"Tell them what they've won, Bob...!"
Posted on 11/19/2005 6:05:19 AM PST by Borax Queen
Tensions are rising in a neighborhood where border crossers who gather on a street corner south of Downtown to be hired for the day mix with dope dealers, alcoholics and thieves.
Neighbors - including Southside Presbyterian Church, home base of the No More Deaths border activists - have complained to police about the day laborers.
Those complaints culminated in the arrest of 20 illegal border crossers by U.S. Border Patrol agents at South Ninth Avenue and East 23rd Street on Monday. Such operations by the Border Patrol are rare in the area.
This South Side neighborhood is a popular pickup spot for employers who want cheap manual labor. Carlos Cervantes, who crossed illegally from Empalme, Sonora, six months ago, says the street corner was his first destination when he arrived.
He earns $8 an hour working for landscaping companies that pick up workers every morning starting at 5:30 a.m.
Cervantes says he doesn't deal in drugs, doesn't urinate on the street corner - he just wants a job.
"Why is wanting to work a crime?" he asked, standing on the corner, his hands bunched in his pockets in the cold morning air.
Cornelio Lopez has lived at the corner of Ninth Avenue and 23rd Street for 13 years.
He paused from pitchforking a pile of mesquite branches off his driveway to watch a group of six day laborers run up to an approaching car. The car slowed when they neared, then drove away. The men returned to the street corner.
"The ones that come at 6 and leave at 7 aren't a problem. It's the ones that stay later, whistling at women, leaving garbage, sleeping in the alleys. They're a nuisance," Lopez said.
Tucson police received several calls last month about the day laborers and vagrants, said Capt. Tom McNally. In turn, police alerted the Border Patrol to an illegal-migrant problem.
McNally said police decided to call the Border Patrol for help because the people who complained, including church officials, told them the problems were caused by illegal border crossers.
"It always seems that for political reasons, we always back away from that. In this particular instance, we had to do something,"' McNally said.
But the call from police is being criticized.
Tucson police will not stop and interview someone based only on a suspicion that the person is here illegally, said Sgt. Mark Robinson.
But Tucson-based Derechos Humanos argues that by calling the Border Patrol to alert them to the day laborers, police did exactly that.
"This could happen to anybody. Does that mean that anybody can make an assessment that you're undocumented and the police are going to act on it?" said Derechos Humanos organizer Kat Rodriguez.
Part of the problem is simply identifying who's who. Rod- riguez said a day labor center would at least keep prospective workers separate from the vagrants.
"You don't know which one is looking for work and which one is going to cause problems," said Al Sarmiento, who runs a shower program for the homeless at Southside Presbyterian.
The courtyard of the church was crowded with homeless, some to use the showers, others sipping coffee and eating honeydew melon. In the parking lot, still more mixed with illegal border crossers, some of whom were looking for work.
To ease tensions in the community, the church has been working with day labor center organizers in Phoenix to open a center on its property. But that project, which was supposed to break ground in October, is now scheduled to open in January and may not open at all.
Sarmiento said he was angry, and that "Sometimes I have second thoughts about opening the center."
Thursday, someone stole boxes of food that Samaritan Patrol volunteers had left at the church after returning from distributing boxes to illegal border crossers in the desert, Sarmiento said.
Illegal border crossers have even used the church's flat roof as a camping spot, he said.
"We have people looking for jobs but we also have people that are drinking and dealing drugs around here," Sarmiento said.
On Monday, the Border Patrol used plainclothes agents to pick up the day laborers, said Jose Garza, a spokesman for the agency's Tucson Sector.
Twenty people were picked up, he said. Three Tucson police officers backed up the federal agents.
Jesus Alvarado Flores says he was among those picked up but was released after he showed his border crossing card to the agents.
Flores gave this account:
At about 6 a.m., a pair of agents pulled up in an un-marked truck pretending to look for workers. Five men took their offer for work, Flores among them. They were deposited in a parking lot and detained by a uniformed agent. A second truck brought five more men, then two loads more for a total of 20 men.
"They pushed us to the ground and had their guns drawn," said Flores, who feels the agency overreacted to what was essentially just illegal border crossers.
The Mexican Consulate in Tucson received complaints that the apprehension was a "setup," said spokesman Oscar Angulo. "But we are not sure about that."
Garza refused requests for details about how the arrest was handled.
Another headline in the Tucson newspaper; another drop in the bucket, but at least the citizens were listened to this time.
I got rights!
"Tell them what they've won, Bob...!"
It's not. Invading another country is.
lol!
For someone who crossed the border illegally, just being here is a crime whether they "want to work" or not.
Somehow I just knew this didn't happen in Springdale. The neighbors would probably be charged with a hate crime.
Ha!
"Tensions are rising in a neighborhood where border crossers who gather on a street corner south of Downtown to be hired for the day mix with dope dealers, alcoholics and thieves.
Neighbors - including Southside Presbyterian Church, home base of the No More Deaths border activists - have complained to police about the day laborers."
-- we can't have these day laborers disturbing the dope dealers, now can we?
