"I don't consider myself a criminal," he said in Spanish. "I would like to fight to see if they let me stay here with my children. To leave them abandoned would be horrible for me. . . . And I don't want them to suffer."
The arrests break up families and create an unfair and inaccurate impression of the immigrant community, which is by and large law-abiding, said Reshma Shamasunder, director of the California Immigrant Policy Center. Enforcement actions also cause fear in immigrant neighborhoods and families that may include U.S. citizens.
"It directs public attention away from the real need to reform the immigration system overall," she said. "This is not going to solve our problems. . . . This is just one narrow-minded, mean-spirited way of trying to fix the immigration problem."
Anti-illegal immigration groups, however, said the action showed what the government can do when it is motivated to enforce the law.
"I hate to sound ungrateful, because we're grateful for any enforcement," said Rick Oltman with Californians for Population Stabilization. "But at this point, we're wondering what took so long."
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anna.gorman@latimes.com
andrew.blankstein@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Crackdown
Federal agents recently picked up over 500 criminal immigrants and immigration violators in Southern California who were not already in county jails.
*--* County Criminals Violators Total
Riverside/ San Bern. 173 72 245
Los Angeles 74 113 187
Orange 14 48 62
Ventura 8 28 36
Total 269 261 530 *--*
Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
