lframerica.com Blog

While this is a touching story and one can not help but feel sorry for the hardship faced by these individuals, one also has to realize that they themselves entered into another country illegally, and as such had not taken the proper steps (in 18 years in this case) to gain legal citizenship in the country.   Stories like this should prompt Mexican citizens and Mexican organizations within the United States to work to improve conditions in Mexico.  They should prompt those individuals and organizations to work towards assuring returning Mexican illegal immigrants from the United States have a job, shelter and government needed aid to help them adapt back to their native land.  One can only hope these organizations put that into action as it would benefit far more people then just focusing on illegal immigrants within the United States.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004330685_mexicoana06m.html 

MEXICO CITY — Ana Reyes walks briskly through a crowded neighborhood here, out of place among the provocatively dressed women of the night soliciting work in the middle of the day.

The 41-year-old mother of four slips through the entrance of a clothing store, its racks thick with the latest fashion, a sign on the door indicating the shop is hiring female assistants.

She approaches the manager about the job but is told it’s only for women 20 to 30 years old.

Manager Maria Inez elaborates when prompted: “A younger girl will be able to bring more male customers into the store. She’s too old.”

Ten months after she was picked up by immigration officers in an early-morning raid of her Burien home and soon deported to Mexico, Reyes — jobless and broke — struggles to eke out the barest existence in the dirt-poor barrios of one of the world’s biggest and most crowded cities.

After nearly two decades picking hops and fruit in Eastern Washington and cleaning hotel rooms near Seattle, she was among more than 870,000 Mexicans the U.S. government expelled from the country last year.

For all the attention illegal immigrants get in the U.S. — from those who believe they’re a drain on social services to advocates who say they do the jobs Americans won’t — little is known about what happens to them after they’re ushered by U.S. immigration authorities through revolving doors into Mexico’s border towns.

Once there, they get little help from their government. Many stay, others try to get back to their hometowns. For the most part no one tracks them — not their government, or the U.S., or their advocacy groups in the states. They become largely forgotten — along with the U.S.-born children they sometimes take with them.

Reyes’ two adult sons, Christian and Carlos Quiroz, whom she and her then-husband had brought illegally into the U.S. as little boys, were also returned to Mexico last year.

And with no family in the U.S., Reyes’ two American daughters, Julie Quiroz, now 13, and Sharise Hernandez, 6, have also joined her here.

Now, unable to find work in a city she left 18 years ago, Reyes shuffles between the cramped homes of a brother and a sister in neighborhoods so unsafe her children aren’t allowed outside to play.

Neither daughter is in school.

The older one longs for her life in Seattle, saying that on the rare occasion she gets close enough to the hotels that cater to tourists here, she strains to hear Americans speak. “I always think that if I had the courage I’d go up and talk to them,” Julie said.

For her mother, small things, like the Starbucks white-chocolate mocha her son sometimes buys her, remind her of their old life. And some days she thinks of little else but how to get it back.

“It’s ugly here,” Reyes said, sitting in her sister’s living room, her children and other family members around her.

“I never wanted to come back here to live. I wanted to stay and watch my daughters go to school and graduate, have the kind of life I didn’t have.”

Fuel for economy

The engine of the American service economy runs on the labor of many of the 12 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

Many had fled poverty in small towns across Mexico and Latin America, becoming the cheap labor that builds houses, cleans hotel rooms and tends gardens in the U.S.

In recent years, stepped-up immigration enforcement increasingly has led to their arrests in work-site raids, on routine traffic stops, when immigration officers sweep through jails and prisons or, in cases such as Reyes’, when they show up at the front door.

“This country simply can’t absorb them all,” said Neil Clark, Seattle-based field-office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, pointing out the U.S. already admits about 1 million legal immigrants a year.

“People have got to demand changes in their home countries if they want to make things better,” he said. “Coming to the U.S. is not the solution to Mexico’s problems.”

Neither, it seems, is deportation.

