Raids this morning throughout our area. Paramilitary teams, no warrants, no probable cause, no warning. If you are brown you are going down. If you object in any way, you are going down too. Open your mouth or refuse to obey orders and it could be trouble.

Ask to see their warrant? Refuse the demand for identification? Stand motionless under armed guard against the wall because they say so until they let you know you are free to go about your life? Answer phone calls from customers, or let it ring? Object to the rough handling of women and children, or stay silent? Object to the targeting by race, as human beings are rudely sorted into two piles, or be glad you are white and lay low?

Federal raid triggers Chicago protest

CHICAGO, April 25 (UPI) -- Residents of a predominately Hispanic Chicago neighborhood took to the streets in protest after heavily armed U.S. immigration agents raided businesses.

"Soldiers bombarded our neighborhood," Baltazar Enriquez told the Chicago Sun-Times. "It looked like they were marching into Iraq."

Heavily armed federal officers in bullet-proof vests, locked down a strip mall Tuesday in a Southwest Side neighborhood known as Little Village, Enriquez said. The raid triggered a protest of 250 to 300 people that lasted into the evening, the newspaper said.

The federal agents were searching for sellers of fake Social Security and resident alien green cards, authorities said, refusing to say how many people were arrested in the search.

Those arrested were to appear in federal court Wednesday. Neighborhood activists said the raid may have been to intimidate people from participating in a downtown May 1 march and rally to protest recent federal raids nationwide, the Chicago Tribune said.

Federal raid triggers Chicago protest (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=upiUPI-20070425-112127-7518R&show_article=1&catnum=0)

6-year-old U.S. citizen detained for 12 hours
The human face of immigration raids in Bay Area
Arrests of parents can deeply traumatize children caught in the fray, experts argue

Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, April 27, 2007

Immigration agents arrested siblings Victor and Elvira Mendoza, 21 and 17, when it turned out the fugitive they were looking for no longer lived at the Mendozas' home. Officers detained 6-year-old U.S. citizen Kebin Reyes for 12 hours when they arrested his father as an illegal immigrant.

These and many other families across the Bay Area and the nation were turned upside down this year by Operation Return to Sender, a federal immigration crackdown begun last May. The raids focus on illegal immigrants who have ignored deportation orders, but 37 percent of the 18,149 people arrested nationwide through Feb. 23 were not wanted fugitives.

Mental health experts say the raids are traumatizing children. Legal scholars and public officials are raising constitutional questions about the way the raids are carried out and about their impact on communities as a whole. And immigrant advocates say changes in immigration law -- including tougher provisions enacted in 1996 -- leave little room for illegal immigrants to correct their status.

The human face of immigration raids in Bay Area (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/27/MNGJIPGO341.DTL&feed=rss.news)

Children Stranded After Immigration Raid

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (AP) - Dozens of young children were stranded at schools and with baby sitters after their parents were rounded up by federal authorities who raided a leather goods maker suspected of hiring illegal immigrants, authorities said Wednesday.

Immigration officials said 327 of the 500 employees of Michael Bianco Inc., mostly women, were detained Tuesday by immigration officials for possible deportation as illegal aliens.

About 100 children were stuck with baby sitters, caretakers and others, said Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts.

"We're continuing to get stories today about infants that were left behind," she said. "It's been a widespread humanitarian crisis here in New Bedford."

Children Stranded (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070307/D8NNHSM00.html)

Inhumane raid was just one of many

By Carol Rose and Christopher Ott
March 26, 2007

IF THE CHAOTIC immigration raid in New Bedford earlier this month troubled you, we have news: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, is just getting warmed up. We know this because the New Bedford raid was part of a frighteningly ambitious plan laid out by the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 -- and it hasn't received nearly enough scrutiny.

The plan is called Endgame, and its details are available online on our group's website (www.aclum.org/endgame.pdf (http://www.aclum.org/endgame.pdf)). It's a 10-year campaign to track down and deport all the immigrants to the United States who are living and working here without proper documentation, by the year 2012.

Already, on any given day, ICE holds approximately 26,000 people in detention. And on March 6, we got a chance to see Endgame at work on a large scale here in Massachusetts. We saw the human cost of an operation directed at 361 people.

The pace of raids will need to accelerate, however, in order to meet Endgame's aggressive deportation goals over the next five years. We'll see more of the surreal New Bedford-style tactics: arrest first, ask questions later. We'll hear more stories of the human suffering that results from such tactics: of nursing babies who become dehydrated when separated from their mothers, of 7-year-olds frantically looking for their missing mothers, and of minors being flown to distant states without adequate protection.

Inhumane raid (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/03/26/inhumane_raid_was_just_one_of_many/)