Federal agents sweep into trailer park

A large group of Mexican men and one woman were rounded up and lined up along Highway 89A on Thursday, Nov. 20, as the Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement swept through Windsong Trailer Park serving warrants.
According to Vincent Pickard, public information officer for ICE, the Fugitive Operations Team was serving administrative warrants to illegal aliens who have already gone before a judge and were told to leave the country.
The warrants at Windsong were for people who were already told to leave the country and haven’t left or left and then came back, Pickard said.
All the people arrested that day don’t live at Windsong, the mobile park’s manager Andrea Curry said.
Three or four of the arrested live at Windsong, Curry said, but most of the others live on the outskirts of Sedona, and wait for work in front of Windsong.
Curry has posted signs and told the men not to sit on the property, but she said she was told by the Sedona Police Department there is nothing she can do about it if they are outside the fence.
Of the 18 occupied trailers at Windsong, Curry said there may be some illegals that live there, but most of the occupants have papers and were working the day of the arrests.
There are over 100 Fugitive Operations teams across the nation, Pickard said, that often work together with local law enforcement agencies.
ICE worked with Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday, Nov. 20, to serve YCSO’s criminal warrants along with the administrative warrants.
“We work on this year-round throughout the state,” Pickard said. “It takes time to gather intelligence and trying to find out where they might be.”
Illegals at Windsong that day who didn’t have a warrant for their arrest were arrested too, according to Pickard.
“The mission of ICE is to remove illegal aliens,” he said. “Any time immigration enforcement encounters an illegal we’ll arrest them and put them in the system.”
Pickard didn’t have the total number of arrests made Thursday, Nov. 20, by press time.

Alison Ecklund can be reached at 282-7795, ext. 125, or e-mail aecklund@larsonnewspapers.com