President Reagan gave AMNESTY to END THE INFLUX OF ILLEGALS ONCE AND FOR ALL, why do we need another one? Because the Mexicans, Philipinos, Middle Easterns, Africans, Russians know that Americans are weak, they want to look good to the rest of the world, so it was only a matter of time before another Amnesty would come along. NO TO A NEW AMNESTY!!! Stop hiring illegals!!! This scum make a mockery of our country and laws.
to Rambo and every damm illegal alien in the U.S. GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!! Your own countries are supposed to support you, THEY have an OBLIGATION with you, not us, when will you get it thru your sick skulls. We have MILLIONS of people who SHOULD BE DOING the work illegals do, i.e. every able body on Welfare, anybody who is in jail for minor offenses, enough of the b.s. especially from muslims and mexicans, beware of them!!!
The federal government has agreements with 14 law enforcement agencies to deputize their employees as immigration officers:
"¢ Alabama Department of Public Safety/State Police "¢ Arizona Department of Corrections "¢ Florida Department of Law Enforcement "¢ Herndon, Va., Police Department
Sheriff's departments
"¢ Maricopa County, Ariz. "¢ Los Angeles County, Calif. "¢ Orange County, Calif. "¢ Riverside County, Calif. "¢ San Bernardino County, Calif. "¢ Cobb County, Ga. "¢ Alamance County, N.C. "¢ Gaston County, N.C. "¢ Mecklenburg County, N.C. "¢ Davidson County, Tenn.
Local police confront illegals Agencies turn to feds for training By Oren Dorell and William M. Welch USA TODAY More than 60 law enforcement agencies across the country are teaming up with the federal government to have the power to arrest illegal immigrants, a move that could add hundreds of new officers to the effort. At least 14 police and sheriff's departments have already received training from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
IN BALTIMORE: Dozens arrested in immigration raid
Many of the 50 new departments looking into training are from smaller cities and suburbs that have seen a wave of illegal immigrants looking for work.
"It's something that is expanding," says Marcy Forman, director of ICE's office of investigations. "It's certainly been a success."
Forman says the training will expand enforcement of federal immigration laws well beyond the 5,600 special agents with ICE.
Some major cities have spurned the federal government's offer, saying their officers don't have time to look for illegal immigrants and worry about the effect, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
Some communities want only the authority to check the status of prisoners who can then be handed over for possible deportation. Others want their police to check the status of people suspected of crimes or even traffic violations.
In Arizona, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office this week is graduating the first of 100 patrol deputies and 60 detention officers scheduled to get the training "” the biggest group yet.
"The people of Maricopa County want me to do something," Sheriff Joe Arpaio says. "They want me to lock up illegals."
In Southern California, two counties using ICE training to screen inmates in their jails report finding large numbers who appear to be in the country illegally.
During the first three months of this year, Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore says 1,422 prisoners were held over for federal immigration authorities "” more than half the 2,685 foreign nationals who were screened in the county's jails.
"The real reason for my request is so we can pursue people who are violating federal law as far as hiring practices," says Mayor Donald Cresitello of Morristown, N.J., which wants training for 10 of its 60 officers.
Morristown, where an estimated 1,500 illegal immigrants live among 19,000 residents, is looking for ways to deal with day labor sites that have become a nuisance, Cresitello says.
Morristown Police Chief Peter Demnitz has concerns. Victims of crime and witnesses who are illegal immigrants might not cooperate with police, he says.
"Morristown is very diverse," Demnitz says. "We have forged relationships, and I am concerned that this will have an impact on our relationships."
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Armenio Pablo-Calmo says he and other workers were paid less than minimum wage.
IMMIGRATION DEBATE Guest Workers Sue Companies Over Wages By Laura Parker, USA TODAY
Armenio Pablo-Calmo, a Guatemalan national, spent six winters as a tree planter in the pine forests of the South as part of a guest worker program that is required under federal law to pay him the prevailing wage for such jobs. That ranges from $6.32 an hour in North Carolina to $9.20 an hour in Alabama, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Pablo-Calmo says he and his co-workers were paid less than the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, were not paid overtime and often were required to pay for their own tools, visas and travel costs. So last year, they sued Eller and Sons Trees, their employer, for back wages and reimbursement of out-of-pocket costs.
A federal judge recently classified the case as a class-action lawsuit, so it now involves about 6,000 tree planters. It is drawing national attention as one of several legal challenges to the H2-B visa program, which admits 66,000 foreigners into the USA each year to do temporary manual labor. As President Bush has proposed tripling the number of such visas issued each year, the H2-B program has come under criticism from the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups that say it has been used by employers to exploit guest workers.
