Anti-illegal immigration display draws shrugs at Elgin college

Dean Knopse of Crystal Lake was killed in 2006 while riding the motorcycle he bought as a retirement gift to himself.

The accused drunken driver who slammed into Knopse's motorcycle already had been deported three times, each time sneaking back over the border.

Crystal Lake resident Peter Ropinski honored his friend's memory Thursday by visiting a display at Elgin Community College featuring 25 pairs of empty shoes, meant to represent 25 young adults killed in crimes committed by illegal immigrants.

"Dean worked all his life to retire. He had bought a motorcycle and wanted to tour the country," Ropinski said. "That guy came right back into the country and no one did anything about it."

Ropinski's anger was just the type of response Doug Heaton, co-founder of Elgin-based Association for Legal Americans, was trying to provoke when he conceived of the "Empty Shoes, Empty Hearts" display.

In addition to the empty shoes, the display included photos of the crime scenes and victims and descriptions of the fatal crimes, which ranged from vehicular manslaughter to homicide.

Heaton said his goal was not to demonize immigrants -- illegal or otherwise -- but to raise awareness about a broken enforcement system that allowed these crimes to occur.

"The whole thing is not aimed at the perpetrators but at the system," Heaton said. "We think the government has failed us on several levels. We pay them and give them the authority to protect us."

Heaton called for local governments to follow the lead of Elgin, which now checks all foreign-born defendants booked at the jail against the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement Agency database.

Heaton also called for the expansion of the federal Criminal Alien Program, which identifies and removes criminal immigrants in federal, state and local detention centers.

Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs, said the federal government already has stepped up efforts to track and remove immigrants who commit crimes.

In 2007, ICE tagged 160,000 criminal immigrants for deportation -- 100,000 more than the previous year, Montenegro said.

The agency's 2008 budget includes $240 million to expand efforts to identify and remove criminal immigrants, Montenegro said, and the agency expects to identify another 200,000 criminal immigrants for deportation this year.

At ECC Thursday, a steady, but small, stream of students stopped to gaze at the display of empty shoes. Their response was generally muted.

"It's weird. It's not something I'd expect," said Tammera Serawite of Elgin. "It's not as if illegals are the only ones killing people. I just thought it was odd."

Many students ignored the display altogether as they chatted, lunched and finished class assignments near the empty shoes.

Elgin Community College faculty also took a detached approach. A few considered -- but decided against -- protesting the display.

The display did, however, spark strong emotions among immigrant-rights activists.

"The display is taking advantage of families' grief to make cheap political points," said Joshua Hoyt, director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Hoyt cited a study by the Immigration Policy Center, a division of the American Immigration Law Center, that showed immigrants are five times less likely than the native-born to be in prison.

"This tactic of saying that this immigrant group is all criminal is as old as America," Hoyt said. "It was done to the Irish, done to the Chinese, done to the Italians and now it's being done to Mexicans."