At least 120 nabbed in immigration raid today; 98 already deported
Fernando Quintero and Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News
Published September 20, 2006 at midnight
About 70 federal agents descended on a site near Buckley Air Force Base today and arrested at least 120 suspected illegal immigrants who were building military housing.
In what may be the largest immigration raid in state history, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, some from as far away as California, loaded the men they detained onto three buses and took them away to be processed. Some family members arrived at the construction site, panicked at the possibility a loved one would be deported.
ICE agents also made early morning raids in Pennsylvania and Delaware this morning, arresting 115 illegal immigrants, including some criminals and fugitives who had ducked previous deportation orders.
Officials with the Mexican consulate in Denver said they were told by ICE that 98 immigrants, including three minors, had already been put on a bus to Mexico.
ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said most of those detained would agree to voluntarily go back to Mexico.
A voluntary return — in which the person is usually flown to the Mexican border, then escorted into his country and released — is offered only to illegal immigrants who have not committed a crime. Illegal presence in the country is a civil offense, not a criminal offense. If any of the illegal immigrants have committed a serious crime in the U.S., they would likely be turned over to the U.S. Attorney's Office for prosecution.
The contractor at the site of the 5:30 a.m. raid in Aurora said agents were lined up every 50 feet around the perimeter of the site, which has only one entrance and one exit. The agents took away the workers' cell phones. They told the subcontractors that they faced fines if it's determined they hired undocumented workers. The men who were arrested could be deported as early as today, the contractor said.
The contractor said agents told him the raid had been planned for three months.
The raids are part of ICE's Secure Border Initiative, launched earlier this year to make the country's border more secure, re-engineer the detention and removal system to make removals faster, and track down fugitives who have already been ordered deported, according to an ICE news release.
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