Re: [migrawatch-public] Wave of immigration raids hardens stance on both sides

Ramiro...this is really fucking scary.

Melina called me last week. They want to set up a Migra Watch int he part
of LA where she lives. How about we create a documant which tells peeps
"How to Start a Migra Watch"...like the one we did for the berets.

Then we can send it far and wide and then maybe folks will have a line of
emergency response and community members and allies can be involved in
this madness.

The Homeland Security Cheif is a weasel who got that job because no one
else wanted it. IT is sad.

I can help you write that document but I think it would be very useful.
paz.
jenn

> Wave of immigration raids hardens stance on both sides
> Increase in arrests adds fuel to debate
> By Antonio Olivo
> Chicago Tribune July 21, 2007
>
>
> ST. MICHAEL, Minn.
>
>
> Breaking the silence in a middle-class enclave of tract homes and
> cul-de-sacs, federal immigration agents recently swooped in and grabbed
> Sara Munoz, carting away the illegal Mexican immigrant before her five
> crying U.S.-born children.
>
> In nearby Minneapolis, community activist Juana Reyes was nabbed for her
> illegal status as she stepped out of her car, spurring a rapidly
> transforming neighborhood into action on behalf of her 9-year-old
> daughter, an American citizen.
>
> And, 110 miles south in Austin, Minn., a divided community seethes after
> several recent deportation arrests. Latin American immigrants are afraid to
> open their doors, while longtime residents press the mayor to do more to
> stop the changes in a former union town built around the global
> headquarters of the Hormel Foods meatpacking operation.
>
> Similar scenes nationwide are part of a ramping-up of federal arrests of
> illegal immigrants, activity that Homeland Security Secretary Michael
> Chertoff recently warned is "gonna get ugly" after immigration
> legislation failed in Washington last month.
>
> Arrests from workplace raids have skyrocketed from about 845 in 2004 to
> nearly 4,000 already this year, federal records show. Arrests of illegal
> immigrants who have ignored court orders to leave the country have doubled
> since last year to a rate of about 685 per week.
>
> "We're gonna do more enforcement actions," Chertoff said during a recent
> Chicago Tribune editorial board meeting where he lamented Congress'
> failure to move immigration reform forward and predicted extensive grief.
> "And, if they have kids at home, even if we make arrangements
> with social services to take care of the kids, the kids are gonna be scared
> because Mommy or Daddy is not coming home that day."
>
> Though the arrests will be "as humane as possible," Chertoff said, "We
> do have to get control over this general problem of illegal immigration."
>
> The heightened enforcement has fueled tensions in fast-changing areas of
> Minnesota, where jobs in meatpacking plants, factories and farms have
> made the state a magnet for new immigrants from Africa, Southeast Asia and,
> especially, Latin America.
>
> As state legislatures and cities nationwide consider their own local
> measures for enforcement, a menacing cloud has swelled over America's
> immigrant landscape, advocates say.
>
> "We have a tsunami coming at us in terms of enforcement measures," said
> Angela Kelly, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, an
> immigrant advocacy group in Washington. "That's pretty terrifying in terms
> of what it means for the 12 million undocumented immigrants and their
> families."
>
> Both sides of the immigration debate, however, see advantages in the
> hardening climate.
>
> "We want them ... looking over their shoulders all the time," said
> Marlene Nelson, 63, a member of the Minnesota Coalition for Immigration
> Reduction, among scores of such groups in the country pushing for even
> more enforcement.Advocates for undocumented immigrants characterize the
> arrests as a necessary "low" that could revive a legalization movement
> after the defeat in Washington.
>
> "There are a lot of people who don't want to see people treated badly,
> but there's a need for them to see that," said Kelly, predicting it would
> strengthen citizenship drives and lead to street marches akin to those
> that swept through Chicago and other U.S. cities last year. "That kind of
> fear as a motivator, that needs to be ramped up and that needs to be
> tapped."
>
> Feeling at home
> Among the glistening Minnesota lakes that remind him of his native El
> Salvador, Nixon Munoz, 36, believed his family was safe from such anxiety.
>
>
> In 1990, Munoz, an ex-government soldier who won political asylum after
> fleeing his civil war-ravaged country, moved from Los Angeles after
> learning there were plenty of jobs in Minnesota. Working as a machinist
> for a box manufacturer, he soon met a shy Mexican woman who was visiting
> on a tourist visa to attend a wedding.
>
> The couple fell in love, and Sara Munoz's visa expired as they planned
> for a family and the home they eventually bought outside Minneapolis. After
