1. Another San Fran. youth arrested
2. Phoenix mayor lobbies congress
3. CA city, Feds launch gang crackdown
4. AZ county enforcement criticized
5. Immigrant group split on sports

1.
Protected immigrant faces charges in stabbing
By Jaxon Van Derbeken
The San Francisco Chronicle, August 21, 2008

An immigrant suspected of being in the United States illegally - freed after being shielded from possible deportation by San Francisco officials despite committing two gang-related assaults as a juvenile - faces charges that he tried to stab a man to death last year in San Mateo County, authorities say.

The case of Eric Antonio Uc-Cahun, now 19, a native of Mexico, is the second in which a youthful offender protected from deportation in San Francisco has later been arrested for a violent crime as an adult.

The San Mateo County stabbing was especially vicious, authorities said - a top prosecutor said the victim had been "gutted, like you gut a pig."

Uc-Cahun's history of youth offenses in the city was similar to that of Edwin Ramos, a 21-year-old Salvadoran native facing triple-murder charges in connection with the slayings in June of a San Francisco man and two of his sons on an Excelsior district street.

"How many of these people are there who were the beneficiaries of this process?" asked Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney for Northern California, who has been critical of the city's practice of shielding immigrants from deportation.

"This is what happens when the best intentions are misapplied," Russoniello said. "If there was any justification for this program, cases like this certainly undermine that expectation."

Both Uc-Cahun and Ramos were in San Francisco's juvenile justice system at least twice during Mayor Gavin Newsom's time in office, Ramos for an assault and an attempted robbery he committed when he was 17, Uc-Cahun in connection with assaults and other crimes for which he was arrested in 2006.

Juvenile justice officials protected both Ramos and Uc-Cahun from federal authorities under their interpretation of San Francisco's sanctuary law, which bars the city from cooperating in U.S. efforts to hunt down illegal immigrants.

However, City Attorney Dennis Herrera's office concluded last month that nothing in the law prevented San Francisco from turning over suspected youth felons to federal immigration authorities. Newsom has since ordered juvenile justice officials to provide information on felons suspected of being illegal immigrants to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Since the policy change, more than 50 juvenile offenders have been referred to federal immigration officials, according to juvenile probation authorities.

No more, spokesman hopes

Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for the mayor, said Wednesday that he could not comment about any juvenile records. However, he said, "because of the mayor's change of policy, we are optimistic that tragedies like this one can be avoided in future."
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/20/MN4U12DRQF.DTL

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2.
Phoenix Mayor wants Congress to act on problems caused by illegal immigration
The KSAZ News (Phoenix), August 21, 2008

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon is in the nation's capitol Thursday morning, along with the wife of murdered Phoenix police officer Nick Erfle.

Gordon and Julie Erfle are there to deliver a speech on the economic, social and public safety costs of illegal immigration at the local level.

Officer Erfle was killed in 2007 after trying to stop a group of people jay-walking. One of those men was an illegal alien that opened fire, killing Erfle.
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http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=7255109&ve...

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3.
Police launch gang crackdown in Santa Ana
The move comes in response to a surge in violence and targets gang members in an area near the Civic Center. Authorities are also encouraging residents to report gang activity.
By Tony Barboza
Los Angeles Times, August 21, 2008

It was nine hours into the anti-gang surge, and an empty wheelchair sat in the driveway.

"The guy in the wheelchair just took off running," said Santa Ana Police Sgt. Lorenzo Carrillo, standing over three tattooed teenagers, suspected gang members seated with their hands behind their backs while police checked their parole status. Just hanging out with one another could be a violation, Carrillo explained.

Although none of the three was arrested and the not-so-disabled man was never found, Carrillo, who directs the Santa Ana Police Department's gang suppression unit, said parole checks like those taking place this week in Santa Ana are key to restoring peace to the city's central neighborhoods.

In response to an escalation of violence -- including three shootings in a 24-hour period last month and an increase in arrests of gang members with guns -- Santa Ana police have launched a three-day operation targeting gang members and encouraging residents to report crime in a 2-square-mile area southwest of the Civic Center.

The operation began early Tuesday with 62 officers in patrol cars and on motorcycles, who saturated the neighborhood bounded by 1st Street, Edinger Avenue, Bristol Street and the Santa Ana River. Officers walked crime-heavy neighborhoods to talk to residents and urge them to call if they spotted trouble. Probation officers and parole and immigration agents also patrolled the neighborhood.

By late Wednesday authorities had arrested 38 on suspicion of a range of crimes, including probation and parole violations and outstanding warrants, weapons, vandalism and drug charges. Most are suspected gang members, and one was the brother of Councilwoman Michele Martinez.

The surge continues today.

Although crime in this city of 350,000 has fallen in recent years, the latest increase has centered in several neighborhoods of mobile home parks, apartments and single-family homes in the city's core, eliciting fears that those gains could be eroding.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-santaana21-2008aug21,0,2476710,f...

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4.
Immigration debate heats up at Maricopa County board meeting
The KNXV News (Phoenix), August 21, 2008

The immigration debate intensified at Wednesday's Maricopa County Board of Supervisor's meeting Wednesday.

Several members of the activist group Maricopa County Citizens for Safety and Accountability appeared at the meeting to voice their frustrations with MCSO's fight against undocumented immigration.

Activists used time set aside for public comments to admonish Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his crime suppression sweeps as they did at board meetings in June and July.

Randy Parraz, a co-founder of the group, cited a six-month investigation by the East Valley Tribune that was published in July.

The Tribune's report found that MCSO's response times to regular law enforcement work had slowed down and arrests had declined during the undocumented immigration enforcement operations during the past two years.
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http://www.abc15.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=b0e680ae-61ee-406f...

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5.
Among Chinese-Americans, a Split on Sports
By Kirk Semple
The New York Times, August 21, 2008

When Patty Law was growing up in Chinatown after immigrating from Hong Kong, sports were not even remotely part of her family’s vocabulary. She was a natural athlete, but the only extracurricular activity she knew as a child in Manhattan was manual labor. Every day after school, and all day on weekends, she joined her mother at a sweatshop, hunched over a sewing machine hemming trousers until well past nightfall.

“My parents didn’t believe in letting us play sports,” she said.

At the same time in another Chinese-American home in New York, Ms. Law’s future husband experienced a different relationship with sports. The son of a first-generation Chinese immigrant father, who was a well-known shop owner in Chinatown, and a second-generation Chinese-American mother from California, Tom Law was allowed to pursue his passion for basketball and joined any playground pickup game he could find.

“I grew up running around New York City,” said Mr. Law, 46, who was a starter on his high school varsity basketball team.

Together, the Laws now run basketball organizations that serve Chinese-American girls and boys in Manhattan, an activity that consumes much of their free time.

The Laws’ childhood experiences reflect two prevailing and divergent views among Chinese-Americans regarding the role of sports in a child’s upbringing. Sports, of course, has become a daily topic of conversation in the Chinese-American community as the Summer Olympics showcase China and its extraordinarily deep athletic talent, which has the nation leading in the race for gold medals.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/sports/olympics/21play.html