CHICAGO -- As they rode through immigrant neighborhoods of Lake County, Illinois, serving arrest warrants, Sheriff's Deputy John Van Dien and three fellow officers were repeatedly confronted by a public relations problem nagging local law enforcement agencies nationwide.
They weren't hunting for illegal immigrants, but at nearly every stop, local residents seemed to think they were.
In Mundelein, neighbors watched the burly officers take a handcuffed Mexican immigrant away from his startled children in a scene that resembled thousands of family separations caused by immigration raids. But this was the case of a legal U.S. resident who had skipped court on drunken driving charges...
