12 on charges of conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants. The authorities say he allowed people to pass uninspected through.
Luis Francisco Alarid, 31, a Customs and Border Protection officer, was arrested May 16 on charges of conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants and drugs into the United States. Mr. Alarid allowed numerous vehicles with migrants or drugs to pass through his inspection lane since at least February at a border crossing east of San Diego, the authorities say. One vehicle, containing 18 illegal immigrants, was driven by his uncle. He has pleaded not guilty.
Lowell Bergman contributed reporting from San Diego.
.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/us/27border.html
?ref=world
Border Agents, Lured by the Other Side
By Randal C. Archibold and Andrew Becker
The New York Times, May 27, 2008
San Diego -- The smuggler in the public service announcement sat handcuffed in prison garb, full of bravado and shrugging off the danger of bringing illegal immigrants across the border.
''Sometimes they die in the desert, or the cars crash, or they drown,'' he said. ''But it's not my fault.''
The smuggler in the commercial, produced by the Mexican government several years ago, was played by an American named Raul Villarreal, who at the time was a United States Border Patrol agent and a spokesman for the agency here.
Now, federal investigators are asking: Was he really acting?
Mr. Villarreal and a brother, Fidel, also a former Border Patrol agent, are suspected of helping to smuggle an untold number of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Brazil across the border. The brothers quit the Border Patrol two years ago and are believed to have fled to Mexico.
The Villarreal investigation is among scores of corruption cases in recent years that have alarmed officials in the Homeland Security Department just as it is hiring thousands of border agents to stem the flow of illegal immigration.
The pattern has become familiar: Customs officers wave in vehicles filled with illegal immigrants, drugs or other contraband. A Border Patrol agent acts as a scout for smugglers. Trusted officers fall prey to temptation and begin taking bribes.
Increased corruption is linked, in part, to tougher enforcement, driving smugglers to recruit federal employees as accomplices. It has grown so worrisome that job applicants will soon be subject to lie detector tests to ensure that they are not already working for smuggling organizations. In addition, homeland security officials have reconstituted an internal affairs unit at Customs and Border Protection, one of the largest federal law enforcement agencies, overseeing both border agents and customs officers.
When the Homeland Security Department was created in 2003, the internal affairs unit was dissolved and its functions spread among other agencies. Since the unit was reborn last year, it has grown from five investigators to a projected 200 by the end of the year.
Altogether, there are about 200 open cases pending against law enforcement employees who work the border. In the latest arrests, four employees in Arizona, Texas and California were charged this month with helping to smuggle illegal immigrants into the country.
While the corruption investigations involve a small fraction of the overall security workforce on the border, the numbers are growing. In the 2007 fiscal year, the Homeland Security Department's main anticorruption arm, the inspector general's office, had 79 investigations under way in the four states bordering Mexico, compared with 31 in 2003. Officials at other federal law enforcement agencies investigating border corruption also said their caseloads had risen.
Some of the recent cases involve border guards who had worked for their agencies for a short time, including the arrest this month of a recruit at the Border Patrol academy in New Mexico on gun smuggling charges.
The federal government says it carefully screens applicants, but some internal affairs investigators say they have been unable to keep up with the increased workload.
''It's going to get worse before it gets better,'' said James Wong, an internal affairs agent with Customs and Border Protection. ''It's very difficult for us to get out and vet each and every one of the applicants as well as we should.''
The Border Patrol alone is expected to grow to more than 20,000 agents by the end of 2009, more than double from 2001, when the agency began to expand in response to concerns about national security. There has also been a large increase in the number of customs officers.
James Tomsheck, the assistant commissioner for internal affairs at Customs and Border Protection, said the agency was ''deeply concerned'' that smugglers were sending operatives to take jobs with the Border Patrol and at ports.
Mr. Tomsheck said the agency intended to administer random lie-detector tests to 10 percent of new hires this year, with the goal of eventually testing all applicants. His office has contracts with 155 retired criminal investigators, adding 36 since last fall, to do background checks.
In one of the new corruption cases this month, at a border crossing east of San Diego, a customs officer allowed numerous cars with dozens of illegal immigrants and hundreds of pounds of drugs to pass through his inspection lane, investigators said.
The officer, Luis Alarid, 31, had worked at the crossing less than a year, and the loads included a vehicle driven by Mr. Alarid's uncle, the authorities said. Mr. Alarid has pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to smuggle. Investigators found about $175,000 in cash in his house, according to court records.
In another recent case, Margarita Crispin, a customs inspector in El Paso, Tex., began helping drug smugglers just a few months after she was hired in 2003, according to prosecutors. She helped the smugglers for four years before she was arrested last year and sentenced in April to 20 years in prison and ordered to forfeit up to $5 million.
