How many are going to decide it isn't worth it, and just decamp for home? Fewer parents are walking their children to school in this border city's Linda Vista neighborhood. The crowd of day laborers huddled in a parking lot outside McDonald's has dropped by half. The sidewalks are quieter. A sense of unease has spread in this community of weather-worn homes since immigration agents began walking the streets searching for people who are in the United States illegally. It's part of a stepped-up nationwide effort targeting an estimated 590,000 immigrant fugitives.
Juana Osorio, an illegal immigrant from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, said her San Diego neighbors have largely stayed indoors since agents visited her apartment complex June 2. "People rarely leave their houses now to go shopping," Osorio, 37, said as she clutched a bottle of laundry detergent in a barren courtyard. "They walk in fear." Her husband, Juan Rivera, 29, has stopped taking their two children to the park on weekends. "We want to go out but we can't," said Rivera, a construction worker.
In a blitz that began May 26 and ended Tuesday, federal agents arrested nearly 2,200 illegal immigrants, including about 400 in the San Diego area, more than any other city. It was the latest salvo in a crackdown on illegal immigration that has included arrests of nearly 1,200 workers at a supplier of wooden cargo pallets and the deployment of National Guard troops on the Mexican border. Meantime, Congress is considering a broad overhaul of immigration laws. |