The center, which filed the lawsuit involving Pablo-Calmo, also has sued three other forestry companies as well as a hotel chain on behalf of foreigners who have worked at 15 hotels in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. One of the forestry suits was settled in September, when Idaho-based Alpha Services agreed to pay a group of Latino workers an undisclosed sum for back pay and travel costs, according to court papers.
"We hope this has a huge impact and other employers see they cannot just choose to hire guest workers and then abuse them with no consequences," says Mary Bauer, an attorney at the law center.
Organized labor has long opposed the H2-B program and other guest worker initiatives, arguing that they are used to abuse immigrants and undermine wages for U.S. citizens. Eller and Sons and other employers targeted in the lawsuits reject the notion of any abuse and say such programs help fill jobs most Americans won't do.
Larry Stine, an Atlanta lawyer who represents the four forestry companies, says that the claims in the lawsuits are "overblown" and that the workers are overstating their hours on the job.
"This is not a case about people being exploited," he says.
The Ellers suit also accuses the firm's recruiters in Guatemala of requiring laborers to hand over deeds to their property to get jobs in the USA. Stine says that Ellers was unaware of the practice until the lawsuit was filed and that it has been stopped. He says workers were asked to leave deeds with recruiters temporarily to try to ensure the workers would return to Guatemala after the planting season.
Originally posted by SICKOFILLEGALS: President Reagan gave AMNESTY to END THE INFLUX OF ILLEGALS ONCE AND FOR ALL, why do we need another one? Because the Mexicans, Philipinos, Middle Easterns, Africans, Russians know that Americans are weak, they want to look good to the rest of the world, so it was only a matter of time before another Amnesty would come along. NO TO A NEW AMNESTY!!! Stop hiring illegals!!! This scum make a mockery of our country and laws.
... and your posts make a mockery of this forum.
"The letter of the law is a sword that killeth; its intent is a spirit that giveth life." (Justice Holmes on II Cor 3:6)
Originally posted by SICKOFILLEGALS: President Reagan gave AMNESTY to END THE INFLUX OF ILLEGALS ONCE AND FOR ALL, why do we need another one? Because the Mexicans, Philipinos, Middle Easterns, Africans, Russians know that Americans are weak, they want to look good to the rest of the world, so it was only a matter of time before another Amnesty would come along. NO TO A NEW AMNESTY!!! Stop hiring illegals!!! This scum make a mockery of our country and laws.
Day Laborer's Hiring Site NY Times 04/02/07 To the Editor: Re"In Defense of Day Laborers" (editorial, March 28): One of the obligations of an honorable lawmaker is to respect the law as it stands, whether or not he or she agrees with it. And like it or not, it is against federal law to hire illegal immigrants. When a local legislature establishes a hiring site, it is with the foreknowledge that every day, day after day, most of the transactions that take place at that site will be federal crimes. This is simply imporoper, whatever your feelings about illegal immigration. John Brock Staten Island, March 28, 2007
Editorial Observer NY Times After an Anti-Immigrant Flare-Up, Texas Gets Back to Business
By LAWRENCE DOWNES Published: April 2, 2007 Austin, Tex.
Everybody said that the nation's anti-immigrant fever was going to spread to Texas this year.
State lawmakers entered the new legislative session with dozens of bills whose anti-immigrant passions ranged from warm to extra hot. They wanted to tax money transfers to Latin America and to sue the federal government for money spent on border enforcement. One even fired a broadside at the 14th Amendment, seeking to deny the benefits of citizenship to Texas-born children of illegal immigrants. Their goal seemed to be to make immigrants' lives as miserable as possible, and to howl at Washington for not fixing the mess.
Meanwhile, an energetic cohort of grass-roots advocates and legislators, Latino and otherwise, stood ready to challenge the hard-liners at every step. A bonfire loomed.
But last week something strange and encouraging happened. The Legislature took a big step back from the immigration fight, as an unusual alliance rose up in support of humane, sensible reform.
The powerful Republican chairman of the State Affairs Committee, David Swinford, declared that most of the immigration bills were constitutionally flawed, needlessly divisive and a waste of time, so he was not going to let them come to the floor. Some members were left spluttering "” "Everything we do here is divisive," said Representative Leo Berman, author of the birthright citizenship challenge and other harsh bills. But that was all he could do.
Mr. Berman, an affable Republican from East Texas, says that Mexico is the world's most corrupt country and that its citizens are infecting us with their law-breaking culture and with tuberculosis and leprosy. He has many friends in the Capitol, which is nobody's idea of an immigrant-amnesty zone.
But the convictions gripping him have been eclipsed by something deeper in the Texas soul.
That would be business.
