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Correos Aztlan
4357 Slauson Avenue
Maywood, Alta California
August 26, 2006

Mayood has been declared an immigrant "Sanctuary City" by a Mexican-American city council. On Saturday August 26, 2006 a small group of Whites decided to travel to the city to protest and were shocked to see a Mexican flag flying at the Maywood post office.

In Maywood it was just about three years ago that Police Chief Bruce Leflar and his cops would routinely set up rush-hour roadblocks on the city's two main boulevards to check every driver's paperwork. His primary targets were Mexican undocumented immigrants driving without valid licenses

The Maywood police dragnets enabled the city to impound the immigrant's vehicles and then auction them off after 30 days. Police Chief Leflar bragged that in one year his cops had confiscated over 1,800 vehicles and had made about $1, 000,000 dollars for the City of Maywood from their share of the vehicle auctions, fees and fines.

Maywood, a city with about 28,300 inhabitants, was founded in 1912 and up to about 1970 it was almost an exclusively "White Oakie" working class community. The demographics of the city started changing dramatically about twenty years ago and today its population is 96.3% Latino (mostly Mexican) and only about 2.6% White. The 2.6% White population or about 739 people are mostly old folks who live in the city's rest homes.

Soon after the Los Angeles Times ran a story concerning the abuses of Maywood Police Chief Lefler, the Mexicano community started to organized politically and last November it elected three new councilmembers of Mexican descent. The new council wasted no time in making changes in how Maywood treated its immigrants. On Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously to declare Maywood, an "Immigrant Sanctuary".

Felipe Aguirre, the newly elected Vice-Mayor of Maywood, said in Spanish, “Estamos creando un santuario para los inmigrantes, queremos que vengan. Si en otras partes los atacan, como en Costa Mesa y Cypress Park, queremos decirles que aquí pueden sentirse seguros”. Vice-Mayor Aguirre also pronounced the city's unanimity against HR4437, federal legislation that seeks to criminalize undocumented immigrants.