On the lookout for immigration raids
Activist networks have sprung up to prepare illegal immigrants for possible federal activity in their communities.
By Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 14, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Reeling from work-site raids that have jailed thousands of illegal workers, immigration organizations are quietly assembling informal networks to gather advance information about federal enforcement operations and to help locals and laborers prepare.
Students, union officials, waiters and others are volunteering to call in tips about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents checking into hotels or renting facilities, about the sudden appearance of out-of-town cars and about a surge in action at the local courthouse.
"Is ICE going to tell us when they're coming? What they're doing? No," said Socorro Leos, a community organizer for Mississippi Immigrants' Rights Alliance. "You have to be working with the grass roots, on the ground, training them to be alert, to be very, very conscious, to open their eyes and senses."
The spontaneous development of these intelligence networks stems from the scale of recent ICE raids: hundreds of agents and vehicles plus a major infrastructure.
"These are huge paramilitary operations," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights। "They use helicopters, jeeps, mobile homes for processing people. They have to have jail space lined up. It's very hard to do that in secrecy."
Still, ICE raids rely on the element of surprise.
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