Enough of this blather. Get all of them out of our country before we are faced with the French syndrome. There is a legal way to enter the United States, as thousands have. If they choose to sneak in the back door we owe them nothing but a free ride home.
Heck, they are willing to pay coyotes to get in. Let's give them a choice. Either pay for you ride home or spend some time in a prison.
What goes around comes around you Southside loserterians!
WOW! I can't believe the paper had the balls to use the transparent euphimism "Entrants".
Entrants????? Jerks!!!
Check this out......"our border feels more dangerous than visiting Iraq" Congressman Culberson
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47401
Pretty obvious -- Southside Presbyterian is part of the PCUSA... the apostate church.
Everytime I see a Presbyterian church listed in something like this, I cringe. Being in a PCA church (Bible believing, conservative, evangelical) I have to make sure there's no confusion as to WHICH denomination (PCUSA) has the problems.
Neal
Arrest the church leaders for harboring criminals. Audit every landscape company in the area, arrest and fine the owners for tax fraud and felony counts.
Thank you for posting that link! I heard on Hannity and Colmes last night about MORE Al Qaeda being turned over to the FBI, but I hadn't found an article about it yet. There are Muslim/Al Qaeda items being found all the time south of Tucson from ones breaking into the country, but little publicity about it.
Isn't that strange?? Gee, I wonder if anyone will point that out in this liberal town - they sure all came out in letters to the editor to support the "humanitarians."
just because diaries written in Arabic, and other assorted Muslim/AQ items are found near the southern border doesn't mean that it belonged to AQ or that AQ is coming through the unpatrolled, understaffed, pourous southern border.
was a sarcasm tag needed? : )
Hahaha!!
Does that mean no? : )
A U.S. lawmaker says elements of the war on terror are now spilling across the nation's southwestern border, and that colleagues he's spoken to who have seen the problem first-hand, as he has, say they felt safer "during trips to Iraq than they would have in a pickup truck on our southern border."
Rep. John A. Culberson, R-Texas, also says there has been an increase in apprehensions of so-called "special interest aliens," or SIAs – aliens from countries where al-Qaida is known to be in operation – along the U.S.-Mexico border, and that American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are aware of it.
I think we would be scared to death if we knew what was really coming across that border!!
They keep talking about a fence but it's too late. We need the National Guard to help the border patrol. It will take years to build a fence. I heard a California congressman [can't remember his name] say that the double fence is working there. As a followup someone from Arizona said it is only shifting the illegal lawbreakers into Arizona, NM and Texas.
Rep. John A. Culberson, R-Texas, also says there has been an increase in apprehensions of so-called "special interest aliens," or SIAs – aliens from countries where al-Qaida is known to be in operation – along the U.S.-Mexico border, and that American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are aware of it.OMG!!!
Yep, and people are in denial. The War on Terror should have included securing our borders.
Yes, and the last Congresswoman who said something retracted her story and said it was old information, but Rep. Culberson seems to have detailed and accurate information. He's talked to many law enforcement folks (sheriffs, I think) who have been involved with the turning over of Al Qaeda to the FBI.
Thanks for posting that information here, BQ, as well as this thread. We don't get real information from the media....just spin.
That's a new one for me.
but.....there's no AQ coming through the southern borders......everybody "knows" that they would ONLY come into the US on planes or through Canada.
omg. Thank you again!
Yes. I believe their trial is due to start in January. Here's a little information about it.
November 17, 2005 -- During the conference, nearly a dozen union and labor organization leaders from southern Arizona joined the campaign recently mounted by the group No More Deaths, the slogan of which is "Humanitarian aid is never a crime."
The campaign's aim is to pressure the federal government to drop the charges against two members of the organization who were arrested while transporting three undocumented migrants who allegedly needed urgent medical care.
The incident occurred in July, when Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sellz were arrested by the Border Patrol near the town of Arivaca. If found guilty, the two volunteers could face up to 15 years in prison.
Neighbors - including Southside Presbyterian Church, home base of the No More Deaths border activists - have complained to police about the day laborers.
Oh, isn't that rich! They're finally beginning to figure out that actions have consequences, often unintended, but real nonetheless.
""Why is wanting to work a crime?" he asked, "
When you are a criminal....moron!
Racists!
There is NO WOT without secured borders. It's so much a sad pathetic joke right now. Blackbird.
"Why is wanting to work a crime?"
Nice try dum-dum.
Crossing the border illegally is a crime.
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,
1. The act of invading; the act of encroaching upon the rights or possessions of another; encroachment; trespass.
"Why is wanting to work a crime?"
You want to work?? Become a citizen, otherwise take your butt back to Mexico!
ping
"They pushed us to the ground and had their guns drawn," said Flores, who feels the agency overreacted to what was essentially just illegal border crossers.
No, I think they reacted just right.
Nah, no reason to make ANY La Raza/MeCHa connection to Islamazis and Koranimals...
Silly "American" serfs, just surrender (Islam) your lands now...we need as many of you as possible to be OUR slave labor force!
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