http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-04-1930s-deportees-cover_x.htm#
U.S. urged to apologize for 1930s deportations
Updated 4/5/2006 6:57 AM
By Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY
American-born Ignacio Pina, 81, returned to the USA after 16 years in Mexico.
His father and oldest sister were farming sugar beets in the fields of Hamilton, Mont., and his mother was cooking tortillas when 6-year-old Ignacio Piña saw plainclothes authorities burst into his home.
"They came in with guns and told us to get out," recalls Piña, 81, a retired railroad worker in Bakersfield, Calif., of the 1931 raid. "They didn't let us take anything," not even a trunk that held birth certificates proving that he and his five siblings were U.S.-born citizens.
The family was thrown into a jail for 10 days before being sent by train to Mexico. Piña says he spent 16 years of "pure hell" there before acquiring papers of his Utah birth and returning to the USA.
The deportation of Piña's family tells an almost-forgotten story of a 1930s anti-immigrant campaign. Tens of thousands, and possibly more than 400,000, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were pressured — through raids and job denials — to leave the USA during the Depression, according to a USA TODAY review of documents and interviews with historians and deportees. Many, mostly children, were U.S. citizens.
Showing posts with label Southern California. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Southern California. Show all posts
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Immigration Raids, Far From Border, Draw Criticism
June 15, 2004
Immigration Raids, Far From Border, Draw Criticism
By JOHN M. BRODER
Southern California Latino communities far from the Mexican border have been roiled in recent days by a series of sweeps by United States Border Patrol agents that have led to scores of arrests.
Fanned by rumors and dire reports in Spanish-language news media, fear has spread through neighborhoods in areas more than 100 miles from the border and has prompted many people to stay home from work and avoid ethnic markets. Some parents are keeping their children out of school and skipping church services after hearing reports that Border Patrol agents are staking out schoolyards, residential areas and church parking lots.
Latino community and church leaders say the inland raids are sowing fear and anger among Latinos, who they say appear to be singled out because of the color of their skin.
A spokesman for the Border Patrol said the arrests were part of an operation that began 10 days ago with sweeps in the Southern California cities of Ontario and Corona, during which nearly 160 people suspected of being illegal immigrants were arrested, most of them Mexicans, but also a few from Guatemala and El Salvador. Patrols last week in Escondido, in northern San Diego County, brought in 150 more, he said.
The Rev. Arnoldo Abelardo of La Placita Church in Los Angeles said immigration officers were randomly stopping Latinos on the street in their neighborhoods in suburbs east and south of Los Angeles and demanding their immigration papers.
''This is a very big surprise. They haven't done this in years,'' Father Abelardo said. ''They're going to Laundromats and schools and shops, stopping people when they get off the bus. They're not doing this in places that are non-Latino.''
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E3DD1130F936A25755C0A9629C8B63
Immigration Raids, Far From Border, Draw Criticism
By JOHN M. BRODER
Southern California Latino communities far from the Mexican border have been roiled in recent days by a series of sweeps by United States Border Patrol agents that have led to scores of arrests.
Fanned by rumors and dire reports in Spanish-language news media, fear has spread through neighborhoods in areas more than 100 miles from the border and has prompted many people to stay home from work and avoid ethnic markets. Some parents are keeping their children out of school and skipping church services after hearing reports that Border Patrol agents are staking out schoolyards, residential areas and church parking lots.
Latino community and church leaders say the inland raids are sowing fear and anger among Latinos, who they say appear to be singled out because of the color of their skin.
A spokesman for the Border Patrol said the arrests were part of an operation that began 10 days ago with sweeps in the Southern California cities of Ontario and Corona, during which nearly 160 people suspected of being illegal immigrants were arrested, most of them Mexicans, but also a few from Guatemala and El Salvador. Patrols last week in Escondido, in northern San Diego County, brought in 150 more, he said.
The Rev. Arnoldo Abelardo of La Placita Church in Los Angeles said immigration officers were randomly stopping Latinos on the street in their neighborhoods in suburbs east and south of Los Angeles and demanding their immigration papers.
''This is a very big surprise. They haven't done this in years,'' Father Abelardo said. ''They're going to Laundromats and schools and shops, stopping people when they get off the bus. They're not doing this in places that are non-Latino.''
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E3DD1130F936A25755C0A9629C8B63
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