Fear, Hate and Hand Grenades: Extremists' Unrelenting Assault on Immigrants

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/67031/

It was a May afternoon in Washington's meridian Hill Park. Forty-year-old Ricardo Juarez Nava was at a rally in support of immigrants when he saw a neatly dressed man approaching the group. As it turned out, the man, Tyler J. Froatz Jr., was protesting the rally and had brought along an anti-immigration flyer (a crudely drawn illustration of border officers firing on an immigrant with the caption, "THE ONLY WAY TO STOP A FLOOD ..."), and a back- pack with a claw hammer, a Taser, and pepper spray inside. Froatz, who is 24 and a New Jersey native, also had a fully automatic M1 carbine rifle in the trunk of his car.

"He was pushing and trying to fight with me. He had a knife here," Juarez says, gesturing toward a front pocket in his jeans as he describes Froatz's efforts to disrupt the pro-immigration rally, which had been organized by a local group Juarez founded called Mexicans Without Borders. After Froatz's arrest, police discovered a hand grenade, a Molotov cocktail, and 1,000 rounds of ammunition in his Northwest Washington apartment.

On the afternoon of our September interview, four months after the assault, Juarez is sitting in a bookstore in Woodbridge, Virginia, sipping coffee. One of 12 children, Juarez was raised in Mexico by his widowed mother, who did laundry and sold firewood to support the family. He attended Mexico City's School of Sciences and Humanities and came to the United States in April 1995, where he found work in construction. In 2002 he founded Mexicans Without Borders to provide legal advice, counseling, and other kinds of support for immigrants in the Mid-Atlantic region.

For Juarez, it has been a rocky summer. In July, members of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors took aggressive steps against undocumented immigrants in Woodbridge and other cities in the county where Juarez lives. The July 10 county resolution passed by the Prince William Board recommended restricting such public services as access to senior centers for undocumented residents. The still more controversial aspect of the resolution instructs police to check into the immigration status of suspected illegals who have been detained -- even for minor traffic violations; previously, police had checked on the immigration status only of those accused of violent crimes.

[Maestro]

1. This is happening all across the country

and unfortunately I do not see it stopping any sooner. We have huge problems in this country, very little of which is caused by undocumented workers, but the government needs to deflect attention away from its own mismanagment.

[NNN0LHI]

2. And too many people including some Dems will jump right on the bandwagon too

Just like they jumped on board when Reagan said all our problems were due to people driving Cadillacs on welfare.

I hope it is because of ignorance or short memories but sometimes I wonder.

Don

[Maestro]

3. I have seen that too.

It's unfortunate. Here is a recent thread of mine related to the subject