Mr. Swinford said he had consulted the state attorney general and concluded that most of the immigration bills would not survive court scrutiny. Never mind that some sponsors were well aware of their bills' technical flaws and were itching to attract lawsuits anyway. Mr. Swinford clearly had no appetite for crusading or grandstanding, and decisively put a lid on things.
"We've got business to do," he told me. "We can't be fighting and get our business done."
He was talking about efficiency. But his words could have been taken from the mouths of the powerful Texas Republicans who have entered the debate squarely on the side of comprehensive reform "” that blend of border toughness and pro-immigrant fairness that Republicans elsewhere deride as "amnesty."
The story dates to last year. It has to do, as Megan Headley wrote in The Texas Observer, with pro-business Republicans realizing that anti-immigrant fervor "threatened to purge Texas of the workers that pluck chickens, build houses, and make some people very rich."
Their attention was grabbed last April, when a Democratic representative, Rafael Anchia, tacked a provocative amendment onto a bill raising business taxes to finance property-tax relief. It would have forbidden employers to cut their taxes by deducting wages of illegal workers.
Mr. Anchia wanted to send the message that any crackdown on illegal immigrants would be met, blow for blow, with bills going after their employers.
That got Mr. Anchia a visit from Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business, one of the state's most powerful lobby groups. An alliance was born.
Mr. Hammond is now standing beside the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Council of La Raza and the Equal Justice Center as a member of Texas Residents United for a Stronger Texas, or Trust.
The group recently sent the Legislature and governor a 15-point statement of principles on immigration reform. It urges economic development in Texas and in Latin America. It argues for cultural diversity, bilingual education and in-state tuition for illegal immigrant children. And it denounces enforcement bills of the sort piled up by the dozen in Austin.
Mr. Swinford represents an agricultural district with a lot to lose from attacks on immigrant labor. (It's home to a Swift meat plant recently raided by federal agents.) But he insists he did not stifle any bills at the behest of big business.
Maybe not, but he has certainly made it happy. The same week that Mr. Swinford announced that the problematic bills in his committee would die there, like the hoof-and-mouth cattle slaughtered in "Hud," Mr. Hammond stood with Mr. Anchia on the Capitol steps to unveil an ad campaign urging Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship.
The ads were created by another new alliance, Texas Employers for Immigration Reform, which includes the Texas Association of Business and executives like Bo Pilgrim, the Pilgrim's Pride chicken magnate. Its Web site, www.txeir.org, makes some of the staunchest arguments for comprehensive immigration reform you'll ever hear from rich Republican donors and power players.
This Texas pragmatism has not taken hold elsewhere. Not in Washington, where Republicans are laying out hard-core positions against "amnesty." Not in states like Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, which are steaming ahead with harsh agendas.
But here, at least for now, powerful forces have come to understand "” whether through warm feelings for workers or, more likely, cold self-interest "” that in attacking immigrants, Texas is attacking itself.
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Women protest the shooting deaths of activists at Chevron oil facilities in Warri. Nigerianshave sued Chevron, saying the company should be held responsible for the deaths of protesters killed by Nigerian security forces outside a refinery owned by its subsidiary.
By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY Monday, Arpil 2, 29 Labor leaders overseas are turning increasingly to an obscure 18th-century law that could for the first time make U.S. companies liable at home for the violent and sometimes murderous actions of their employees around the world.
Several lawsuits alleging violation of the Alien Tort Statute are awaiting trial in federal courts, filed with the help of unions and activist groups in the USA.
One against Geo W. Drummond Ltd. of Alabama alleges the contracting company's subsidiary in ColumbiaColombia paid death squads to kill labor leaders.
The lawsuits have set up a showdown over whether boardrooms in the USA should pay big-money verdicts for crimes not prosecuted in countries where corruption and violence are often seen as a cost of doing business.
"I realize that there are problems in lots of different countries," said William Jeffress, a lawyer for Drummond. "But to have the U.S. courts attempt to provide remedies for all of the injustices that occur in countries around the world is not a rational system." At least a dozen such cases are ongoing. Among them: "¢Relatives of people killed in an airstrike by the Columbia military say that Occidental Petroleum of Los Angeles should pay damages because its security contractor worked with the military to take out leftist terrorists accused of sabotaging Occidental's pipeline operation. The plaintiffs say the attack killed 17 unarmed civilians.
"¢Chevron, headquartered in San Francisco, is fighting a lawsuit filed by Nigerians who say the company should be held responsible for the killing of protesters by Nigerian security forces outside a refinery owned by its subsidiary.
"¢Del Monte is being sued by five union officials in Guatemalawho say they were kidnapped by armed men hired by the Miami corporation's subsidiary and forced to quit their jobs at a banana farm.