For Mexico, the return of illegal immigrants is a double punch: The economy loses the deportees’ share of some $24 billion that Mexicans abroad send home each year. And back in the small towns they fled, deportees compete for what few low-paying jobs exist.

“Sometimes they leave with much fanfare and dreams of getting the family out of poverty — only to be sent back home, their deportation seen as a failure,” said Erica Dahl-Bredine, country manager for Catholic Relief Services Mexico, based in Tucson, Ariz.

So many don’t go back home but instead remain in border towns such as Tijuana and Juárez — sometimes because they don’t have money for a bus ticket home but mostly because they’re waiting for a chance to re-enter the U.S.

It’s what Reyes might have done last July if she’d had the money to pay a smuggler to help her return to the U.S. Instead, she returned to her family in Mexico City, buying time while she figures out a way to get back to Seattle.

She’d first come to the attention of U.S. immigration authorities in 1998 when she got into a fight with another woman on a street in the Eastern Washington town of Sunnyside, violating a restraining order.

In 2003, an immigration judge granted her a chance to leave the U.S. voluntarily, saying her daughters were young enough that they could adjust to life in Mexico. She appealed and lost, but never left, she said, because she kept hoping changes in U.S. immigration laws would allow her to stay legally.

She was asleep the morning 10 months ago when a team of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers knocked on the door of her apartment, her name on their fugitive list for that day.

Among those inside, besides her two daughters, were her younger son, Carlos; her boyfriend and the father of her younger daughter, Arturo Hernandez; and her brother-in-law Luis Hernandez. The men were all returned to Mexico. Reyes’ older son was living in Tacoma and deported several months later.

Later, Reyes would remark that if deported, she would not bring her daughters to Mexico because she would not be staying long.

She couldn’t have known how bad things would get for her here.

Mexico City as home

The metropolitan area of Mexico City is the second-largest in the world — teeming with congestion, pollution and poverty. The divide between rich and poor is vast.

It is, in so many ways, removed from the green landscape and fresh air of Western Washington, where Reyes lived in an apartment complex and worked as a hotel maid for nearly half her years in the U.S. On good days, she earned about $70 a day, her boyfriend about twice that.

Much of what the family had was left behind in the Burien apartment: a microwave, beds, tables, other furniture. “Everything that I worked really hard for,” Reyes said.

Now, in Mexico, home is sometimes her brother’s third-floor, two-bedroom apartment near the historic center of the city, where drug dealers and prostitutes hug grimy street corners, conducting business in full view of the police.

Mostly, it’s her sister Patricia Reyes’ cramped two-bedroom house in Arboledas, a poor neighborhood that is part of the city’s stubborn march toward the mountains surrounding it.

The house is like many others throughout the city, joined to those on either side, with the street as its front yard.

Her family lives like many in Mexico’s large cities, doubling and sometimes tripling up under the same roof. Up to 10 family members sometimes share her sister’s home. Reyes sleeps on a mattress on the floor, a wooden bar braced at the front door to keep rats from scurrying inside.

She is often depressed, her family said.

“We’re been back and forth, back and forth,” Reyes said. “It’s the hardest thing because I had my own place up there, my own car, my own money. I have nothing here.”

Looking for work

Reyes’ age, long absence from Mexico and lack of a high-school diploma help explain why the hotels, restaurants and stores where she seeks work aren’t calling her back.

“I tried the hotel jobs and even when I tell them how much experience I have, I still don’t get called,” she said. “They say that someone younger will produce more than me.”

Susanna Noguez, who works in the protection department in the Mexican consulate office in Seattle, said, “If she has the intention of finding any kind of work, it’s not easy, but it’s not impossible.”

In this city, getting work also depends on whom you know.

Reyes’ 68-year-old father slowly shakes his head when asked if he can use his position as a former government worker to help.

“Before, when I was younger, there was lots of work here — enough for everybody,” Luis Reyes said. “Now everything has gotten more corrupt … .”