> three daughters and a son, their youngest child, Edwin, 4, was born
> autistic. Sara Munoz cared for him between shifts at a local dry cleaning
> company.
>
> "It was a nice life," Nixon Munoz said. "We were very content."
>
>
> That changed last month. Arriving from the grocery store with his
> children, Munoz said he saw his terrified wife handcuffed in front of their
> two-story stucco home. With the family in tears, she was taken away and,
> eventually, deported to Mexico, where she tries to continue to parent her
> five children through long-distance calls.
>
> Filling a void
> The couple's eldest daughter, Joanna Munoz, who turned 14 the day before
> her mother left, has stepped in as a mother figure. The hazel-eyed teen
> cooks, cleans and tries to comfort Edwin when he calls for his mother at
> night, sometimes in uncontrollable tantrums during which he hurls himself
> against walls.
>
> "He still thinks my mom is visiting family," she said of her brother,
> unsure how all this will affect her dream of attending college and becoming
> a marine biologist.
>
> The impact that such arrests and deportation have on the estimated 5
> million children of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is troubling, said Randy
> Capps, a researcher at the Washington-based Urban Institute who
> has been studying the aftermath of raids in several states.
>
> Many of these children are likely to grow up harboring resentment
> against law enforcement. Others will have psychological problems that stem
> from seeing their parents ripped from their lives, he said.
>
> "If they stay in the country, they've been through this traumatic
> experience and will continue to be separated from their parents for some
> time," Capps said. "These are people that didn't choose to come over."
>
> Such worries have fueled the reaction in South Minneapolis to the arrest
> of Juana Reyes, 52, a soft-spoken activist known as much for the
> opinionated daughter seemingly stuck to her hip as she was for her work
> helping new immigrants. Arrested this month, Reyes is inside a county jail
> in Elk River, Minn., one of about 26,500 illegal immigrants imprisoned
> nationwide on a given day, according to a recent report by the federal
> Government Accountability Office.
>
>
> Betty Reyes, 9, tries to shrug off the experience with jokes or one-word
> replies. Occasionally, however, the facade crumbles in tears and she will
> not let anyone answer a door knock, friends and family members said.
>
> Her experience has inspired plans for a "children's march" in the
> neighborhood clustered near a row of Mexican restaurants and shops that
> began sprouting along the Lake Street business corridor in the 1990s.
>
> "We're training the children now to become activists," said Mariano
> Espinoza, director of the Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network. "They are
> going to take this movement to the next level."
>
> Inside his tiny office in Austin, organizer Victor Contreras longed for
> such optimism.
>
> Since a raid last month when federal agents pulled some 20 immigrants
> from their homes, plus others capturing hundreds more in neighboring towns
> nestled between drought-singed corn fields, "the community is consumed by
> fear," Contreras said. "Nobody wants to open their doors. We are up
> against a great force."
>
> Some evidence of that could be heard two doors away, at the public
> library.
>
> Inside a meeting room, about 20 long-time residents harangued Austin
> Mayor Tom Stiehm, a retired police officer who won his job last fall on
> an immigration-enforcement platform.
>
> Many in the room pinned the steady arrival of mostly Mexican immigrants
> to Austin during the past decade on a yearlong strike at Hormel during the
> mid-1980s, when the company known best for making Spam canned meat busted
> the local union after a wage dispute.
>
> Well-paying union jobs were given to immigrants willing to work cheaply,
> the residents said. That sparked a demographic transformation now seen
> along Main Street, where Hormel's Spam Museum sits a short distance from
> the Mi Tierra restaurant and several other Mexican businesses.
>
> "What are you going to do about it, Tom?" one resident shouted,
> complaining with others about crime, overcrowded housing and the formation
> of a separate non-English-speaking society.
>
> The resentment illustrated the pressure even small-town officials like
> Stiehm are under.
>
>
> Shrugging, Stiehm promised to make arrests in cases of welfare fraud and
> other crimes.
>
> "I'm going to go after the law-breakers and leave the families alone,
> the ones that want to be a part of Austin," the mayor vowed. "You can't
> just get rid of them all. If you did, we'd lose 7,000 people, we'd be
> closing down our schools."
>
> That answer sparked more protests, with angry voices echoing through the
> small, recently built library.
>
> aolivo@tribune.com
>
> Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
>
>
>

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