Crackdown on immigrants empties a town and hardens views

[superconnected]

STILLMORE, GA. - As Department of Homeland Security agents in black SUVs tooled up and down the dirt avenues of Stillmore, Ga., hundreds of undocumented people scattered into the woods like "flushed quail," one witness said.

Many of those who weren't arrested fled, some to Kentucky. One family hid for two nights in a tree. As night sets now, a sprinkling of solitary lights glow from once-crowded trailer parks. Since the Labor Day raid, Stillmore, where the wishful sign at the city limit reads "A town that is still growing," has shrunk by at least a third after more than 120 people were arrested and perhaps as many as 300 others disappeared.

"It's a ghost town," says resident Bennett Byrd.

As federal, state, and local officials crack down on illegal immigrants across the country, attitudes continue to harden among those who want them to stay and those who want them to go. In places like Stillmore, Ga., Arkadelphia, Ark., and Charlotte, N.C., raids and crackdowns have uncorked a phenomenon for those left behind: a sense of moral confusion about mass roundups and midnight raids.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20061003/ts_csm/aghosttown