ONTARIO, Calif. (AP) -- Elidia Celestina peered from behind a window shade before opening the door a crack to a stranger. If she leaves her apartment at all these days, it is only for a rushed, nerve-racking trip to the store.
"Everyone is afraid," said Celestina, 19, who came from Mexico five months ago. "We're like mice, hiding in our homes."
She and many other illegal immigrants in Southern California have been gripped by fear since a new Border Patrol unit began roving through Hispanic communities and making arrests well north of the border, beyond the agency's usual area of operations.
Since June 1, the unit has captured more than 420 suspected illegal immigrants. They have been picked up on the street, pulled over while driving, or caught coming out of stores in communities 100 miles or more from the Mexican border.
The raids have spread such fear that some people have stopped going shopping or attending church. Immigrant advocates say some are staying home from work, too.
California is home to an estimated 2 million illegal immigrants, more than any other state. The border itself is patrolled aggressively. But for years, illegal immigrants who reach the interior, often at great cost and danger, have faced little risk of arrest.
"It does appear to be a shift in tactics," said Shaheena Ahmad Simons, a Los Angeles attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. "These sweeps have created a pervasive fear and even anger among Latinos regardless of their immigration status."
While the Border Patrol has employed what it refers to as roving units in the past, it had not used them recently, said Mario Villarreal, an agency spokesman in Washington.
Villarreal would not say exactly why the Border Patrol has started the inland sweeps.
The Border Patrol has the legal authority to make arrests inland but traditionally operates close to the border, and it employs checkpoints instead of roving patrols. It is immigration agents, from a different agency altogether, who generally make arrests inland.
The Mobile Patrol Group consists of 12 agents based at a station in Temecula, about 55 miles from the border. The Temecula team ranges across some 3,000 square miles.
Border Patrol officials said it makes arrests only when it has information about the presence of illegal immigrants.
"If you're here legally in the United States, you really don't have anything to worry about," said Raul Martinez, a Border Patrol spokesman.
Nevertheless, immigrant activists contend agents have violated people's rights by questioning Hispanics without probable cause.
"In Southern California, there are many people who appear to be of Mexican ancestry. That does not mean they are here illegally," said Simons, whose organization is considering a legal challenge.
Mexican President Vicente Fox also has criticized the arrests, instructing his foreign secretary this week to lodge "an energetic protest" with the U.S. government.
Throughout the region, the arrests have set off rumors and panic.
Alerts, often false, about "la migra" checkpoints (Spanish slang for immigration officials) have become as common as traffic reports on Spanish-language radio. Activists have organized marches and protests. Local politicians have called immigration officials, demanding answers. Shops and restaurants in Hispanic neighborhoods say their business has plummeted because many illegal immigrants are staying close to home.
"We're just waiting for the moment when it's going to get us. We're terrified," said Luis Paredes, a 28-year-old construction worker in Escondido, 50 miles north of the border. He and wife go out only to work or to buy groceries. And they stick together when they do so, for fear one will be deported without the other.
On June 4, the Border Patrol unit went north to the San Bernardino County city of Ontario, about 100 miles from Mexico, and captured 79 illegal immigrants. Among them were Celestina's husband and his two brothers, who were caught as they headed to a job unloading trucks. A day later, the patrol arrested 75 people in Corona, about 80 miles from the border.
The Border Patrol said about 10 percent of those detained had criminal records. "We've gotten numerous calls of support from the community," Martinez said. "It's overwhelming."
Nearly all those captured are Mexican, with a few from Central America. The vast majority have agreed to be released just across the border, in Tijuana, rather than await a deportation hearing.
Celestina, who said she is four months pregnant, now waits for her husband to return from Tijuana.
The area around Escondido, which means "hidden" in Spanish, has been hardest hit by the patrol, with 268 people arrested as of Thursday.
In a commercial district frequented by Hispanics, witnesses said Border Patrol agents cornered people at a laundry and a supermarket.
Beatriz Ramirez, who runs a money-transfer business, said the number of people using her service to send cash to families in Latin America has dropped to one or two per day, down from 20.
"It's become a ghost street," she said.
Teodulo Ruiz Perez, who is from Mexico and works at a car wash, said: "We're just here working. What harm are we doing? Is it a sin to work?"
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Vicente Fox can take his 'energetic protest' and take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. God forbid that we start to enforce the immigration laws.
A couple of hundred down, only about 12 million left.
