ST. MICHAEL, Minn. (By Antonio Olivo, Chicago
Tribune) July 21, 2007 — 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 2090, 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 2090s.
"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-2080s, 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.