“The people I can call, they’re all retired, like me. They can’t help.”

So five evenings a week, Reyes does what many of her generation here do to make a living — she peddles on the street.

She and sister Patricia roll a food cart up a dusty street to sell quesadillas for 70 cents, gorditas for 90 cents. On a good night they can clear $20. On this particular one, they had three customers.

One was 28-year-old Santo Lopez, who had been deported from the U.S. only a few months earlier. He had lived for four years in Hope, Ark., he said, holding down jobs in a mechanic shop and at a warehouse.

He’s found a food-processing job here that pays $80 for a six-day week but says he could make that same amount in two or three hours in the states.

“I hear they are now jailing people they catch trying to cross the border,” he said. “If things get much worse for me here, I might consider just that. Life in detention in the states might be better than it is here.”

Lopez bought three quesadillas.

On evenings like these, unsold inventory becomes the family’s meal. At the end of every day, everyone in the family pools what money they made that day.

“And that’s how we survive,” Reyes said. “It’s not the life I imagined for my kids.”

But many who oppose the presence of illegal immigrants in the U.S. say it’s right to deport them and that the hard realities of life across the border are Mexico’s to resolve.

“Maybe if the Mexican government was half as concerned about its people in Mexico, so many of them would not be trying to get out,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation of American Immigration Reform.

How it began

Reyes grew up in a relatively poor neighborhood near central Mexico City, one of four children.

She didn’t finish high school but attended a trade school, where she was trained as a secretary and later got work with the government.

She married young and had her first child at 18 and her second child four years later.

In the late 1980s, her husband followed the wave of Mexicans going north for jobs in the fruit farms in Washington and California.

He crossed illegally and settled in Eastern Washington; she followed in 1990, walking three hours with a smuggler whom her husband had paid $1,000.

She said she was apprehended by U.S. border authorities and promised a work permit, Social Security number and legal status if she would testify against the coyote.

But the smuggler ended up admitting to the charges and the deal for the green card was off, though Reyes was granted what most illegal immigrants covet — a valid Social Security number and a work permit, which would expire a few months later.

The couple settled outside Yakima in Sunnyside, where they worked in the hops fields, then picked apples and cherries.

About a year later, they sent for their boys, 7 and 3 at the time, paying a coyote to guide the children through the desert.

But authorities stopped the boys and the smuggler. The children, now grown, speak of spending days in foster homes, separated from one other and afraid, before their father came from Washington and all three crossed with a coyote.

Reyes’ relationship with her husband grew strained, and in the winter of 1998, he moved without the family to Western Washington.

With no money, she and her children were evicted from their Sunnyside apartment. They moved in with Arturo Hernandez, who was renting a small trailer in the same town.

Together, in 2001, they followed other Mexican fruit pickers to the construction, restaurant and hotel jobs in and around Seattle. Reyes landed a job at SeaTac Crest Motor Inn, where Manager Karl Singh calls her a “really hard and honest worker.”

“We still miss her,” he said.

Plotting their return

Soon after she was deported, Reyes, the girls and her younger son went to live with Hernandez and his family in a small town outside Aguascalientes, some 300 miles northwest of Mexico City.

It is here they sometimes return when they need to give her brother and sister some space. When they arrive, the two-bedroom house Hernandez shares with his extended family comes alive. Reyes and the kids say they feel safer here. There are other children for the girls to play with and they can walk the few blocks to the neighborhood store.

Hernandez, who had been employed by a Tacoma boat builder for $20 an hour, now starts his days tending his father’s horses and goats. He’s not found a job because all seem to require the high-school diploma he doesn’t have.

He had gone to the U.S. when he was 16, making enough to send money back to his aging parents every two weeks.

“Now I’m back and there’s nothing here,” he said. “My parents have to help me because I have no money.”

His mother said she was apprehensive when he left. “He was still a boy,” Maria Pilar said. “I prayed that he would be fine.”

