ROSWELL, N.M. — This conservative city on the barren eastern plains of New Mexico long had been spared the acrimonious debates over illegal immigration that have racked so much of the Southwest.
That is, until December, when immigration enforcement entered the murky terrain of the local high school.
A school security officer stopped Karina Acosta, an 18-year-old pregnant Roswell High School senior, and discovered she was in the country illegally. He called federal immigration authorities, who swiftly deported her.
The district superintendent protested and the officer was removed from the school and transferred back to the city Police Department. About three dozen angry students and parents marched on police headquarters -- a notable event in a town not accustomed to controversy -- and were met by a handful of counterdemonstrators who backed the officer.
The schools suffered a sudden drop in attendance as students whose parents were in the country illegally kept them home. The local newspaper was peppered with angry letters to the editor denouncing illegal immigrants. And even two months later, unease permeates the community.
"What shocked me more than anything is what it did to this town," said Coreta Justus, one of Acosta's teachers. In the classroom, she said, "you can feel the difference vibrating from the students. I don't think they have those safety feelings anymore. School used to be a very safe place."
In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that illegal immigrants had the right to attend public schools and that educators could not ask students whether they were in the country legally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a policy against entering campuses.
But local police forces like Roswell's are increasingly being pressured to crack down on illegal immigrants.
"You have legislatures that say one thing, a Supreme Court that has ruled something else," said Scott Douglass, Roswell's interim police chief.
"The country's not giving really clear signals."
Douglass defended his officer, saying he was obligated to call immigration officials once he learned that Acosta was in the country illegally.
There have been cases elsewhere of local police arresting illegal immigrants at schools to be deported. Last year in Tucson, police were called to a high school because a ninth-grader was caught with marijuana. When the student's family arrived, they arrested the student, his mother and his brother and handed them over for deportation.
