For some, Arizona's new law represents a case of dejà vu
Byline: Anna Gorman;
Los Angeles Times
CHANDLER, Ariz. -- In late July 1997, police officers searching for illegal immigrants fanned out across this Phoenix suburb. Working side by side with Border Patrol agents for five days, police demanded proof of citizenship from children walking home from school, grandmothers shopping at the market and employees driving to work.
At the end of what became known as the Chandler Roundup, 432 illegal immigrants had been arrested and deported. But police and federal officers also detained dozens of U.S. citizens and legal residents -- often stopping them because they spoke Spanish or looked Mexican.
As Arizona prepares to enact SB 1070, the state's new immigration law, Chandler's Latino residents said they are fearful of a repeat of the past.
SB 1070 just brought home the point if you are Hispanic or Mexican, you are just not wanted in Arizona," said Joe Garcia, 65, a U.S. citizen who owned a video store in downtown Chandler and helped form a civil-rights coalition to demand answers after the roundup.
The state attorney general later determined that authorities engaged in racial profiling The consideration of race, ethnicity, or national origin by an officer of the law in deciding when and how to intervene in an enforcement capacity.
The new law, which takes effect July 29 and is supported by a majority of Arizonans, requires police to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop and suspect is in the country illegally. The law also makes it a state crime to lack proper immigration papers. Gov. Jan Brewer has said racial profiling will not be tolerated.
A history of raids
While not well-known outside Arizona, the Chandler Roundup wasn't unique. Throughout U.S. history, raids conducted by local police and federal immigration agents have resulted in deportation of U.S. citizens, according to Francisco Balderrama, a Chicano studies professor at California State, Los Angeles.
In the 1930s, federal agents and police arrested more than 1 million people in nationwide operations and sent them to Mexico. Balderrama, by researching records at Mexican consulates, estimates as many as 60 percent of those deported were U.S. citizens. Other deportation efforts, including the infamous Operation Wetback continued into the 1940s and 1950s.
Balderrama said history accounts for some of the unease in the Latino community about SB 1070. "It underscores the situation that your skin color and your surname are used as ways of measuring if you are American or not," he said.
Teresa Rodriguez, 69, knows what it is like to be singled out. She -- and her parents -- were born in the United States, but Rodriguez was stopped three times by Chandler police and Border Patrol agents during the roundup.
In one incident, she was speaking Spanish to a friend. A police officer on a bicycle came up on one side of her, an immigration officer on the other. She recalled one saying in Spanish, "You don't belong here, do you?"
When Rodriguez, who speaks English, answered in Spanish that she was a citizen and that her birth certificate was at home, they didn't believe her. She said the police officer grabbed her arm and forced her to sit on the curb until she convinced them she was a citizen.
"They made me feel like I was being stepped on, like I was an animal," she said.
Garcia, a retired Mesa police lieutenant, and his wife, Rosalia, said they still feel disappointed and angry about the way officers behaved. Rosalia remembered customers fleeing into the video shop and police officers on bicycles stopping people arbitrarily. "They were literally sweeping, coming through the sidewalks" until the streets were empty, she said.
Stephen Montoya, a lawyer who represented U.S. citizens and legal residents in a lawsuit against the city, said the new Arizona law paves the way for more such raids. "It knocks down the wall and legitimizes a constant, statewide roundup," he said.
Chandler authorities, who conducted the sweeps as part of a plan to revitalize the city, settled the lawsuit with 29 plaintiffs for $400,000 and pledged to not let it happen again.
The City Council in 1999 adopted a policy saying police could only ask about the immigration status of people arrested on suspicion of felonies and certain misdemeanors. In anticipation of SB 1070 becoming law, however, the council this year unanimously repealed the 1999 policy.
Mayor Boyd Dunn said the policy change was necessary to bring Chandler up to date with other Arizona cities. He said SB 1070 won't result in anything like what happened 13 years ago. "We will protect not only our citizens, but their rights," he said.
Evolution of Chandler
Chandler, once a small agricultural town, now has a population of 250,000 and is home to several high-tech factories. The city is 21 percent Latino. The downtown square is surrounded by new condos, shops and restaurants.
A few blocks away, however, day laborers still wait for work, as they have for years. One of them, Nasario Ramos, 38, said he was deported to Mexico during the roundup and sneaked back into the United States days later. He said he worries that the calm that has prevailed in Chandler for 13 years is about to end. "It's going to be worse than '97," he said.
Illegal immigrants continue to be a sore point for some residents. Fred Blevins, 62, said that although he believed police went too far when they stopped U.S. citizens in 1997, something had to be done. He supports SB 1070 and believes local police will enforce it the right way.
"Chandler learned its lesson," he said. "They got slapped."
Chandler community activist Juanita Encinas said the city made efforts to build bridges with the Latino community after the sweeps but that a level of distrust remains. "The scars will never go away," she said.
For Rodriguez, who said she received about $27,000 of the cash settlement, a reminder of the roundup never is far away. She now carries her birth certificate.
thefreelibrary.com |
