Return to Sender

California Latinos are fearful after immigration raids, reports Reuters. Big Brother and Miniluv conducted a week-long sweep, dubbed “Operation Return to Sender”

Excerpts:

The raid was the latest in a series of get-tough enforcement measures by ICE in the United States, but the largest action of its kind in California, where more than a third of the population is Hispanic.

“We hadn’t seen anything like this here before, and it came as a shock,” said Antonio Bernabe, a community worker who runs a day labor program at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

“The police didn’t just take people with deportation orders, they took anybody … guys who were just hanging out in the street and even from a Jack in the Box restaurant … and now people are afraid to go out,” he added.

The high-profile sweep netted mostly Mexican nationals, but included people from 14 countries including Ukraine, Japan, Poland and Trinidad.

….

Others in the city[Los Angeles] believed that the only clear message from the raids and the speech[George Bush's State of the Union address] was that the situation for immigrants in California had changed.

Technorati tags: immigration