Forgive me if I don't give a rat's hindquarters about the worry, concern, and anxiety caused to illegal immigrants by the fact that ICE is starting to take its mandate to handle immigration matters seriously.

Cook Rosa Maria Salazar's eyes dart anxiously to the door as customers file into the Salvadoran cafe in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles.

"We're terrified. The police could come for us at any time and deport us," she said in Spanish earlier this week as diners fingered maize tortillas stuffed with beans and pork scratchings and chatted softly.

The 55-year-old undocumented worker from Guatemala is among many Hispanics deeply shaken by recent immigration raids at the heart of Latino communities in southern California.

The-seven day Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweep, dubbed "Operation Return to Sender," targeted jails across five counties in the Los Angeles area, where police took 423 of what they called "criminal aliens" into federal custody for deportation, after being held on charges unrelated to their immigration status.

Federal agents from seven teams also fanned out in local communities, where they nabbed 338 undocumented immigrants, more than 150 of whom were classed as "immigration fugitives" -- foreign nationals who ignored final deportation orders.

The raid was the latest in a series of get-tough enforcement measures by ICE in the United States, but the largest action of its kind in California, where more than a third of the population is Hispanic.

"We hadn't seen anything like this here before, and it came as a shock," said Antonio Bernabe, a community worker who runs a day labor program at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

"The police didn't just take people with deportation orders, they took anybody ... guys who were just hanging out in the street and even from a Jack in the Box restaurant ... and now people are afraid to go out," he added.

Fear is precisely what these folks ought to be feeling following the latest round of immigration raids. Indeed, every single border-jumping immigration criminal ought to live in constant terror of deportation. That isn't hatred or bigotry talking -- that is respect for the rule of law.

Indeed, my only objection is that there are at least 12 million more of these folks at large, violating American law with every breath they take on our nation's soil -- and that they are not yet frightened enough to get the hell out of the US in order to re-enter in a legal manner, at which point I will gladly welcome them with open arms.

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