When his mother first learned he was being deported, she was at once happy because she would be seeing him again and devastated by what she knew were dim prospects.

So he and Reyes, along with her grown sons, haven’t stopped plotting ways to get back to Seattle.

She thinks her only chance of doing that legally is years away and hinges on daughter Julie, whom she thinks can petition for her when she turns 21.

But it’s not that simple: Because Reyes lived illegally in the states for 17 years, she faces a 10-year bar to legal entry. So Julie would have to be 23 and have a home established in the U.S. before she could petition for her mother to join her.

Reyes and Hernandez are considering an offer from an Edmonds real-estate investor who learned of their circumstances and has offered to help them relocate to Juárez. The girls could stay with a family in El Paso, Texas, and attend school there during the week. But the idea of seeing her mother only on weekends worries Julie.

A few months ago, it was a different plan — to cross illegally with a group of people who had been deported from Phoenix.

Then they heard that a cold front had passed through the desert, leaving four people dead of exposure. And they found out that U.S. immigration authorities are now jailing — not just catching and releasing — those caught sneaking across the border.

So that plan, at least for now, is on hold.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/rights_85433___article.html/civil_border.html

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas will hold a community meeting Thursday in Brownsville to discuss human rights and civil rights issues on the border.

The event is co-sponsored by the Coalition of Amigos in Solidarity and Action (CASA).  Border residents are urged to attend the meeting to voice their concerns about the border wall, immigration detention centers, and collaboration between local law enforcement officers and the Border Patrol, among other issues.

“We really want to hear from border residents about what worries them, what issues are important in their communities,” said Rebecca Bernhardt, Director of Policy Development at the ACLU of Texas, “and what they want for their communities in the future.”

The meeting will include “Know Your Rights” training about residents’ legal rights in law enforcement encounters, and attorneys and other advocates will be available to answer questions from community members.

“This information is important for residents so they know what to do when they are approached by police officers or border patrol officers in their homes, in their cars, and on the street,” Bernhardt said.  “They will learn what law enforcement constitutionally can and cannot do.”

CASA member E. Elizabeth Garcia said CASA is getting complaints from community members that during routine traffic stops police officers are asking about their immigration status.

“Many in our community live in fear of being targeted and subjected to invasive, inappropriate questioning,” Garcia said.  “For this reason, we want to provide community members with an opportunity to discuss their experiences as well as information on how to handle these types of incidents.”

The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at San Felipe de Jesus Church, 2218 Carlos Avenue. Dinner and refreshments will be provided.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/05/AR2008040501135.html

Prince William County Police Chief Charlie T. Deane said most of the people arrested during the first month of the country’s illegal-immigration crackdown would have gone to jail anyway.

Of the 89 people questioned about their citizenship status, 41 were taken to the county’s adult detention center. Although officers have reason to think the 41 people arrested are in the country illegally, all but two were charged with a series of misdemeanors and felonies unrelated to their immigration status.

“Most of them would have been made anyway,” Deane said during a news conference to provide details about the county’s first month of increased illegal immigration enforcement.

Seven people were charged with felonies, including attempted murder, cocaine possession and shoplifting. Thirty-two people were charged with misdemeanors, which included public drunkenness, domestic assault and lack of a driver’s license. Two others were detained on immigration-related charges.

The Board of County Supervisors voted last fall to direct officers to check the citizenship or immigration status of suspects they think might be in the country illegally. The measure took effect March 3.

Of the 89 people questioned about their residency status, two were found to be in the country legally, Deane said.

Among those thought to be in the country illegally, 21 were released without charges and 25 were given citations for minor offenses. Police are referring the 87 cases to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Our job is to communicate that” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Deane said. “What happens after that is out of our hands.”

To put the numbers into perspective, Prince William police officers generally make 1,100 arrests a month, Deane said.

Supervisor John T. Stirrup Jr. (R-Gainesville) said that the first month’s numbers were consistent with his expectations but that it’s too early to determine the long-term effect.

