Fewer parents are walking their children to school in this border city’s Linda Vista neighborhood.
The crowd of day laborers huddled in a parking lot outside McDonald’s has dropped by half.
A sense of unease has spread in this community since immigration agents began walking the streets as part of a stepped-up nationwide effort targeting an estimated 590,000 immigrant fugitives. Other illegal immigrants are being rounded up along the way.
Juana Osorio, an illegal immigrant from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, said her neighbors have largely stayed indoors since agents visited her apartment complex June 2.
“People rarely leave their houses now to go shopping,” Osorio, 37, said as she clutched a bottle of laundry detergent in a barren courtyard. “They walk in fear.”
In a blitz that began May 26 and ended Tuesday, federal agents arrested nearly 2,200 illegal immigrants, including about 400 in the San Diego area–more than any other city.
All this has immigrants on edge, even in places such as San Diego that are home to thousands of illegals, many of whom have lived openly for years.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said about half the 2,179 people arrested in the 19-day nationwide raids–dubbed Operation Return to Sender–had criminal records, including convictions for sexual assault of a minor, assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping.
While criminals were targeted, agents also asked neighbors and curious onlookers about their immigration status and, if they were in the country illegally, they got hauled away for deportation too.
“We can’t just turn our heads away from people we find along the way,” said Lauren Mack, an ICE spokeswoman in San Diego.
