October 15, 2006

Roundup scars are slow to heal

By Sarah N. Lynch

East Valley Tribune

José Félix’s eyes still mist up when he thinks about five sweltering days in Chandler nine years ago, when many of his neighbors were hauled away by police. The events that took place during the summer of 1997 have become what many people consider a stain on the city’s past that has still not completely faded.

Between July 27 and July 31 of that year, Chandler police officers and federal Border Patrol agents took to the streets on bicycles in search of illegal immigrants.

The officers and agents stopped Hispanics and asked for proof of citizenship or residency in what was known as “Operation Restoration.” Those without documents were apprehended, and in the end, 432 immigrants were rounded up for deportation.

Félix, 73, who had his green card during the roundup, said he was stopped two days in a row, and even now he’s still furious. The first time, they came to his apartment complex and took away 12 people.

“I went to open the door and they rushed in. It’s a miracle they didn’t knock me down,” he said in Spanish. “I told them ‘just because you have a gun, you think that means you can go in?’ ”

For some, the Chandler roundup is a thing of the past, and many newly arrived immigrants are not even aware of the history. But the raging political debate on illegal immigration and Mesa lawmaker Russell Pearce’s comments about a 1950s mass deportation program have caused some of those memories to resurface.

While some Hispanic residents don’t know about Pearce and haven’t heard his comments, the political atmosphere has aroused fears of another roundup.

“I don’t think we’ve learned anything,” said immigration activist Alfredo Gutierrez. “It’s repeating itself, but in a much broader sense . . . it’s all coming back.”

Gutierrez and other Hispanic activists have raised concerns about the way Maricopa County’s top law officials have enforced a law against human smuggling. Individuals who sneak across the border have been arrested and charged with “conspiring” to smuggle themselves across the U.S.-Mexico border. Two separate Superior Court judges have since upheld their legal interpretation of the law.

“In other towns, they’ve adopted various ordinances that have gone beyond the Chandler event,” Gutierrez said. “And Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his intellectual soulmate (Maricopa County Attorney) Andrew Thomas are running their own Chandler program and basing it on a unique reading of the ‘coyote’ law.”

Although there has been progress in soothing race relations in Chandler following the roundup, the social attitudes toward illegal immigration in 1997 were not the same attitudes that people hold today.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have since reshaped the immigration debate, shifting toward homeland security and away from the economic impact.

“Back in 1997, the question of terrorism was nonexistent in reference to immigration. It was really economics and fundamental fairness and humanitarian concerns,” said civil rights attorney Stephen Montoya, who filed a lawsuit against Chandler following the roundup and won a settlement of $400,000.

“The prevailing view back in 1997 was that undocumented workers helped the American economy by providing an available supply of unskilled labor,” he said. “What’s radically changed is 9/11.”

The threat of terrorism has heightened tensions between the burgeoning immigrant communities and the more established ones. Some of the people who remember the roundup now say that fear of deportation is still prevalent today.

“There is no confidence in the police,” said Benjamín Flores, a 57-year-old Chandler resident who remembers the roundup. “If someone sees a patrol car, they hide and get intimidated.”

The Chandler roundup stirred an outcry from the Hispanic community. Activists such as Juanita Encinas, who used to work alongside labor activist César Chávez, joined with attorneys to demand explanations and apologies.

To this day, Encinas said she thinks of the roundup regularly. Old newspaper clippings still hang in her office, and when she spoke of it, she began to cry a little.

“Almost every day,” she said of how often she recalls the roundup. “And everybody who got hurt. All the farmworkers who couldn’t defend themselves. Who couldn’t’ speak English. Who were horrified. And it hurts me.”

Rumors abounded after the roundup. To this day, some claim police barged into homes without cause, although an independent investigation did not substantiate many of those stories. It did find, however, that Chandler police were not properly trained for the operation.

“It had a long-term impact (on Chandler) simply because of the perception issue,” said former Lt. Ray Villa, who served on the Chandler Police Department during the roundup and was later named the police liaison to the Hispanic community.

“It made us look like we were a racist city that does not have a strong bond with the Hispanic community,” he said.

Among the biggest complaints against law enforcement during the roundup was that some Hispanic Americans and legal residents alike were stopped by police.

Several lawsuits were filed against the city, including Montoya’s. Many people still view the Chandler incident as a case of racial profiling, although the independent investigation concluded that police did not “set out” to violate anyone’s civil rights.

“In the roundup, to get 432 detainees, they stopped thousands of people,” said Chandler City Councilman Martin Sepulveda, who was in office during the roundup and still disagrees with how it was handled. “Are those acceptable odds? Are you willing to forgo someone’s constitutional rights?”

New questions have arisen since then about the role of local law enforcement. More and more, local and state governments are exploring ways to tackle the problem themselves, just as Chandler tried to do.

“Back in 1997, there was virtual unanimity that only the federal government could enforce immigration laws unless the state and local government entered into a written agreement with the attorney general of the United States,” Montoya said. “Now, local and state governments are arguing they do have the inherent authority.”

That has been apparent in Arizona over the past year, especially in the heat of election season. In Phoenix, a Superior Court judge recently denied ballot placement for a measure that, if passed, would have required Phoenix police to enforce immigration law. The backers of the proposition have since filed an appeal.

More recently in Mesa, Mayor Keno Hawker tried to convince City Council members to pursue the possibility of training local police to enforce immigration, but the majority of the council decided to back off.

Hawker said that if the city revisits the issue and decides to implement it, the police would not enforce the law like Chandler did in 1997.

“That was total racial profiling,” he said, adding that the immigration laws should only be enforced by trained police officers, and there should be probable cause to stop someone.

Rep. Pearce, R-Mesa, drew criticism from activists and even fellow party members after he went on a local radio station, saying, “We know what we need to do. In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower put together a task force called ‘Operation Wetback.’ He removed, in less than a year, 1.3 million illegal aliens. They must be deported.”

Many lawmakers have opted not to push for mass deportation, saying it’s not feasible, and some activists even point to Chandler to explain why it would never work. A mass deportation program could run the risk of detaining citizens and violating rights, they said.

Even Pearce himself has backed away from his statements on the radio and claims he was never calling for the deportation program to be reinstated.

But in discussing the Chandler roundup, he told reporters he felt the officers did not break the law. When asked if he’d be in favor of resurrecting such a roundup, however, he replied, “I’m not going to go there.”

Villa said he doubts that a roundup like the one in Chandler will occur again. Politicians and police learned their lesson. Although Chandler had done occasional operations with Border Patrol before the infamous roundup of 1997, they haven’t done one since, he said.

“(The roundup) gives people a second thought before they consider it,” Villa said.

“ I know for a long time, we’d go to meetings (in other police departments) and people said, ‘Remember Chandler?’ ”

“Nobody wants to go down that path.”