“The reports I’ve been getting narratively are strong endorsements that criminal activity has reduced,” he said. “The presence of [illegal immigrants] has significantly reduced. It’s had a positive impact.”

Deane said he is concerned about perceptions in the community that police will set up checkpoints to question people about their citizenship status.

“We don’t do immigration roadblocks; we are not going to sweep day-labor sites,” he said.

Deane held a community meeting with Mexican Consul General Enrique Escorza to clear up misinformation and to quell fears about the scope of the county’s illegal immigration policies.

The cost of the illegal immigration measures for the first year will be $6.4 million. It is one of several public safety initiatives in the county’s budget for fiscal 2009, which begins July 1.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/brothers_85658___article.html/bernardo_indicted.html

A federal grand jury has returned a 19-count indictment against twin brothers Alberto and Bernardo Peña, and three others on charges of obtaining fraudulent work visas for more than 80 Indian nationals.

The Peña brothers, both 38, face charges of obtaining fraudulent H-2B visas, which are used to procure foreign manual labor. The visas are for non-immigrants and allow an employer in the United States to hire foreign workers for temporary non-agricultural work, according to federal court documents.

Also named in the indictment are Mahendrakumar “Mack” Patel, 55, Rakesh Patel, 36, and Marte Othon Villar Sr., 48, according to federal court documents. Are all charged with encouraging and inducing the illegal immigration of the Indian nationals in exchange for thousands of dollars per visa.

“Today’s significant charges represent the excellent task force-like efforts of four federal agencies,” U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle said in a prepared statement issued Friday. “All of the criminal charges are the result of a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional investigation.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of State, Department of Labor, and the Internal Revenue Service all worked together on the case.

Charles Keith Viscardi, 48, the owner and manager of a construction company located in New Iberia, La., is alleged to have enlisted AMEB Business Group Inc., a visa facilitation firm owned and operated by the Peñas and Villar, to hire foreign workers.

Viscardi asked AMEB Business Group Inc. to procure foreign manual labor under the H-2B visa program.

Viscardi, who was charged on March 20 with conspiring to encourage and induce illegal immigration in connection with the Indian scheme, is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Colvin Botley. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

AMEB procured workers from Mexico for Viscardi’s construction company, however, the Peñas and Villar also submitted documentation to the Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services and other governmental agencies seeking workers from India on behalf of Viscardi.

Mack, of Fort Worth, and Rakesh, of Houston, recruited citizens of India who were willing to pay between $20,000 to $80,000 in exchange for visas to enter the U.S., the news release states.

In spring 2006, Alberto and Bernardo traveled to India to assist the Indian nationals with the application process and allegedly visited and communicated with the U.S. Consulate in Mumbai.

The U.S. Consulate in Mumbai received an anonymous fax on Feb. 26, 2006, “which alleged that a recent group of visa applicants had each fraudulently obtained visas by paying an unknown U.S. person fees between $57,000 to $68,000,” court documents show.

The 88 Indian nationals began to arrive in the United States from late February to late March 2006 and entered the country, court documents show.

Each of the Indian nationals that were granted H-2B visas arrived to Houston, where they made payments for their visas in the form of cash, cashiers checks and international money orders.

“None of the Indian nationals were ever employed by Viscardi at the construction company,” the news release states. “Instead, they simply disappeared throughout the U.S. after paying for their fraudulently obtained visas. All of the conspirators, including Villar and Viscardi, shared in the proceeds derived from the scheme.”

All defendants are accused of assisting in the procurement of the H-2B visas for the Indian nationals, although they allegedly knew none had intentions of working for the company that obtained the visas on their behalf.

If convicted, they each face a maximum penalty of up to 15 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Bernardo faces an additional 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine if convicted of money laundering for the purpose of concealment. Mack and Alberto each face an additional 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted of violating the money laundering spending statute.

