More suspected illegals, coyotes found at Phoenix drop house

Several suspected illegal immigrants are in custody after a drop-house bust in the West Valley.

Police said it was one of the suspected illegals who led them to the house at 75th Avenue and Indian School Road.

Officers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided the home Monday night. They discovered six suspected illegal immigrants, including one child.

Those people were being held against their will in exchange for money. None of them was hurt.

Investigators said somebody inside the house tipped them off when he called his sister Monday morning and told her that he was being for ransom. Police were able to track the call to the home.

Three alleged coyotes were also taken into custody.

9 illegal immigrants dead, 10 illegal immigrants injured in single-vehicle rollover

9 illegal immigrants were killed and 10 more illegal immigrants were hurt in a single-vehicle rollover on the highway outside of Florence.

It happened Thursday morning on State Route 79 north of Tom Mix Monument, which is about 17 miles south of Florence. The first call came in about 8:30 a.m.

According to DPS, a 1998 GMC SUV carrying a total of 19 illegal immigrants rolled over on the right side of the road at about milepost 117, 15 miles south of Florence.

DPS said the SUV was traveling north on SR 79 at a high rate of speed when the driver lost control. The vehicle went off the road and into a wash. The SUV flipped, coming to rest on its roof.

Nine illegal immigrants were confirmed dead on the scene. The medical examiner is en route. The 10 injured illegal immigrants were flown to Tucson Medical Center, as well as Good Samaritan Hospital and Maricopa County Medical Center in Phoenix. Most of the passengers had to be extricated from the vehicle.

DPS confirmed that the occupants of the SUV were illegal immigrants. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are on the scene, working with DPS. It's not known at this point if any coyotes were among the dead.

While the SUV was apparently going quite fast, it was not being chased at the time of the wreck. The highway is open in both directions, but travel is limited.

Phoenix Mayor Gordon Falsely Accuses Joe Arpaio's Office of Racial Profiling

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in December that a Phoenix city employee's husband was issued a ticket for off-roading in a restricted area and she threw out the 'race card' at first - but later retracted it.

A few months ago, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon accused Sheriff Joe Arpaio of racial profiling in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

In the letter, the mayor claimed that race was behind a stop and citation against a Hispanic city employee. After an investigation, Sheriff Arpaio found Gordon's claim to be false.

Arpaio called into the J.D. Hayworth show, on KFYI AM550, and said that Mayor Gordon didn't have his facts straight. During the investigation, the city employee apologized and said she wasn't racially profiled.

Earlier this week in Washington, Gordon asked the national news media to look closely at Arpaio's methods for his "crime suppression sweeps" that target illegal immigrants. At a news conference on Wednesday, Gordon repeated his request to Arpaio to cooperate with local police agencies when he does the sweeps. Gordon also insisted that it's not a personal feud with Arpaio, but rather a feeling that Arpaio is not following professional police procedures.

"Operation Scheduled Departure"

Phoenix Joins "Operation Scheduled Departure"

The Bush administration is inviting people who have ignored orders to leave the country to surrender at immigration offices and leave voluntarily, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said Wednesday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is launching "Operation Scheduled Departure" on Aug. 5 in the cities of Santa Ana, Calif.; San Diego; Phoenix; Chicago and Charlotte, N.C., said spokeswoman Cori Bassett. The program will end Aug. 22.

People who have been ordered to leave the country but remain in the U.S. and have not committed a crime can participate, Bassett said.

"Those folks will be able to walk into an ICE office and say I'm here and I want to go home," Bassett said. They will not be jailed as most people are who are arrested because they are believed to be in the country illegally, she said. They will not be required to wear tracking devices, she said.

Jim Hayes, the acting ICE detention and removal director, said some 572,000 people in the country have final deportation orders but have not committed a crime.

Bassett said the people who take advantage of the program will get up to 90 days to pull together money to pay for family members to return home with them, attend to older parents or take care of any other arrangements.

Hayes said people with deportation orders who have previously surrendered to ICE usually need a month to 40 days to square away family affairs.

ICE Director Julie Myers first announced the program on an Univision Sunday news program, but did not provide full details.

Myers' comments were translated into Spanish. In the translated interview on the Univision Web site, she said the program would be an organized way for people to self deport, especially if immigrants fear ICE might come to their home or show up at their workplace.

She said people could show up to ICE offices with passports and documents.

Hayes said the idea came from advocates who have said people would show up if given the chance to surrender. "We hope the advocacy groups back up what they told us," he said.

But the idea was quickly criticized. Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigration advocacy group America's Voice, said it was not a serious proposal, reminiscent of a "Saturday Night Live" sketch.

"The idea that millions of people are going to knock on the government's door and ask to be deported is pure fantasy. This is not a solution; this is mass deportation on the cheap, and it just won't work."

Hayes said ICE has 104 "fugitive alien" teams that are highly successful.

ICE has been conducting work and home raids to track down people it believes are in the country illegally. Those raids have drawn praise from anti-immigration backers and criticism from immigration advocates.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff promised to step up immigration enforcement after Congress failed to pass an immigration reform bill last year.

Hayes denied that the voluntary departure program was designed to increase the numbers of immigrants removed from the country or as a political move in the midst of the presidential election where immigration remains a volatile issue.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus separately called on President Bush to end the ICE raids after hearing stories from children and families in Postville, Iowa, where the agency carried out one of the largest raids in U.S. history at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plan.

"We need to end these raids. These raids do absolutely no good," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus planned to meet Thursday to come up with strategies on how to respond to the Iowa raid.

"It's not ICE's job to write the immigration laws," said Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., who chairs the caucus.

Also this week, New Life Covenant and others will gather a truckload of toiletries, disposable diapers and food. The group will drive the truck to Postville, pitch tents in the town Friday and distribute its goods to families of the detained immigrants, Gutierrez said.

Associated Press Writer Anabelle Garay in Dallas contributed to this report.

On the Net: Immigration and Customs Enforcement: http://www.ice.gov

50 people taken into custody at a West Phoenix drop house

More drop house news!

Phoenix Police spent most of the morning on the scene of an apparent drop house in West Phoenix Tuesday morning. Dozens of suspected illegals are now in custody.

At least 50 people, which 15 to 20 of them were women and children, were found inside the home at 56th and Virginia avenues.

A neighbor who noticed that something wasn't right called 911. That neighbor reportedly saw a van dropping people off and spotted at least one person running through the neighborhood. That person turned out to be a suspected coyote.

A police spokesman on the scene said officers have taken dozens of illegal immigrants into custody, as well as the people responsible for bringing them into the country. Those people were turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

It's not clear how long the people had been living in the house, but the conditions inside were not good.