All of the lawsuits come under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that allows citizens of foreign nations to sue in U.S. courts for actions that violate the "law of nations," such as genocide, torture and slavery. Human rights activists began using the law in the 1980s to sue foreign military leaders accused of repression who had retired in the USA. Now, those activists have teamed with labor unions here to sue U.S. corporations for oppression of workers in Latin Americaand Africa.
"A lot of these countries do not have judicial systems which are independent and free of corruption," said Dan Kovalik, a lawyer representing the families of victims killed in the Drummond case. "It's unfair to make them try to bring a case where it would be futile."
The companies say they are being unfairly targeted by liberal activists who are using the law to try to remedy the injustices of foreign governments. Lawyers for Drummond and other companies have said they are being blamed for crimes they deplore and knew nothing about.
"We think the Founding Fathers didn't intend all this," said Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council.
Reinsch said the statute, which was almost never invoked until recently, is being misused. "What you got is trial lawyers who have seized on it as the new asbestos, filing these hoping to hit the jackpot," he said.
The Bush administration, in a federal court case involving charges against oil giant Unocal in Burma, also known as Myanmar, stated that the federal courts were never intended to settle disputes between foreigners who have no legal issues against the U.S. government.
"Although it may be tempting to open our courts to right every wrong all over the world, the function has not been assigned to the federal courts," stated a Justice Department brief filed in 2003.
The State Department also weighed in, saying in an advisory letter to the district judge presiding over the Occidental case that such litigation interferes with U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy.
"It may also be perceived that the U.S. government does not recognize the legitimacy of Colombian judicial institutions," according to William Taft IV, the former chief legal adviser for the State Department.
The families of the victims killed in Columbia say in their lawsuit that they can find justice only in the USA.
Most of the details of the Drummond case had been kept under seal. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the case unsealed March 14 after Stephen Flanagan Jackson, a professor at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Ala., made a request through the Freedom of Information Act.
Among the details revealed was that a witness says the head of the company's Colombia operation gave a "suitcase full of money" to a paramilitary group to commit the killings. The case is likely to go to trial this summer.
Reinsch warns that if the lawsuits prevail, U.S. companies may be forced to shut down foreign operations. That could prove to be another injustice to workers who rely on the companies for jobs that usually pay more than most.
"The oil in all the nice countries has been found already," Reinsch said.
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I see that the illegals don't like the truth, the raw truth I throw at your faces, too bad, I'm an American and you'll JUST HAVE TO TAKE IT MORONS and if you don't like it GET THE HELL OUT OF MY COUNTRY.
Question for the primitive races invading my country, to be specific, Mexicans, Philipinos, Africans, Cubans, Haitians, Central Americans, Peruvians, Colombians, Orientals, etc. Why don't you LEARN ENGLISH? Why is it that you don't join main stream America? Why is it that you bring all your bad habits over here? Immigrants before you all worked hard to LEARN ENGLISH, to BE A PART OF THIS SOCIETY, to BELONG, but you people want to live in the US, earn DOLLARS, ab-use OUR BENEFITS, refuse to learn English and continue living the way you did in your third world countries. It doesn't make sense!!! Are you too stupid to learn? Perhaps your i.q.'s are lower than that of the rest of the world? What is it, I'd like to know.
Question for the pinko liberal americans? Why is it that everytime I call a company the recording asks me "to continue in English press 1", WHY???? when I go to the Hospital I see signs, forms, etc. in every damm language or dialect posted everywhere, this stupidity is everywhere and it must stop. In the US we speak, write and read ENGLISH, why? because is the language of main stream america. We must STOP THE BULL TODAY!!! and we need to AMEND THE CONSTITUTION, WHY??? because the Mexicans, the Philipinos, the Africans, etc etc will not understand any other way.
Day Laborers To the Editor: Re "In Defense of Day Laborers" (editorial, March 28): Last July, after a year long study, the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons adpoted a position in support of the establishment of a hiring center for day laborers in the Hamptons. We did so based upon the belief that such a center is a humane reponse to day-laborer hiring practices and that such a center will reduce traffic congestion and provide a safe and clean environment where an orderly hiring process can take place. Since then, we have supported the work of the Coalition for a Worklink Center, made up of civic and religious organizations and concerned citizens, which is striving to establish such a hiring center on the East end. We are glad you have added your voice to those who view this solution as the best alternative to addressing this situation. Anne K. Marshall President, League of Women Voters of the Hamptons Bridgehampton, N.Y., March 28, 2007
excerpt from the New York Daily News dated 3/14/07, written by a dolores prida, her address is: doloresprida@aol.com. She writes: Americans are notorious for their negative and dismissive attitude toward foreign languages... this cultural "arrogance" could be costly (she cites about the lack of translators of Arabic into English after 9/11). Why are monolingual Americans so averse to embracing foreign languages? because 1. Americans suffer from "xenoglossophobia" 2. "they" believe it's necessary to amend the Constitution to know for sure which is "their" official language. 3. "They" think English is an American language. 4. They fear we are talking about them. 5. "They" hate foreing films because they can't read the English subtitles fast enough. 6. "They" think it's ok to sell (she names a bunch of products) to minorities in their native languages, but not ok to have bilingual education, or VOTING BALLOTS in those same languages. This can only be written by a third world, commie pinko *******, who lives in the US, takes advantage of OUR BENEFITS, including the FREEDOM OF SPEECH, and yet she refers to us as "they". She deliberately twisted everything around to fill her own agenda. And why is the NY Daily News allowing these primitive people to trash our country, our people, our ideas?
