(Photo: Courtesy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Federal immigration officials have been raiding homes in neighborhoods throughout San Diego. During the last two weeks, authorities have arrested 340 undocumented immigrants. KPBS Border Reporter Amy Isackson has the story. It's a little after 5 a.m. and still dark outside as eight armed agents, wearing bulletproof vests, sneak up to a small white house in Vista. They surround it. Two knock on the front door. A sleepy looking woman let's them in.
They go from bedroom to bedroom searching for a 41-year-old Mexican woman on their list of people who've been ordered deported but are still in the country. Agents rouse everyone in the house and sit them in the living room for questioning. About ten minutes go by.
Neighbors drive by and stare. Eventually, the authorities lead two men out of the house in handcuffs and pajamas.
Goorden: There's no arrest warrant for me. I didn't do anything. My three month old is inside.
ICE officer Mario Ortiz explains what happened.
Ortiz: The do know the person we are looking for. They let the lady use the address. We didn't encounter her there.
Isackson: But you did encounter two other people?
Ortiz: Yeah, two other individuals who were undocumented. We interviewed them, determined they're in the United States illegally, and they were taken into custody.
Agents leave the one man's baby and eight-year-old daughter with their mom. The team climbs back into their unmarked white Suburban and travel in convoy with three other vehicles to hit the next house on their list -- where a similar scene plays out
Officers go inside. Their target is a smuggler. But it turns out he lives in Chicago. He's related to this family. But they say he's a bad guy and never lived at the house. Nevertheless, just like before, agents round up four other people, including one renter who says he crossed illegally from Tijuana two days earlier.
Standing outside, ICE spokeswoman Lauren Mack says similar operations are taking place all over the country as agents look for some 620,000 immigrants who've been ordered out but still remain. Mack says it's like pulling a needle out of a haystack.
Mack: A number of different reports are reviewed in attempt to identify these people. I mean, they're in the society. They're living in their communities and they're very difficult to track down.
Since 2003, the federal government has spent $204 million on operations like these. However, a report by the Department of Homeland Security says the number of immigrant fugitives has grown in the last four years by about 200,000. And that growth has outpaced agents' ability to find and apprehend people.
In response, immigration officials plan to increase the number of teams dedicated to these sweeps from 52 to 75 by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, back at the federal building in downtown San Diego, immigration agents fingerprint and photograph the people they arrested during their early morning swing.
Javier Gonzalez, the man in his pajamas who left his two children behind, says he's been in the United States for ten years and has worked at a plastics factory in Vista the whole time. Except, he says, for the few weeks it took him to get back into the country after he was caught at vehicle checkpoints and deported.
Gonzalez says he knew he could get caught again.
Gonzalez: But I never thought they'd come to my home. No. I didn't think it would happen like that. All I can think about right now is my daughter. She was crying hard. She reached out her hand for me.
Gonzalez is deported to Tijuana a few hours later.
Three days later, I visit the home where immigration agents went looking for the smuggler who lives in Chicago. Twelve-year-old Luis Flores answers the door.
Luis says one of the men agents detained at his house is his 20-year-old brother. Luis says he's had a hard time sleeping since the agents came.
Flores: I think that they're going to come again and take everybody.
Federal immigration officials say their stepped up effort to detain people in San Diego who've been ordered deported ends today.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dubbed this recent crackdown Operation Return to Sender. But if history is any guide, the cross border ties to family and friends and decent paying jobs will cause Mexicans to return to the United States.
Amy Isackson, KPBS News.
