MILTON, Fla. — Three months after the local police inspected more than a dozen businesses searching for illegal immigrants using stolen Social Security numbers, this community in the Florida Panhandle has become more law-abiding, emptier and whiter. Many of the Hispanic immigrants who came in 2004 to help rebuild after Hurricane Ivan have either fled or gone into hiding. Churches with services in Spanish are half-empty. Businesses are struggling to find workers. And for Hispanic citizens with roots here - the foremen and entrepreneurs who received visits from the police - the losses are especially profound. ‘It was very hard because the community is very small, and to see people who came to eat here all the time then come and close the business,’ said Geronimo Barragan, who owns two branches of La Hacienda, Mexican restaurants where the police arrested 10 employees. ‘I don’t blame them,’ Mr. Barragan added. ‘It’s just that it hurts.’ Sheriff Wendell Hall of Santa Rosa County, who led the effort, said the arrests were for violations of state identity theft laws. But he also seemed proud to have found a way around rules allowing only the federal government to enforce immigration […]