Chicago Tribune: Muslim exodus from U.S. unravels tightknit enclaves:
"On the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Shakeel Ahmed loaded his wife and five children into the family's green 1994 Mercury mini-van, their years in America reduced to a pair of cardboard boxes stuffed with children's clothes.

The rest they left behind: a television, furniture, pots and pans, blankets and pillows. Ahmed figured he had little time to waste because word had spread through the sweet shops and mosques around Devon Avenue, the heart of Chicago's South Asian community, that the federal government was deporting illegal immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries.

As he drove down Devon for the last time, Ahmed's thoughts turned to a cabdriver friend who had left with his family just two days before. Another companion they'd played cricket with in Washington Park had left months earlier.

Now it was his turn."

"I never cry in my life," he said. "The day I left Chicago, tears came out of my eyes."

And so the Ahmeds joined the vanguard of those fleeing America, not only from Devon but from Warren Road in Dearborn, Mich., Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn and the other main streets of America's Muslim and Arab enclaves.

Federal officials saw this as a bonus: immigration enforcement, free of charge to U.S. taxpayers.…

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0311180129nov18,1,7516113,print.story?coll=chi-homepagenews-utl