Immigrants speak of living in fear

<p>Francisco Sanchez said he lived with a fear not shared by his friends at Santa Rosa High School.</p><p>Every time he went on a class field trip or to a movie, Sanchez worried about being arrested and deported.</p><p>Sanchez, now a 20-year-old junior college student, is an illegal immigrant from Mexico. His family brought him to the United States when he was seven.</p><p>"The fear was always there," he told about 100 people at an immigration forum Sunday in Santa Rosa.</p><p>Sanchez was arrested once for driving without a license. And he was a passenger in a car pulled over by sheriff's deputies last year.</p><p>He was asked to step out of the car, and subsequently detained and turned over to immigration agents, he said.</p><p>He now fears the impending likelihood of being sent to the unfamiliar country of Mexico. He is fighting his deportation in court while he attends classes at Santa Rosa Junior College.</p><p>His story was cited by civil rights activists attending Sunday's session at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation as a reason for policy changes, especially for local law enforcement agencies to stop cooperating with federal immigration agents.</p><p>"We have children living in fear right here in Sonoma County," said Marlene Abel, president of the Old Adobe Union School District board in Petaluma.</p><p>The session was organized by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation along with the Jewish Congregation Shomrei Torah of Santa Rosa. It was the latest of several forums and rallies in Sonoma County this year focused on the role of local police in enforcing immigration.</p><p>Sheriff Bill Cogbill couldn't be reached Sunday. But he recently said his staff works with immigration agents under two circumstances:</p><p>When someone is accused of a crime and booked into Sonoma County Jail, federal agents check his or her immigration status and place a "hold" on anyone here illegally.</p><p>When certified gang members are found to be in the country illegally.</p><p>Sanchez said he was marked for deportation after gang task force members conducting an investigation in an apartment complex stopped a car he was riding in and questioned all the passengers.</p><p>A social worker and an elementary school teacher at Sunday's forum described children returning home to an empty house, their parents having been detained for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.</p><p>The Committee for Immigrant Rights announced plans to ask Sonoma County and its Sheriff's Department to stop collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency with primary responsibility for enforcing immigration laws.</p><p>The nonprofit civil rights group is proposing that the county adopt a law prohibiting the use of county money to collaborate with Immigration enforcement, except in situations required by law.</p><p>Similar laws exist in San Francisco and Oakland.</p><p>Illegal immigrants are afraid to call the police for fear of deportation, according to several speakers at Sunday's event. That fear prevents people from reporting domestic violence or neighborhood crime, they said.</p><p>When people see immigration enforcement agents riding along with Sonoma County sheriff's deputies, what are they supposed to think, asked Richard Coshnear, an immigration attorney and head of the Committee for Immigrant Rights.</p><p>The group plans to present more than 4,500 signed letters requesting the county stop working with immigration enforcement agents at the Dec. 4 meeting of the Sonoma County supervisors, Coshnear said.</p><p>Efforts to contact supervisors on Sunday were unsuccessful.</p><p>"It's hard for me to understand why we wouldn't want to be a county of refuge," said Rabbi George Gittleman. "I find these personal stories troubling."</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Nathan Halverson at 521-5494 or nathan.halverson @pressdemocrat.com.</p>