to Rambo and every damm illegal alien in the U.S. GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!! Your own countries are supposed to support you, THEY have an OBLIGATION with you, not us, when will you get it thru your sick skulls. We have MILLIONS of people who SHOULD BE DOING the work illegals do, i.e. every able body on Welfare, anybody who is in jail for minor offenses, enough of the b.s. especially from muslims and mexicans, beware of them!!!
AP NewsBreak: McDonald's to pay more for sandwich tomatoes By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ AP Hispanic Affairs Writer
MIAMI -- McDonald's Corp. agreed Monday to pay a penny more per pound for its Florida-grown tomatoes to help boost wages for the migrant workers who harvest them, following a two-year campaign by an advocacy group that called for the increase.
Under the agreement, a third party will verify that farmworkers who pick McDonald's tomatoes will receive the increase. Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's will also require its suppliers to follow a workplace code of conduct that the workers would help create.
The deal involves payments for round tomatoes that go on McDonald's sandwiches. McDonald's USA Spokesman William Whitman declined to say how much the change would cost the company but said the increase would not be passed on to consumers.
The announcement was made by the nonprofit Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the nation's biggest fast-food restaurant chain at the Atlanta-based Carter Center, where they negotiated the deal.
The coalition targeted McDonald's in 2005 and were about to launch a cross-country bus tour to protest in front of the company's headquarters before the deal was signed.
The coalition had previously won similar concessions from Taco Bell after a four-year boycott against restaurant chain, which is part of Yum Brands Inc. Numerous religious groups, including the Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Council of Churches lent support to the coalition's efforts.
"This is one step forward in the fight," said coalition co-founder and farmworker Lucas Benitez. "It sends a strong message to the rest of the fast food industry that the leaders of the industry are taking concrete steps to improves the lives of workers, of human beings."
Florida pickers harvest about 90 percent of the nation's domestic winter tomato supply, but McDonald's mainly buys Florida's round tomatoes for its sandwiches, about 15 million tomatoes annually. Farm workers are paid about 40 cents per 32-pound bucket. The extra penny a pound would nearly double their pay to about 72 cents a bucket.
The coalition also recently began a similar campaign against Burger King Corp. Miami-based Burger King has said it cannot control what its suppliers pay their workers.
"Given that we represent such a small percentage, others in the industry need to step up and follow our lead," Whitman said.
Former President Jimmy Carter agreed.
"I encourage others to now follow the lead of McDonald's and Taco Bell to achieve the much needed change throughout the entire Florida-based tomato industry," he said.
McDonald's had previously refused the coalition's requests, maintaining it bought tomatoes through a third party and could not track where its produce came from. Instead, it sponsored a study - later discredited - that suggested farmworkers were paid more than twice the state's minimum wage. McDonald's also prompted Florida growers to develop a code to improve workplace conditions and protect workers. But farmworkers were not included in the development of that program, which did not call for a boost in wages.
Whitman credited the Carter Center for facilitating dialogue between the two sides and the company's suppliers who worked with McDonald's.
But Taylor & Fulton Farms co-owner Jay Taylor, who supplies McDonald's with tomatoes, was somewhat wary of the deal.
"I'm trying to digest how this will affect my relationship with McDonald's," he said. "I have to see exactly what this agreement means for us."
The fastest Immokalee pickers can earn more than $75 a day for hours of back-wrenching toil, but most earn far less - though exact numbers are difficult to come by. Pickers can go days without work and get neither sick leave nor overtime.
I commend you for your wish to work on a delicate topic as this one for your thesis. This will help in a way to let everyone know that there are people suffering and they are not asking for money or government help, they want to work and a better life for their families just as immigrants did in the time of the colonies. Just as your grandparents and great great grand parents had to do. The only difference now is the color of our skin. We are easily targeted and easily silenced. Many times I wonder if this is just the way human nature is. As Darwin says, the survival of the fittest. Only when there exists a benefit for the wealthy and the powerful, will there be a legalization of all the immigrants or at least some form of legalization. I will like to be optimist that the government will act rightiosuly and do what is clearly just and equitable, but I also see the way the world works and the reality is another.
