Maury County raid chills immigrant community

By CLAY CAREY,BRAD SCHRADEand JANELL ROSSStaff Writers
COLUMBIA, Tenn. — Two dozen illegal immigrants were arrested and processed for deportation this week after happening upon a mobile home where police and federal agents were investigating a case, residents of a local trailer park said Thursday.
The arrests and apparently imminent deportation of 23 males and one female in Maury County sent shockwaves through the Midstate's Hispanic community, where some feared the raid could create a rift between Hispanics and law enforcement that would be very difficult to repair.

"These types of actions send ripples of fear throughout a community," said Jessica Baba, public awareness coordinator with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
"Fear causes people to stop reporting crimes and talking to police. That is a threat to public safety," Baba said. "Going after one person is one thing. We're not going to dispute that. Going after an entire community is entirely different."
Others, like Theresa Harmon, co-founder of Tennesseans for Responsible Immigration Policies, think the arrests are a step in the right direction.
"If (police) have a reasonable suspicion that I'm driving drunk, they're going to pull me over to find out. The same thing usually applies across the board to everything except illegal aliens," Harmon said.
"That's got to stop. … As long as our law enforcement agencies look the other way, that makes us a sanctuary" for illegal immigrants, Harmon said.
Many law enforcement agencies, like the Metro Police Department, have said their officers will not take part in immigration enforcement, fearing that such actions could lead immigrants to be uncooperative with police. Several attempts to call Maury County Sheriff's Department officials and federal authorities on Thursday were unsuccessful.
Details of arrests hazy
Two days after the raid, details of the arrests are hazy.
Sheriff's deputies and federal immigration agents have said they went to the Countryside Mobile Village Tuesday morning in search of a teenage boy and his mother. Police learned the two were in the United States illegally after the boy brought a gun to school.
While they were there, they took 22 more illegal Mexican immigrants into custody.
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing. They (immigration agents and officers) were everywhere," said Antonio Gonzalez, 20, a neighbor and acquaintance of several of the people arrested.
Angela Leyva, sister-in-law and aunt of two of the arrestees and a legal U.S. citizen, said the family's trailer had been surrounded by patrol cars.
Two immigration officials entered the house. People who lived nearby gathered to watch, Leyva said. Then, immigration officials began asking people in the crowd about their immigration status. Some people were followed back to their trailers, asked to produce documents, and then arrested when they could not, Leyva said.
Barbara Haskins said her fiancé, Luis Enrique Sanchez Castro, told her a similar story Tuesday night when she found him locked in the Maury County Jail. Sanchez Castro pulled up in front of a trailer a few doors down from the Leyvas' Tuesday morning. He was there to pick up a co-worker.
Something about the blue Ford must have caught law enforcement's attention. Officers headed toward the car. One occupant hopped out and ran. But Sanchez and three co-workers were arrested.
Sheriff Enoch George and his staff were unavailable to discuss the raid Thursday, but on Wednesday Capt. Nathan Johns said carloads of illegal immigrants approached them.
Angela Leyva said she heard from her nephew — the boy who brought the gun to school — on Wednesday. He said he was in a holding facility, he thought in New Jersey. Last the family heard from her sister-in-law, she was in a holding facility in Franklin, expecting to go to Texas for a hearing before being deported to Mexico.
"For (authorities) to say they can't tell us anything — that's not right," Leyva said. "(Where) they're going or how we can find out what's happening to them; they're not letting us know anything."
'Right to remain silent'
People crossing border checkpoints can be searched, questioned or detained even if there's no obvious proof that they're entering illegally, said Jerry Gonzalez, a Nashville civil rights attorney.
Once they're here, a law enforcement officer has the authority to walk up and ask them if they're here illegally — but that doesn't always mean they'll be arrested.
If an immigrant doesn't make that admission, but an officer has an "objectively reasonable suspicion" that the immigrant is a criminal, the officer can detain him for questioning, Gonzalez said.
That detention is only supposed to last as long as it takes to figure out if the crime was committed. "We're talking 20 minutes," he said.
But most immigrants who are deported convict themselves under police questioning, Gonzalez said.
"Most illegal aliens are determined to be illegal because an (immigration) agent asks them 'are you illegal' and they say 'oh, you got me. I'm illegal.' And then they take them. Generally, everybody has the right to remain silent. … Nobody can compel them to speak."
Though some police officers will take it upon themselves to question Hispanics about their immigration status, "most enlightened law enforcement agencies" frown on the practice, said Elliott Ozment, a Nashville attorney who specializes in immigration issues.
"It could expose that law enforcement agency to very serious charges of discrimination," he said.
None of that mattered much to those left behind at the Countryside Mobile Village. Leyva said she had to explain to her daughters where their cousin and their aunt had gone.
"I told them they came and got them and took them back to Mexico," Leyva said, explaining that her 6-year-old was particularly confused. "She wanted to know why. How do you explain that to a kid?"