Foxnews.com
By Matt Hayes
In a series of sweeps in southern California over the course of a few weeks in June, a dozen agents of the Border Patrol arrested more than 420 illegal aliens and placed them in deportation proceedings.
Americans enthusiastically supported the sweeps, as any public opinion poll would have predicted, but Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., and Mexican President Vicente Fox were outraged.
At a Chicago rally for Mexicans living in the United States — now about 10 percent of his nation’s entire population — Fox promised that his government would not permit violations of the human and labor rights of Mexicans living in the United States. "We will stand beside every Mexican woman and man in this country,” Fox told the crowd. “We will defend them against the raids being carried out in the state of California."
Baca, a member of the Hispanic caucus, said in a press release, "I am doing everything I can to make sure that sweeps like the ones last week do not happen again. I will not stop until this situation has been resolved."
During a June 25 meeting with Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson, Baca and other members of the Hispanic caucus accused the Border Patrol agents of racial profiling.
In response to the charges, Hutchinson’s office appeared to collapse. Describing the Border Patrol officers involved in the sweeps as a renegade unit that had taken it upon itself to enforce the law without having first obtained the permission of officials in Washington, the DHS, in an all-too-familiar pattern, ordered the sweeps halted.