ROGERS (AP) Hispanic immigrant workers who toil on red-clay construction sites and cut flesh from bone on poultry plant lines in northwest Arkansas, helping to fuel the region's economic growth, say they've become targets for local police who are conducting raids once left to a few federal agents stationed here.
After changes in state and federal law, local police, sheriff's deputies and state troopers throughout Arkansas can help enforce federal immigration laws. Recent raids in northwestern Arkansas rounded up a handful of illegal immigrants but even those with a legal right to be in the United States face questions.
"It feels like it is dangerous to be Hispanic," activist Jim Miranda said.
And police acknowledge that some legal residents will wind up temporarily detained.
"Through these investigations, there's going to be collateral damage," said Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder. "If there's 19 people in there who could or could not be here illegally, they are going to be checked. Although those people who might not be conducting criminal activity, they are going to get slammed up in the middle of the investigation."
Through the 1990s, Arkansas' Hispanic population grew at the nation's second-fastest rate. Fewer than 17,000 people of "Spanish origin" lived in Arkansas in 1980, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures, but the total today is at more than 141,000 about 5 percent of the population. Most of the state's Hispanics live in northwestern Arkansas, home to Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Tyson Foods Inc. and trucking company J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc.
Healthy corporate bottom-lines offered new jobs for those already living in the region and opened jobs in poultry plants and on construction sites for newly arrived Hispanics.
"They are good workers, they work hard for the most part," said Benton County Sheriff Keith Ferguson. "Hispanic people are just like any other nationality of people. You've got the good and you've got the bad."
The bad caught the attention of Rogers Mayor Steve Womack. He said the shooting of an undercover Rogers police officer while serving a warrant on an illegal immigrant spurred him to push for inclusion in the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement's 287(g) program. The program, named after the section of law it occupies, allows local and state police officers to perform immigration checks and take part in operations in the field.
Interest in the program grew as political remedies to illegal immigration failed in Congress. More than 30 police agencies take part in the ICE program, in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
ICE began 2008 with 90 additional requests, including one from the Arkansas State Police. Legislators here authorized troopers for immigration work in 2005, but state police only recently applied to join the program.
The cities of Rogers and Springdale, along with Benton and Washington counties, sent 19 officers to several weeks of training last year and Helder says the Hispanic community has noticed tougher enforcement. Illegal immigrants suspected of drug trafficking or falsifying identification documents bail out of homes after officers show up for a "knock and talk" before pursuing warrants, Helder said.
"What have seen is a recognition by that community we are serious about this task force," Helder said. "By the time (the officers) get back, there's nothing left in the house but swinging hangers."
Those arrested go through a process that takes more than four hours at a time, including having their fingerprints and a photograph scanned into a computer. An interview follows and officers create a packet of papers to be given to a judge. An inmate's fingerprint dot the bottom right-hand corner of every page in packet, which includes aliases, addresses and supporting affidavits of arrest.
Helder said Washington County had seen more than 70 arrests from the task force through January. Benton County jail officials said they processed more than 100 illegal immigrants in the same period.
Miranda, an immigration activist who lives in Bella Vista, said the advertised goal of the task force changed once the officers began making arrests.
"This program was sold to us as targeting serious crime," Miranda said. However, he said, police seem to be intent on "crippling" Hispanic business owners, noting immigration raids on Mexican restaurants in December. ICE agents said they arrested 23 people during the raids, fueled by criminal complaints signed by the head of the immigration task force.
Miranda said restaurants and groceries stores aimed at Hispanic customers suffered a drop in sales after the raids.
"It's really throwing this community into turmoil," he said.
But the concerns don't stop with the task force. In December, police say a man beat and kicked a Hispanic man to death in Lowell after his nephew spoke Spanish to his girlfriend. The nephew said he had only cooed at the woman's infant.
In Bentonville, officers say another man burned down a hotel under construction in November after he saw Hispanic workers there. Police say the man told detectives he decided to burn down the hotel after seeing a Hispanic man pull $20 out of a coin-pusher arcade game the Hispanic man had just played.
As far south as Little Rock, radio announcers on Spanish-language stations caution listeners against driving at night. Police stress they will not racially profile Hispanic drivers, noting how the city of Rogers settled a lawsuit by Hispanic motorists who claimed racial profiling by police in 2003.
On New Year's Eve, Benton County sheriff's deputies arrested 14 illegal immigrants at a sobriety checkpoint on New Year's Eve. Deputies said only four had been drinking while the rest didn't have driver's licenses.
Miranda said a recent meeting among business owners resulted in $22,000 in promised money toward the legal and education fund for minorities in northwest Arkansas. Miranda said some of that money likely would go to help defend those arrested in the recent restaurant raids.
Still, the fear that pervades the community touches Miranda as well. Miranda showed three unsigned greeting cards he received at his home since speaking out at civic meetings. Each card holds police blotters listed with Hispanic names and newspaper articles mentioning his name.
"Obviously, the message is we know who you are, we know where you are and we don't like what you're doing," he said. "It is worrisome."
