Three years ago, as the debate over immigration policy raged nationally, it raged in Escondido, too. In 2006, the City Council passed a rental ordinance prohibiting landlords from renting to illegal immigrants. The Police Department increased its use of traffic checkpoints targeting unlicensed drivers in an effort, the new police chief said, to address the city's high rate of hit-and-run accidents, although critics complained it was another measure aimed at undocumented immigrants. Read More »