Mack and Rakesh appeared Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Mary Milloy in Houston. They were released on a $50,000 bond. They are scheduled to appear in federal court on April 15 before U.S. Magistrate Calvin Botley in Houston.

Alberto appeared Friday before Milloy and was released on a $50,000 bond.

Bernardo and Villar remain at large, and warrants for their arrest have been issued.

Anyone with information regarding their whereabouts is asked to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE (866-347-2423).

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/day-laborers-city-2011287-deberry-ordinance

New ordinances cracking down on businesses allowing day workers to congregate add to declining numbers in Orange. 

ORANGE – The number of day laborers in town has dropped 80 percent this year, in the wake of two municipal laws meant to stopping the laborers from congregating and soliciting work, city officials say.

The Police Department keeps statistics on sightings of apparent day laborers.

Further, City Attorney David DeBerry said he spotted approximately eight day laborers at Chapman and Hewes avenues on a recent day.

“That’s a huge drop,” DeBerry said. “There’s usually 70.”

City officials say no business has applied for a permit to allow day laborers to congregate on their property since a city law went into effect.

Councilman Jon Dumitru said the new law, enacted on March 13, adds to the ordinance enacted in January aimed at stopping day laborers from soliciting for work.

Under the latest law, city businesses that want to allow day laborers and those who want to employ them to congregate on their property must get a permit from the city.

“It’s not just day laborers, it’s also the people hiring them,” Dumitru said. “We’re going both directions on it.”

The ordinance states that permits are not needed if four or fewer day laborers gather. The fine for violating the ordinance is $250 for the first offense, $500 for the second – and $1,000 and up to three months in jail for the third.

DeBerry said 30 citations were handed out from Jan. 17 to March 1. Police logs show that just three citations were handed out in March.

“The ordinance seems to be working. Every once in a while, you’ll see more than one or two day laborers,” Mayor Carolyn Cavecche said.

Thursday morning, at Moreno’s Restaurant on Chapman Avenue, about six men gathered in front. Restaurant owner Javier Moreno said he had not received any official notice of the city ordinance.

“They eat and have coffee,” Moreno said. “I haven’t had any problems with them whatsoever.”

DeBerry said police went to different businesses along Chapman to tell owners about the new ordinance.

“Typically, how the situation would be handled is that we would receive a complaint about a business that was allowing day laborers on the premises,” DeBerry said. “Then we would go out and let them know the day laborers would have to leave, be reduced to four or less or the business would need to get a permit.”

Jose Herrera, 35, returned to the U.S. from Mexico two months ago and had little success finding work by standing at Hewes and Chapman. Herrera said the ordinance is the reason would-be employers don’t pull up looking for workers anymore.

“I’ve seen a lot of police cars, there are signs saying we can’t stand here and look for work,” Herrera said. “Police and sheriff officers stop by and tell us to leave or we’ll get fined, so we leave. But we need to work, so we come back.”

Stricter enforcement eligibility requirements at the Resource Center have resulted in a drop in patronage.

“They’re required to present two forms of identification and be able to present a Federal I-9 form in order to be used,” Dumitru said.”

DeBerry said the combination of ordinances and enforcement might have driven out day labors from other cities.

“We had some evidence that day laborers were coming from other jurisdictions,” DeBerry said. “Maybe they’ve stayed in their own areas.”

Herrera said he’s heard some laborers have moved out of state, to Oregon for example, because of the lack of work.

http://www.nbc4.com/news/15765600/detail.html?taf=dc

PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, Va. — A Prince William County Board of Supervisors meeting on immigration enforcement took an unexpected turn on Tuesday.

The board was to receive an update from the police chief on the county’s crackdown on illegal immigration, but board Chairman Corey Stewart, the architect of the plan, instead was attacked.

A dozen residents, including the head of the police officer’s association, blasted Stewart.

Some focused on the consequences of the illegal immigration crackdown he spearheaded. Others were angry about criticism he leveled at Police Chief Charlie Deane.

