Feb 14, 2007 9:48 pm US/Pacific
Immigration Agents Conducting Raids In S.F.
CBS 5 Investigates
by Anna Werner
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ―
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ICE officials arrest undocumented workers during a recent raid.
CBS
CBS 5 Investigates has been looking into complaints about federal immigration raids in the East Bay. Now CBS 5 has learned they have moved into San Francisco.
Immigrant rights groups maintain even though the city is officially a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, that isn't stopping immigration from conducting raids here. They contend roughly a half-dozen locations have been subject to raids in the past week or so.
Now Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval is speaking out: "What we are hearing from the community is that they are arresting anybody and everybody who is within an arm's length," he told CBS 5.
So how many raids? "At least 5 different arrests in different parts of the city," according to activist Miguel Perez with the Latin American Alliance for Immigrant Rights.
Word of the raids is swirling through the local Latino community. There are reports of ICE agents picking people up at their jobs, for example, at a refrigerated trucking company in San Francisco where the owner said they took away 8 or 9 people.
"It has happened in San Francisco where the INS has gone out to employers who really are caught between a rock and a hard place and the ins is going out to the workplaces and arresting these people", said Sandoval.
And it's clearly a painful experience for many immigrants like a woman who wanted to be identified only by her first name, Rebecca.
In Spanish, she told CBS 5, "It hurts, (the) children (are) hurting." The children belong to her son, who she says was picked up by ICE agents while working at a construction job. They're her grandchildren, who she said asked her, "where is our father?"
Mayor Gavin Newsom issued a statement Wednesday afternoon saying, "I am very concerned about the recent raids performed in various parts of the city by immigration and customs enforcement."
"These raids jeopardize the public health and safety of the city by instilling fear in those who may come forward to report information about a crime," the mayor said.
An ICE spokeswoman refused to provide specific details regarding where and when those raids were conducted in San Francisco.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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