U.S. Raid on an Immigrant Household Deepens Anger and Mistrust By NINA BERNSTEIN Published: April 10, 2007 EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. "” Awakened by banging on the front door and the shouts of strangers inside her family's sprawling suburban home, Erica Leon, 12, thought at first that the house was on fire.
Then her bedroom door burst open, she said, and armed men in blue bulletproof vests pushed in, demanding to know if she was hiding someone. They pressed on to the room where 4-year-old Carson was asleep with their mother, and pulled off the covers.
"They started screaming at my mom real bad," Erica said. "I wasn't crying, but I was, like, terrified. Like, who are you guys?"
They were federal immigration agents hunting for an illegal immigrant "” Erica's long-absent father, Patrizio Wilson Garcia, who was ordered deported after his 2003 divorce from Erica's mother, Adriana, and has not lived in the house since. But they had entered a three-generation immigrant household where everyone was an American citizen by naturalization or birth.
To the Leon family, Hispanics who have owned their house here on Copeces Lane for seven years, the early-morning raid on Feb. 20 seemed like the ultimate indignity in a history of hostile scrutiny. But to some residents, it was an overdue response by federal authorities to long-simmering concerns about illegal immigration on Long Island's East End.
Since 2000, neighbors' complaints about the family's volleyball games, their many cars, their living arrangements, even the fallen tree limbs in their yard, have prompted more than 18 inspections by town code enforcers and repeated surveillance by the town police, records show. Often officials found nothing to cite; occasionally they issued notices of violations that ended in court fines. Typically, the Leons complied with official demands, only to face fresh complaints.
Federal immigration officials would not say what had prompted the raid, which swept into four other East Hampton houses and rounded up three dozen illegal immigrants. But the operation had nothing to do with town code enforcement, the officials said, or with Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, who has won national attention by vowing to move against illegal immigrants the federal government ignores.
They also said Erica's grandmother let them in, providing consent for a search that others in the household could not legally stop.
Residents on both sides see the raid "” the first in recent memory in this wealthy beachfront community "” as the latest escalation in a wave of crackdowns driven by complaints against immigrants at every level of government. And it points to a sense of frustration in both camps that is making Suffolk County one of the hotbeds of the nation's immigration debate.
"People here are fed up," said Richard Herrlin, a neighbor of the Leons' who welcomed the raid and described himself as a builder of $20 million mansions. "It's possible the feds showed up because the town officials have done nothing for years, because the town is terrified of being accused of racial insensitivity."
For him and some others in the neighborhood, where large wooded lots and winding roads bring to mind rural New England, irritation over what they described as the Leons' noise, trash and traffic has fed on deeper anger over an influx of Hispanic illegal immigrants on the East End. There are festering grievances about taxes, schools crowded with Spanish speakers and homes turned into rooming houses.
For the Leons and other immigrant families, meanwhile, confusion over what civil rights, if any, apply in such raids heightens new feelings of vulnerability.
"Your house is supposed to be where you're safe, right?" said Andres Leon, 22, Erica's uncle. "When you see police, you're supposed to feel protected. But the way they acted, we don't feel protected; we feel violated."
Ms. Leon, now remarried, had even obtained an order of protection against Mr. Garcia before their divorce ended his temporary legal status and led to the deportation order.
In a strange twist, that became the legal basis for a Fugitive Operations team of seven agents to bang on the Leons' door at 5 a.m.
Like the family's American life, the house, on 3.8 acres in a middle-class section, is still a work in progress. But it is now valued at about $1 million, nearly four times what the Leons paid for it in 2000, before they added 70 percent more finished space, step by step, with earnings from housecleaning, carpentry and a home beauty salon.
"They started screaming at my mom real bad," Erica said. "I wasn't crying, but I was, like, terrified. Like, who are you guys?"
They were federal immigration agents hunting for an illegal immigrant "” Erica's long-absent father, Patrizio Wilson Garcia, who was ordered deported after his 2003 divorce from Erica's mother, Adriana, and has not lived in the house since. But they had entered a three-generation immigrant household where everyone was an American citizen by naturalization or birth.
To the Leon family, Hispanics who have owned their house here on Copeces Lane for seven years, the early-morning raid on Feb. 20 seemed like the ultimate indignity in a history of hostile scrutiny. But to some residents, it was an overdue response by federal authorities to long-simmering concerns about illegal immigration on Long Island's East End.