Stewart suggested a meeting Deane had last week with the Mexican General Consul and Latino residents was inappropriate and possibly illegal.

“I am appalled that you, Corey Stewart, have publicly attacked our chief,” said former county Supervisor Hilda Barg.

“To you Corey, I say, ‘If you cannot lead us, we must have a leader. Please leave us,’” Barg said.

“Bar none, every single person I talk to was angry, disappointed and very upset at your flippant, arrogant remarks. They do nothing more than add poison to this situation, and it is disgusting,” said resident Skip Brown.

Other speakers begged the board to reconsider the policy implemented last month allowing police to check the citizenship status of those arrested in the county if they think they may be in the country illegal.

A woman who once sponsored a fundraiser for Stewart highlighted a Web site created by supporters of Stewart that likens illegal immigrants to dog food.

“The person I know would never have a relationship with somebody who would post vileness like this,” she said.

Before the meeting, Stewart defended his meeting with the Mexican official.

The controversy overshadowed the police chief’s update on the crackdown. Deane departed from his planned remarks to address the questions.

“This meeting was neither a violation of law, State Department protocol, nor was it unprecedented,” he said.

The chief said the meeting was one of 77 he has had in the community to allay fears about the policy.

Deane said in the first month of the crackdown, the police had contact with 89 people suspected of being in the country illegally.

In his first briefing to the county supervisors since a crackdown on illegal immigration began March 3rd, Deane said that most were questioned during traffic stops and calls for service and 41 were arrested on various charges and taken to the county’s adult detention center.

In the fall, the board voted to direct officers to check the residency status of crime suspects they think might be in the country illegally. Some in the immigrant community are concerned that the program will be used to profile Latino residents.

Since July, when the county began implementing federal immigration laws, the county has detained almost 700 people.

http://ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=793698

Gov. Janet Napolitano urged Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and Sheriff Joe Arpaio to resolve their differences over immigration enforcement Wednesday as Hispanic leaders called for an end to the sheriff’s immigration patrols, claiming they are dividing the community and could lead to violence.

The governor, speaking at her weekly media briefing, said the problems “should be resolved professionally,” adding, “I think law enforcement ought to be focused on how public safety is most enhanced.”

She said the dispute over notification between the city and the sheriff over their operations needs to be settled.

“You run the risk of somebody getting hurt,” she said. “If you don’t know what other undercover operations or other things are going on out there, you really could have people running into each other… The second question is making sure that you are not violating people’s civil rights as you do these activities.”

Meanwhile, Hispanic leaders said the sheriff’s crackdowns on illegal immigrants are creating fear and unrest in the community.

“As a community, we see him going out setting up his troops and stopping people at random — racial profiling,” said Hector Yturralde, president of We Are America. “After they find out they can’t speak English or they have no identification, then they stop them for immigration.”

Yturralde added, “He is causing a division within this community that is not good. And that is not his job.”

He said the sheriff is using his title to grandstand at taxpayers’ expense.

In the past two weeks, Arpaio has conducted patrols at two Phoenix locations where day laborers gather, using some 200 deputies and posse members. Last week, more than 50 people were arrested in the area around Cave Creek and Bell Roads. More than a dozen were illegal immigrants. Arpaio has vowed to continue the operations.

Yturralde, Lydia Guzman with Respect Respecto and immigrants’ activist and former state lawmaker Alfredo Gutierrez expressed concerns that Arpaio’s patrols, which have drawn large groups of protesters and criticism from Phoenix police and the mayor, will end up in violence.

“We’re seeing people come out of the shadows who are very angry because at some point they feel victimized,” said Guzman. “And other people are coming out of maybe the other side of the shadows and saying we want something done.”

Gutierrez said most “decent” people do not believe the sheriff’s operations are accomplishing anything, except dividing the community.

“He chose to take this extraordinary provocative approach,” Gutierrez said, adding that during last week’s operation, “We were able to maintain control, but barely.”