Although bad apples turn up in almost every law enforcement agency, the corruption cases expose a worrisome vulnerability for national and border security. The concern, several officials said, is that corrupt agents let people into the country whose intentions may be less innocent than finding work.
''If you can get a corrupt inspector, you have the keys to the kingdom,'' said Andrew P. Black, an F.B.I. agent who supervises a multiagency task force focused on corruption on the San Diego border.
Comparing corruption among police agencies is difficult because of the varying standards and procedures for handling internal investigations, said Lawrence W. Sherman, the director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania and an authority on corruption.
But he described policing the border as ''potentially one of the most corruptible tasks in law enforcement'' because of the solitary nature of much of the work and the desperation of people seeking to cross.
Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, declined an interview. But in response to questions at a recent news conference, he suggested that the breadth and depth of border security improvements would inevitably produce problem officers.
''There is an old expression among prosecutors,'' he said. ''Big cases, big problems. Little cases, little problems. No cases, no problems. Some people take the view we ought to make no cases and then we would have no problems. I think that is a head-in-the-sand view, which I do not endorse.''
A Veteran Gone Bad
The customs inspector stands just outside his booth, his hand waving a stream of cars through the Otay Mesa crossing just east of San Diego. They zip past, one after another, no questions asked, an unusually easy welcome into the United States where inspectors are known to grill citizens about their travels before allowing them through.
But time was running short for this Customs and Border Protection officer, Michael Gilliland, a revered veteran on the late shift expecting a special delivery -- a vehicle with several illegal immigrants -- in his crossing lane.
Rather than intercept them, he had arranged for their safe passage through his lane, federal prosecutors said.
Mr. Black, the F.B.I. agent from San Diego, shook his head as he watched a surveillance videotape of Mr. Gilliland.
''You're basically giving that smuggling organization an opportunity to conceal whatever else they want in that vehicle,'' he said, ''whether its drugs, weapons, terrorists.''
The smugglers use any ruse available to lure border workers but seem to favor deploying attractive women as bait. They flirt and charm and beg the officers, often middle-aged men, to ''just this once'' let an unauthorized relative or friend through. And then another and another.
Prosecutors believe this is how smugglers ensnared Mr. Gilliland, who eventually pleaded guilty to taking $70,000 to $120,000 in exchange for letting hundreds of illegal immigrants pass through his lane. He was sentenced last year to five years in federal prison. Two women he had befriended also pleaded guilty.
The case against Mr. Gilliland, 46, stands out for the number of immigrants he helped and the shock of a respected veteran gone bad.
To young inspectors, Mr. Gilliland was a mentor, quick with advice, even an embrace, a burly go-to type with 16 years under his belt.
''He knew the laws backward and forward,'' said Edward Archuleta, an internal affairs agent with Customs and Border Protection who once worked with Mr. Gilliland and eventually helped bring him down.
A tip steered F.B.I. agents to Mr. Gilliland's illegal activities, but it took agents two years to build the case. The evidence against him included secretly recorded phone conversations in which Mr. Gilliland coordinated with Mexican smugglers when to drive their cargo of illegal immigrants through inspection lanes.
One morning, while Mr. Gilliland was taking a break from his shift, agents called him over and told him he was under arrest. They had braced for Mr. Gilliland to become belligerent, but instead he collapsed into a chair, weak-kneed.
''My grandfather always told me that when you're born, the only thing you're born with is your word, and only you can give that away, your integrity,'' Mr. Gilliland said at his sentencing hearing. ''And I'm sorry.''
A Breach of Trust
The case against the Villarreal brothers -- the former Border Patrol agents in San Diego -- illustrates how hard it has been for investigators to hunt for and root out corrupt officers, many of whom know how to game the system.
The Villarreals would meet illegal immigrants near the border. The doors of their government-issue truck would swing open and Mexicans and Brazilians would climb in. Off they drove, Border Patrol agents at the wheel, but not to a station or jail, investigators said.
Instead, they said, the migrants were taken to a drop house in San Diego and later transported by others in the smuggling ring to cities and towns far from the border.
The case against the Villarreals had shock value, even to those on the inside.
''Just really brazen, broad daylight,'' said an investigator, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss a continuing investigation. ''They could say, 'We picked these guys up, we're taking them in.' ''
As they closed in on the brothers, a squad of agents from several federal agencies met. Some had qualms about speaking openly in front of such a large group, fearing internal leaks.
Their fears were apparently borne out when, a couple of weeks after the meeting, the brothers quit their posts, left their badges at their family's home in National City, Calif., and have not been seen publicly since.
