Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

11/10/99 News Report -- San Antonio Express-News

BOERNE, TX -- Local police, aided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service,
arrested 38 undocumented immigrants in Kendall County on Tuesday, including
nearly 20 residents of the trailer park where a sheriff's deputy was killed
Oct. 2.

Hundreds of cars were stopped by Kendall County sheriff's deputies at
roadblocks on Cascade Caverns Road from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. Tuesday. Motorists
and passengers without proper documentation were referred to INS officers
on the scene for questioning.

Authorities said the crackdown was prompted by complaints from nearby
residents about dangerous traffic and the presence of undocumented workers
at a nearby construction site.

But some at the Shady Rest Mobile Home Park saw the arrests as retribution
for the fatal shooting of Lt. Larry S. Kolb by a fellow resident, Jose Gil
Ramos, whom police killed after he attacked Kolb.

"One person messed up, and all of the other people are paying for it right
now," said resident Maria Matamoros, 35.

She and several other residents said Wednesday that police swept into the
trailer park at dawn, knocking on several doors and apprehending many
residents.

"Immigration came in here and went in homes and took people out," said
Celia Moreno, 20. "They went around the whole place knocking on doors. They
even came knocking on my door."

But Tom Homan, INS assistant district director for investigations in San
Antonio, said his officers only entered the park to accompany detainees
arrested at the roadblock who wanted to retrieve belongings from their
trailers.

Three more undocumented immigrants encountered inside the park were
apprehended as the officers accompanied the detainees to their homes, he said.

"The only trailers my agents should have gone to are ones where they had
arrested someone and were going back to retrieve articles," Homan said
Wednesday.

Mexicans accounted for nearly all of the detainees, officials said, and
they had been deported by Wednesday. Several Hondurans and Guatemalans
awaited deportation Wednesday.

Homan confirmed that one of those arrested resided at the former home of
Ramos, where Kolb was shot.

INS spokesman Ray Dudley said Kendall County Sheriff Henry Hodge initiated
the roadblocks on both sides of the trailer park entrance and asked the INS
to assist.

"His deputies had been stopping a large number of construction vehicles for
traffic violations, in many cases with 12 guys in the back," Dudley said.
"A large number of the people they were stopping had no license, no
insurance, and a lot of the people aboard those vehicles had no
identification of any kind."

Hodge could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

Duke Key, chief deputy at the sheriff's department, said Kolb's shooting
was not related to the crackdown.

"There's been a lot of problems with illegal aliens for a while in that
area," Key said.

Several of those apprehended Tuesday had been working on the construction
of two new Boerne schools at the corner of Cascade Caverns Road and Old San
Antonio Road, he said.