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 News from Around the Americas | January 2008 
Families in Shadow of Deportation
 Julia Preston - New York Times
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| | A husband and wife in Waukegan, Ill., avoid public places for fear that he, an illegal immigrant, might be deported. The city has been an immigrant landing for generations. (Sally Ryan/NYT) | | |
Waukegan, Ill. — She is a homeowner, a taxpayer, a friendly neighbor and a U.S. citizen. Yet because she is married to an illegal immigrant, these days she feels like a fugitive.
Whenever her Mexican husband ventures out of the house, "it makes me sick to my stomach," said the woman, who insisted on being identified only as Miriam M.
"I'm like, 'Oh, my God, he took too long,' " she said. "I'll start calling. I go into panic."
In the past year, thousands of illegal immigrants and their families have retreated from community life in Waukegan, a microcosm of what is happening nationwide, clinging to homes and jobs despite tougher federal and local enforcement.
From Illinois to Georgia to Arizona, such families shop in towns distant from home, avoid parties and do not take vacations. They stay away from ethnic stores, forgo doctor's visits and meetings at their children's schools, and postpone girls' normally lavish quinceañeras, or 15th-birthday parties. They avoid the police.
"When we leave in the morning, we know we are going to work," said Elena G., 47, an illegal Mexican immigrant and Waukegan resident of eight years who works in a factory near Waukegan. "But we don't know if we will be coming home."
35,000 arrested
Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested more than 35,000 illegal immigrants, including unauthorized workers and immigration fugitives, more than double the number in 2006. They sent 276,912 immigrants back to their home countries, a record number.
Because about three-quarters of an estimated 11.3 million illegal immigrants nationwide are from Latin America, and many have spouses, children or other relatives who are legal immigrants and citizens, the sense of alarm has spread broadly among Hispanics.
A survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, found in December that 53 percent of Hispanics in the United States worry that they or a loved one could be deported.
Stores catering to Hispanic immigrants in places such as Atlanta and Cincinnati have closed because of the drop in customers. Michael Barrera, president of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said anecdotal reports indicated that small storefront businesses had been the hardest hit by a sharp decline in spending by immigrants.
Held by families, jobs
Federal immigration officials said stepped-up enforcement in the past year by the Bush administration and some local authorities has persuaded growing numbers of illegal immigrants to return home. But in places such as Waukegan, a racially mixed middle-class suburb north of Chicago, most have chosen to stay, held by families and jobs.
The city has been an immigrant landing for generations. Latinos have been coming since the 1960s and are 40 percent of the population of 91,000. The number of illegal immigrants among them swelled in the past decade.
Despite their illegal status, those immigrants found steady jobs in factories and landscaping. Lacking Social Security numbers, they used IRS taxpayer numbers to open stores and businesses, enroll in the community college and take out bank loans to buy cars and homes.
The welcome began to fade four years ago, when the city government increased fines and penalties for driving without a license. Because Illinois requires a valid Social Security number for a license, many illegal immigrants lost their cars when they could not afford the fees for impounded vehicles.
Last summer, the City Council voted to enter an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency, to train Waukegan police officers to initiate deportations of immigrants who were convicted felons. While city officials insisted the officers would handle only cases of imprisoned criminals, rumors spread that the traffic police would check the immigration status of anyone they stopped.
Also, in recent months federal immigration agents conducted two big raids nearby.
"People came to me and said, 'Father, when did we become the enemy?' " said the Rev. Gary Graf, a Roman Catholic priest whose Waukegan parish includes many Latino immigrants.
City officials said the tougher traffic ordinances were not intended to single out illegal immigrants or Hispanics but to reduce accidents with uninsured drivers.
"The only reason we did it was for safety," Mayor Richard Hyde said. "We don't want anybody on the road that doesn't have a license."
Nonetheless, fear has become a daily companion for many residents.
Raimundo V., 30, an illegal Mexican immigrant who has lived in Waukegan for 13 years, said he canceled repairs on his home, stopped buying in local stores and was saving as much money as he could in case he should be arrested and deported.
"My expectation here is to be prepared for anything that comes," Raimundo said.
Hurting business
Miriam M. and her husband, married in 2004, own a house and are raising four children from previous marriages, all U.S. citizens. He runs his own landscaping company, paying business and property taxes.
Even though Miriam M. is a citizen, it is difficult for her husband to obtain legal papers, because he entered illegally from Mexico 12 years ago. She did not focus on her husband's illegal status when she met him.
"Boyfriend and girlfriend, you don't think much about it," she said. "All right, maybe I didn't want to think much about it."
Now, he stays close to home and avoids downtown Waukegan.
Hispanic business owners in Waukegan complain of a sales slump that they said went beyond the effects of a sluggish national economy.
"People are turning away from Waukegan business and going elsewhere to invest or to buy," said Porfirio Garcma, a Mexican American who is president of Exit/Re-Gar Realty, a real-estate brokerage firm.
At the Belvidere Mall, which caters to Hispanic customers, Maria Sotelo, a legal Mexican immigrant, said she was closing her store after 17 years because her sales dropped in the past six months to $500 a week from $5,000.
The mayor, for his part, said he will continue enforcing local law. "Do I believe in closing the borders?" Hyde said. "Do I believe in putting troops down there? You bet your life. Illegal is illegal, and that's the end of the conversation, really." |
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