A lawyer for the family, Jon Ronis, declined to say where the brothers were and said neither they nor family members would comment. Mr. Ronis said Raul and Fidel Villarreal were ready to defend themselves if the government brought a case.
Federal officials declined to comment because the case was still open. But investigators described some aspects of it on condition of anonymity. When the public service announcement was being made for Mexico, for example, Raul Villarreal spoke excitedly about his role in producing it, even suggesting camera angles and lighting, said a person familiar with its production.
Just when and why the brothers turned against the Border Patrol is unclear, even to the investigators. There is speculation that Raul had grown disgruntled with the work, chafing at having been moved back into the field from his public affairs job, considered a comfortable, high-profile position.
The Villarreal case is especially alarming for the level of trust the brothers had earned within the Border Patrol. Their betrayal has had the effect, at least in some investigations, of leading the authorities to move in more quickly when agents are suspected of wrongdoing.
In the case of Jose Olivas Jr., a Border Patrol agent in San Diego who was discovered serving as a scout for smugglers, an arrest was made within a year. Mr. Olivas, an agent for 10 years who had worked as a liaison between the agency and the United States attorney's office, was sentenced in January to three years in prison.
The drawback to moving in fast, investigators said later, is that they probably will never know how deep Mr. Olivas's ties were to the smuggling organization. He suggested to a judge that he had been drawn to smuggling to help pay his bills.
Policing the Police
An internal Web site at Customs and Border Protection features a page devoted to a rogue's gallery of agents and officers recently convicted of corruption-related charges.
The intention, homeland security officials say, is to send the message that corruption will not be tolerated. That message has taken other forms, as well. When Mr. Olivas, the San Diego border agent, was sentenced to prison, several agents attended the court hearing at the behest of homeland security officials to shame him publicly.
''I am truly embarrassed just looking at them,'' Mr. Olivas told the judge. ''I am truly sorry for the breach of trust that was given to me.''
But if the department is serious about catching wrongdoers, investigators of corruption cases say it also needs to make fundamental changes in the way it polices the border police.
One result of the awkward marriage of agencies that begat the Homeland Security Department is that three internal affairs units, in addition to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have a hand in corruption investigations. In the best case, having more than one unit investigate corruption can be a ''force multiplier,'' in the words of one investigator, but more often, it can slow cases down and lead to confusion over who should take the lead, several investigators said.
The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general has nearly 170 investigators to police 208,000 department employees -- including other large agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Administration, the Secret Service -- and gets first crack at cases. When it passes on an investigation, the case is picked up by either the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's office of professional responsibility or the Customs and Border Protection internal affairs unit.
The F.B.I. also develops its own cases. Don Allen, a retired agent who until 2005 supervised a multiagency task force in San Diego investigating corruption among border officers, said internal affairs units did not always readily share information and often resented any sense of being big-footed by an outside agency. He said law enforcement agencies often ''had a negative impression of the bureau.''
Thomas Frost, an assistant inspector general with the Homeland Security Department, said the limited number of investigators meant his office focused on ''those most important cases and what resources we can bring to bear.''
He suggested it would be ''more efficient'' if his office had more investigative resources under its control so that it could better track ''everything going on.''
''Let's face it,'' Mr. Frost said, ''part of the issue of the border is it is kind of a balloon. When you squeeze one part, another bulges.''
Some Recent Cases
Jose Ramiro Arredondo, 33, a Customs and Border Protection officer in Laredo, Tex., was arrested in March after a smuggler who had been detained told the authorities that Mr. Arredondo had helped bring illegal immigrants across the border.
Miguel Angel Avina, a trainee at the Border Patrol academy in Artesia, N.M., was arrested in May on fraud and conspiracy charges related to his participation last year in a ring that smuggled at least 110 guns into Mexico, the government said. He has been dismissed from the academy.
Juan Luis Sanchez, 31, a Border Patrol agent, pleaded guilty May 20 to drug, bribery and fraud charges. He admitted transporting at least 3,000 pounds of marijuana in his Border Patrol truck from summer 2002 to January 2004 in exchange for $45,000 in bribes.
Jose Magana, 44, a Customs and Border Protection officer at the San Luis, Ariz., border crossing, was arrested May 12 on charges of conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants. The authorities say he allowed people to pass uninspected through.
Luis Francisco Alarid, 31, a Customs and Border Protection officer, was arrested May 16 on charges of conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants and drugs into the United States. Mr. Alarid allowed numerous vehicles with migrants or drugs to pass through his inspection lane since at least February at a border crossing east of San Diego, the authorities say. One vehicle, containing 18 illegal immigrants, was driven by his uncle. He has pleaded not guilty.
Lowell Bergman contributed reporting from San Diego.
.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/us/27border.html
?ref=world
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