A recent wave of immigration sweeps (or, as Indy Bay calls it "Gestapo Immigration Raiders") is creating a bit of a fuss not only in San Francisco but throughout the Peninsula and East Bay. There's talk of protests, organizing, sending out nasty press releases, and even the creation of new laws. In Redwood City, there's talk of creating an "Immigration Sanctuary" in San Mateo County and in San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors will debate a resolution tomorrow condemning the sweeps. That'll show them. Hell, even Gavin's jumped into the fray with his very own press release tut-tutting the raids. All of this has brought the Minutemen into the action as they held a rally in Castro Valley to call for closing the border. It wasn't until a few days ago when we realized the Minutemen were named after our Revolutionary soldiers and not their sexual dysfunctions, although one could probably explain the other.

The raids have been occurring over the past few weeks, some with the real cute name "Operation Return to Sender" and does everything have to have some cute name? This is all part of stepped up enforcement throughout the country the past couple of months.

Immigration rights activists have been calling the recent raids a "reign of terror" and have talked about their being fear spread throughout the community as people are worried that at any minute, they could get carried away. They are also calling on cities not to enforce immigration laws until a reform bill is passed in congress, something will probably occur sometime never. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials claim they mainly targeted people who had already ignored deportation orders, but most of the people caught did not quite fit into that category. Instead, they just got caught up in the raid. And Rush Limbaugh somehow blames Hillary Clinton.

Picture of Gerardo Sandoval from the Examiner.