Chicago Targeted by ICE

-----

200 Arrested in Immigration Raids
Democracy Now

September 22, 3008

Federal agents have arrested at least 200 people in immigration raids in Illinois, Indiana, Colorado and California over the past week. Most of the arrests took place in the Chicago area and northern Indiana. Beginning on Sept. 12, four ICE Fugitive Operations teams detained and arrested 144 people in nineteen towns in the region. Fifty-nine more immigrants were arrested in Colorado, where agents conducted raids in fourteen cities. In California, agents arrested twenty-one undocumented immigrants working at a chain of Chinese restaurants. Meanwhile, a new study by the Pew Hispanic Center has found that nearly one in ten Latinos in the United States reported that in the last year police or other authorities stopped them and asked them about their immigration status. Last year, ICE agents arrested more than 35,000 undocumented immigrants—more than double the number in 2006.

---

144 illegal immigrants arrested
Associated Press/Chicago Tribune
6:24 PM CDT, September 17, 2008
CHICAGO - Federal agents have arrested 144 illegal immigrants in a series of sweeps in the Chicago area and northern Indiana.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced the arrests Wednesday. The raids targeted 110 undocumented immigrants who failed to appear for hearings or were ordered by a judge to leave the country. ICE arrested the other 34 illegal immigrants during the sweeps that began on Friday and ended Monday.

This brings the total number of illegal immigrants the Chicago ICE office arrested since last October to 1,597.

One of the largest immigrant rights groups in the state is condemning the sweeps.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights claims the arrests separate families and unfairly target immigrants.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

15 arrested in crackdown on Chicago fake ID ring
By MIKE ROBINSON | AP Legal Affairs Writer
1:15 PM CDT, September 19, 2008
CHICAGO - Federal agents said Friday that they've arrested 15 alleged members of a bogus documents ring and are searching for six others as part of a renewed crackdown on Chicago's brisk, multimillion-dollar trade in counterfeit identification papers.

Agents fanned out across the city's West Side on Thursday, and by early Friday had arrested two U.S. citizens and 13 Mexican nationals charged in freshly unsealed conspiracy indictments, officials said. They said six of those named in the indictments were still sought by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"This action should send a clear message that ICE and its law enforcement partners will identify those criminal organizations that perpetrate document fraud," said Gary J. Hartwig, special agent in charge of the Chicago ICE office.

The arrest of members of the so-called St. Louis document-selling ring follows a similar crackdown in May 2007 against another bogus identification ring called the Albany Crew.

At a news conference, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald acknowledged that Immigration is a touchy subject. But he said the case was about selling fraudulent documents, not Immigration.

Prosecutors said that the St. Louis ring announced immediately after the Albany arrests that it was open for business and would sell falsified documents.

The ring allegedly sold Social Security cards, so-called "green cards" carried by resident aliens, driver's licenses and state ID cards, officials said.

Prosecutors said the ring included eight to 10 "miqueros," or vendors, who would signal to passing vehicles and pedestrians that false ID papers were available. A full set cost $110 to $150 while a Social Security card alone cost about $40, federal officials said.

They said customers were typically from Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, Illinois and Michigan. They sought green cards indicating they were from Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Ecuador, El Salvador, Jamaica, Poland, the Czech Republic, Albania, Russia and China, officials said.

Some seeking fake IDs were also believed to be U.S. citizens, they said.

Conspiracy to produce false IDs carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Tensions in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, where Thursday's raids took place, have been high since ICE agents conducted a daytime raid on a shopping mall there last year and arrested dozens of people. At least 22 were charged in a conspiracy to make thousands of fake identification documents like social security cards; several people have been deported in the case.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------