He said more patrols could lead to formal resistance, i.e. civil disobedience on the streets of Phoenix.

“I think that will begin to occur at his next excursion, the next time he brings 200 or 300 people into a neighborhood to arrest people,” Gutierrez said.

Guzman and Gutierrez said everyone believes that immigration reform is absolutely necessary, but it is the responsibility of Congress and the federal government.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/county_85487___article.html/federal_cornyn.html

CORNYN: Getting Federal Money For Levees ‘fair and just’ 

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/officials_85497___article.html/increasingly_recklessness.html

McALLEN - Human smugglers are employing increasingly risky and dangerous methods to transport illegal immigrants since security tightened along the U.S.-Mexico border, law enforcement officials said.

“They’re getting less area they can successfully enter,” said Oscar Saldaña, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman.

“That’s why were seeing more of these desperate acts. And unfortunately, we anticipate there’s going to be more of these types of events.”

On Thursday a Ford F-150 carrying more than 20 illegal immigrants collided with another vehicle on Expressway 83 in Peñitas, leaving three dead and another 14 injured.

They were the latest victims of what appears to be a growing and often fatal trend in the Rio Grande Valley of human smugglers, or coyotes, filling cars and trucks with loads of immigrants far beyond the vehicles’ capacity and then driving at high speeds, often to elude law enforcement.

Law enforcement’s presence here has increased significantly over the past six years, since President Bush ordered federal law enforcement agencies to tighten control of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The number of Border Patrol agents in the Valley has risen from about 1,200 in 2002 to more than 2,200 this year, Saldaña said. And local law enforcement agencies - from small-town police departments to the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office - have been awarded a series of state and federal grants to dedicate officers to border security details.

“You’re talking about human smuggling and drugs,” Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. “There’s no doubt in the last five years the attitude of the human smuggler has taken a 180. They have transformed themselves into a commodity broker that has no limitations to getting their cargo to where they want to go.”

Less publicized than their counterparts in the drug trafficking industry, human smuggling organizations tend to be highly structured, with resources and operatives spread across the globe, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Janice Ayala, who directs investigations between Laredo and Brownsville.

Fees range anywhere from $300 to $50,000 per person, depending on where the immigrant is coming from and wants to go, as well as the difficulty of the route, she said. A person traveling from China might have one smuggler take them to Central America, another take them to Mexico, another to take them across the border and another to move them through the United States.

“These are organizations moving people from one country to another to another, so they need a very sophisticated network in order to do that,” Ayala said.

“Most of these alien smuggling organizations are paying passage to a large (drug) cartel, because they have the routes to the U.S.”

Officials uniformly expressed dismay at what Treviño described as the “abrasive and violent” attitude of the coyotes.

“Back in the day, a coyote would take money for helping people across, but they were maybe more of a compañero, more of a surrogate,” Treviño said.

The Mexican government, at both the state and federal level, is in the midst of a public relations campaign to warn Mexican nationals of the growing danger of crossing the border illegally.

Billboards in the United States and Mexico caution against traveling with coyotes, and government-written newspaper columns tell horror stories of immigrants drowning in the Rio Grande or being left to die in the desert heat.

“We share the tragic stories of migrants, so people can talk to relatives and discourage them,” said Miriam Medel, vice consul of the Mexican Consulate in McAllen.

“(The coyotes) are our worst enemy, and we’re always trying to tell people not to trust them.”

In Washington, D.C., where Congress is expected to address immigration reform again next year, the recent worsening of the human smuggling problem has not as yet gained traction as a political issue, said Douglas Rivlin, a spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant advocacy group.
In fact, despite heightened interest early in this presidential campaign, illegal immigration has fallen off as a talking point for the candidates over the last two months, he said.
“I think (some people are aware) in terms of just some of the press coverage we’ve seen about immigrants being held captive by smugglers, but not in terms of people being aware that we’re in a new era of smuggling,” Rivlin said.
‘Our worst enemy’
‘Abrasive and violent’