Federal authorities are seeing an increase in the number of  foreclosed and unoccupied homes in metro Atlanta being seized by members of an anti-government group.

"I'm not sure I can connect it with the economy, but we've seen a surge of these in the last year, in particular," Stephen Emmett, special agent in the Atlanta field office of the FBI, said Saturday.  Emmet said federal and local authorities increasingly are running into confrontations with members of a sect known as "sovereign citizens."

"They're expanding throughout the Metro Atlanta area," Emmett said. "DeKalb has had their fair share of problems with them and now Clayton."

On Friday, Clayton County SWAT was called to a foreclosed home near Riverdale  where a couple had been living illegally. SWAT members surrounded the house after getting reports the people inside had threatened violece against anyone who approached the house.   Gideon Israel and his wife, Deborah, had been living illegally in the bank-owned, gray stucco house on Stimson way near Riverdale in the northwest part of Clayton County for a while  and had submitted reams of fraudulent paperwork to county officials to try to block the eviction, according to Major Jeff Mitchell, who heads the enforcement division for the Clayton County Sheriff's Office.

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