26 Of 32 in immigration sweep are back home, all people arrested were here illegally.
NEW HAVEN – Twenty-six of the 32 people arrested in controversial raids on illegal immigrants in the city last month are back home after their families and the community raised enough money to post their bails.
The immigrants said they lost their jobs, left behind their families and suffered humiliation while they were detained, the New Haven Register reported Sunday.
One of those arrested, a 32-year-old woman identified only as Teresa in the newspaper report, said she wants to stay in New Haven because she needs to take care of her mother and ill father, and she has a 14-year-old daughter. She lost two restaurant jobs after her arrest, but has gotten a job at another restaurant.
“When I got detained, my world fell apart, because I thought I wouldn’t be able to support them any more,” she said. “They treated us like criminals, and we aren’t criminals.” *
New Haven officials and lawyers for the immigrants have criticized federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities for the raids on June 6 and 11, saying constitutional rights and government policies were violated. They also said the raids appeared to be in retaliation for the city’s new identification card program for illegal immigrants.
*The National Research Council has estimated that the net fiscal cost of immigration ranges from $11 billion to $22 billion per year, with most government expenditures on immigrants coming from state and local coffers, while most taxes paid by immigrants go to the federal treasury. The net deficit is caused by a low level of tax payments by immigrants, because they are disproportionately low-skilled and thus earn low wages, and a higher rate of consumption of government services, both because of their relative poverty and their higher fertility.
This is especially true of illegal immigration. Even though illegal aliens make little use of welfare, from which they are generally barred, the costs of illegal immigration in terms of government expenditures for education, criminal justice, and emergency medical care are significant. California has estimated that the net cost to the state of providing government services to illegal immigrants approached $3 billion during a single fiscal year. The fact that states must bear the cost of federal failure turns illegal immigration, in effect, into one of the largest unfunded federal mandates.