Since 2000, neighbors' complaints about the family's volleyball games, their many cars, their living arrangements, even the fallen tree limbs in their yard, have prompted more than 18 inspections by town code enforcers and repeated surveillance by the town police, records show. Often officials found nothing to cite; occasionally they issued notices of violations that ended in court fines. Typically, the Leons complied with official demands, only to face fresh complaints.
Federal immigration officials would not say what had prompted the raid, which swept into four other East Hampton houses and rounded up three dozen illegal immigrants. But the operation had nothing to do with town code enforcement, the officials said, or with Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, who has won national attention by vowing to move against illegal immigrants the federal government ignores.
They also said Erica's grandmother let them in, providing consent for a search that others in the household could not legally stop.
For him and some others in the neighborhood, where large wooded lots and winding roads bring to mind rural New England, irritation over what they described as the Leons' noise, trash and traffic has fed on deeper anger over an influx of Hispanic illegal immigrants on the East End. There are festering grievances about taxes, schools crowded with Spanish speakers and homes turned into rooming houses.
For the Leons and other immigrant families, meanwhile, confusion over what civil rights, if any, apply in such raids heightens new feelings of vulnerability.
"Your house is supposed to be where you're safe, right?" said Andres Leon, 22, Erica's uncle. "When you see police, you're supposed to feel protected. But the way they acted, we don't feel protected; we feel violated."
Ms. Leon, now remarried, had even obtained an order of protection against Mr. Garcia before their divorce ended his temporary legal status and led to the deportation order.
In a strange twist, that became the legal basis for a Fugitive Operations team of seven agents to bang on the Leons' door at 5 a.m.
Like the family's American life, the house, on 3.8 acres in a middle-class section, is still a work in progress. But it is now valued at about $1 million, nearly four times what the Leons paid for it in 2000, before they added 70 percent more finished space, step by step, with earnings from housecleaning, carpentry and a ome beauty salon.
The first to arrive in the United States, more than 25 years ago, was Ramon Leon, who works as a cabinetmaker for Central Kitchen Corporation in Southampton. It took him years to win permanent residency under the 1986 immigration amnesty, and years more to bring his wife, Elena, and three children "” Adriana, Jazmin and Andres "” to join him legally. Erica and her little sister had to be left behind in Ecuador for seven years and joined their mother only three years ago. The household now comprises six adults and five children.
By the spring of 2002, neighbors were complaining that two volleyball courts built by the Leons had become the site of large, sometimes raucous sporting events that drew dozens of people.
All over East Hampton, such games were a flashpoint between longtime residents and Latino immigrants, whose numbers were soaring. And the clashes fueled resentments that helped elect local politicians who promised to crack down on illegal immigrants or "quality of life" violations.
Despite complaints and petitions, officials were unable to shut down the games. At the Leons', for example, the East Hampton police reported no violations after surveillance over a three-day weekend in 2002 found 15 to 40 people, most of them playing volleyball; 20 vehicles "all registered and legally parked"; and "very little noise."
But the games had stopped by 2004, after Adriana, 30, married Norman Aguilar, who took over his father-in-law's share of the mortgage. "I don't want any problems," said Mr. Aguilar, who was born in Costa Rica and is a manager at a newspaper distribution company, as well as an agent for a financial services company, Primerica. "I just want to live in peace."
By then, however, neighborhood complaints seemed to have a life of their own. When Jazmin Leon opened her one-chair home beauty salon "” allowed under the residential code "” neighbors tried to shut it down over the scissors sign seen through the picture window. When Mr. Aguilar painted a rock white, a neighbor produced town surveys to show that it jutted over his property line by three or four inches.
"My wife wanted to sell the house," Mr. Aguilar said. "I told her no, anywhere you go, you'll have the same problems. I feel like for us it's, like, getting harder in this town. The laws that they're putting on us, it's, like, against Hispanic people."
Some residents say the town does not enforce codes the same way against city people in time shares, or houses crowded with Irish summer workers.
"Profiling is not about who you raid, it's who you don't raid "” who gets the winks and who gets the handcuffs," said Amado Ortiz, 60, an American-born architect who joined the board of OLA, a Latino immigrant advocacy group, after being "radicalized," he said, by an increasingly anti-Hispanic climate.
William E. McGintee, the town supervisor, dismissed such complaints of bias as "nonsense."
"We don't have a large influx of illegal immigrants from Russia," he said. "We have Ecuadoreans, we have Peruvians, we have Mexicans. We don't know who is living in those houses; we get complaints, and it's complaint-driven."
But the limited effect of such complaints only heightens the frustration of residents like Lucinda Murphy, a registered nurse who volunteered that she and her husband, Sean, a television news producer, had often called the police about cars parked at the Leons'.
