Mr. Fox, Cough Up $300,000

PENDLETON, Ore. — Out of ideas and low on cash one cold morning, the man with the biggest badge in town put his meaty fingers on a keyboard and tapped out a letter to the leader of Mexico.

"Dear Precidente [sic] Fox," it began.

"My name is John Trumbo. I am Sheriff of Umatilla County in northeastern Oregon, United States of America." Illegal immigrants "from your country" who committed crimes here, the letter said, cost Americans lots of money.

Last year, more than 360 of "your citizens" spent time in jail "at a cost of $63 a day which equates to a request for payment of $318,843," the letter concluded. "At this time, you will not be billed for medical, dental and transportation costs. Your prompt attention to this request will be very much appreciated."

Three months later, Trumbo reports, Vicente Fox still has not paid up. The Mexican president has issued no response, no installment payment, nada.

The silence has reverberated at the Umatilla County Justice Center, a complex of modular beige buildings set among rolling hills of wheat. Here, the influx of Mexican immigrants -- many of them illegal and a portion criminal -- has become an increasingly prickly issue. Trumbo's letter voiced the growing frustration of a region that has been compared to the California farmlands of the 1950s and 1960s -- a place going through a transition in racial demographics.

Between 1990 and 2000, Umatilla County's Latino population, including legal and illegal immigrants, jumped 114% to 11,400 people, according to the Census Bureau. This doesn't include thousands of seasonal workers who live here part of the year and many others who choose not to be counted.

About 70,000 people live in the county.

In towns such as Hermiston, Umatilla and Milton-Freewater, Latinos occupy entire neighborhoods, and the beginnings of "Little Mexico" commercial areas have taken hold. The neighborhoods tend to be poorer, and many residents blame Latino immigrants for the region's gang and drug problems.

Public schools have become increasingly populated by Latinos. In Milton-Freewater and Umatilla, with a combined enrollment of about 3,300, Latinos make up half of the student body. No one knows how many are children of illegal immigrants because federal law prohibits schools from asking about parents' immigration status.