Immigration sweep nets 42, provoking outcry

Carolyn Hileman - The Voice* | June 15, 2008

NEWPORT — Community advocates yesterday denounced a two-day immigration sweep on Aquidneck Island as an inhumane and deliberate effort to spread fear, and they said the raids on Wednesday and Thursday had already pushed people into hiding.

At a news conference in Washington Square, half a dozen speakers said agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement had gone into restaurants, stores and apartments during the sweep, but in some cases appeared to be targeting people because they appeared foreign and were driving landscaping trucks.

“This is nothing less than Gestapo tactics, and it has to stop,” said Alison Foley, a Providence lawyer. She said she and others are trying to get legal aid and other assistance to detainees and their families.

Immigration agents, assisted by state and local police, arrested 42 people from Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico in Newport and Middletown, according to Paula Grenier, spokeswoman for ICE in Boston.

She said 21 had ignored final orders of deportation, 12 had illegally reentered the country after being deported, and 9 others were determined to be in the country illegally. Grenier said the agents are members of ICE’s Rhode Island Fugitive Operations Team.

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