Ms. Murphy, who has three children, voiced larger misgivings about illegal immigrants with children in the local school. She called them "freeloaders."
"I'm paying taxes, they're not," she said. "Yet their kids still get to go to school with the privileges of my kids. I resent it."
City dwellers with weekend houses on Copeces Lane have also complained about the Leons, upset that property values could be hurt by the less-upscale Latinos, said Richard Dunn, 65, an East Hampton teacher.
"This is a town that's driven by money and real estate," he said. "People who are so concerned about Latinos feel they're being driven out."
His own house is cleaned by Adriana Leon and her mother. "I have nothing but good feelings for them," he said.
On the morning of the raid, Mr. Aguilar, 40, had already left for work. He returned to find the shaken family reading the Bible together in the kitchen.
"We don't have a large influx of illegal immigrants from Russia," he said. "We have Ecuadoreans, we have Peruvians, we have Mexicans. We don't know who is living in those houses; we get complaints, and it's complaint-driven."
But the limited effect of such complaints only heightens the frustration of residents like Lucinda Murphy, a registered nurse who volunteered that she and her husband, Sean, a television news producer, had often called the police about cars parked at the Leons'.
Ms. Murphy, who has three children, voiced larger misgivings about illegal immigrants with children in the local school. She called them "freeloaders."
"I'm paying taxes, they're not," she said. "Yet their kids still get to go to school with the privileges of my kids. I resent it."
City dwellers with weekend houses on Copeces Lane have also complained about the Leons, upset that property values could be hurt by the less-upscale Latinos, said Richard Dunn, 65, an East Hampton teacher.
"This is a town that's driven by money and real estate," he said. "People who are so concerned about Latinos feel they're being driven out."
His own house is cleaned by Adriana Leon and her mother. "I have nothing but good feelings for them," he said.
On the morning of the raid, Mr. Aguilar, 40, had already left for work. He returned to find the shaken family reading the Bible together in the kitchen.
For a time, the house became a gathering place for immigrants rounded up at other houses that morning, who were mostly released with notices to appear at deportation proceedings. Their accounts of the raids galvanized a group of local clergy, Hispanic activists and even a religious organization based in Costa Rica that flew in counselors.
"It would appear that in the war against terrorism, agents of our nation are now acting in the role of terrorizers," the group of local clergy, East End Clergy Concerned, wrote their congressman in a letter asking for an investigation.
Mr. Aguilar tried to file a complaint about the raid with the town police but was rebuffed. "We don't conduct investigations on another law enforcement agency," Todd Sarris, the chief of police, explained.
Nor was the raid a mistake, said Christopher Shanahan, director of deportation and removal for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the New York region.
"We would like to find fugitive aliens at 100 percent of the locations we go to, but it's not an exact science," he said.
No records are kept to show how often the teams find the fugitives they are seeking. And the rules for the searches are murky.
Unlike a criminal search warrant, which requires a judge to review the evidence and find probable cause for a search, the "administrative warrant" used by immigration agents is approved only by the team's supervisor "” and is valid only with the consent of the occupants, Mr. Shanahan said.
But in what he described as standard practice, that consent bears little resemblance to what laymen or constitutional scholars expect. Once Erica's grandmother let agents over the threshold, Mr. Shanahan said, there was no turning back.
"Due to officer safety needs, they can look into other areas, to clear rooms," he said. But he added: "If officers did something to humiliate people, I want to know about it. We are very adamant that we want our officers to be professional."
On a recent afternoon, back from a seventh-grade civics lesson on the separation of powers, Erica spoke about what had changed since the raid.
"My mom wanted me to sleep in her room so I wouldn't be scared," she said. "Sometimes, we have heard, they take parents away from the children, or they take children from the parents."
When the agents left, she remembered, "they said they might come back."
This message has been edited. Last edited by: explora,
Congratulations on having the courage to take on the subject of exploitation of undocumented.In my little town there is a good example of exploitation by a major corporation, but she would have difficulty telling for fear of losing her job.
Another study I would like to see is a study of Hispanic new business and how it compares to other ethnic groups weighted to size of population.
How about a program like:
ADOPT A BIGOT
This program will benefit both the 15,000,000 undocumented immigrants and the bigots. How the program works. A hard working, tax paying, law abiding, church going, family oriented undocumented immigrant family adopts a bigot like Tom Tancredo or Lou Dobbs by corresponding with him to familiarize the bigot with what kind of people he is wanting to deport. Maybe the bigot would become more knowledgeable about the real humanity of many of these undocumented. As a result of this we would have more supporters of real comprehensive immigration reform, enough to pass a decent, compassionate, affordable, workable bill. We have waited long enough, remove this wicked cloud over all these good people and get on with finding the undesirable ones who are not good citizens.
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