http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5868590.html

July 2, 2008, 11:40PM

Owners arrested after ICE raid at Houston company

2 leaders and 3 managers face charges after operation snares 166 workers

By JAMES PINKERTON
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Last week their undocumented workers were hauled off to a detention facility, but today the owners and managers of a Houston rag exporting firm are in custody for employing the illegal immigrants.

This morning a U.S. magistrate in Houston is scheduled to preside over the initial court appearance of two owners and three managers of Action Rags USA. The eastside company, located in a sweltering factory near the Port of Houston, was the scene of one of Houston's largest immigration raids when 166 undocumented workers were detained June 25.

Federal charges were unsealed late Wednesday after agents arrested company owner Mabarik Kahlon, 45, and his partner and uncle, Rasheed Ahmed, 58. Also arrested Wednesday were manager Cirila Barron, 38, resource manager Valerie Rodriguez, 34, and warehouse supervisor Mayra Herrera-Gutierrez, 32. Ahmed, who has health problems, was freed on his own recognizance until today's court appearance. The rest remain in federal custody.

Barron and Herrera-Gutierrez are illegal immigrants from Mexico, according to the U.S. Attorney's office in Houston.

The five are charged with conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants, inducing illegal immigrants to come into the country, as well as illegal hiring practices including knowingly accepting false work documents.

''Immigration is a political issue and until it is solved politically, any employer is at risk," said David Gerger, a prominent Houston attorney who is representing the owners. ''But as far as this case goes, we will defend it in court and not in the press." Gerger represented former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow during his criminal case.

The arrests of the company leaders were applauded by those who favor tough enforcement of immigration laws.

''Employers who knowingly hire illegals need to face the consequences, and the consequences are prosecution," said U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble. ''Employers have been getting a pass way too long on hiring illegals and not being held accountable for it."


Tip came from informant
Those charged were the subject of an extensive undercover investigation that began in May 2007, after an informant put agents in touch with several current and former employees.

An affidavit for the criminal search warrant filed before the raid provides a rare inside look into the undercover investigation during which owners and managers were audio recorded.

Action Rags was reported to a Department of Homeland Security tip line in July 2005 by a person who said the company was ''hiring smuggled, illegal aliens, some as young as 13 years of age." Workers at the plant sorted bales of used clothing that were either shipped or processed into rags.

ICE agents directed a confidential source to enter Action Rags, posing as an undocumented worker, according to the affidavit.

When the source told Barron, a company manager, that she could find six other undocumented workers to take jobs at the plant, the manager replied ''take them to the flea market and make them citizens," by obtaining fraudulent Social Security cards, according to the affidavit.

The source then told Barron that she had previously obtained a fake Social Security card for $125. Barron told the source that she had paid too much for the fraudulent document and could have obtained one for $80.

On two occasions in 2007, company officials ordered all plant employees to go home because they had heard an immigration raid was coming, the affidavit states.

The source, who was hired at the plant in August without documentation, said Ahmed, the owner's uncle, told her to acquire fake work documents at a flea market.

The informant told ICE agents she met with Kahlon, the owner, on Aug. 23, and during a recorded conversation he told her to obtain fraudulent work papers for her girlfriends who were looking for work. Kahlon also suggested she marry a U.S. citizen so she could gain legal status, ''and further stated he knew people the source could marry to begin the process to obtain legal status," according to the affidavit.

''Kahlon told the source that Immigration would not come to Action Rags because they are more concerned with drugs," the affidavit states.


Deplorable conditions
A former plant worker told ICE agents that she was not authorized to work when she was hired by the company. The worker said she never provided any work documents and did not complete the federally required I-9 employment form.

In June 2007, another undocumented worker told ICE agents that conditions in the plant were deplorable.

''There is no air conditioning, and there are only small fans in the corners of the warehouse," the ex-worker told investigators. ''The workers must provide their own drinking water and the company provides no safety equipment such as gloves, support belts, or masks for protection from dust created by the rags and used clothing articles."

A Richmond attorney, who represents the company in civil matters, said he had spent months working with Action Rags to ensure its work force was legal.

''They are totally innocent of any wrongdoing, and have attempted through the legal process, of absolutely honoring all laws," said William F. Estes. ''I am their civil attorney and they came to me, and we have met numerous times to make sure they don't stumble."


Dilemma for employers
Estes said employers are placed in a tough position of trying to verify the legal status of workers, while not violating federal employment laws that prevent discrimination based on national origin.

ICE officials in Houston referred questions about charges in the case to the U.S. Attorney's office. Officials there did not return phone calls.

The raid at Action Rags took place two months after ICE agents arrested 20 undocumented workers at a Shipley Do-Nuts distribution facility in Houston.

No charges have been filed against company officials in that case.

''Sometimes these arrests happen close to the time of search warrant execution, sometime they may take months, even years, depending on the complexity of the investigation and the evidence," said Robert Rutt, Special Agent in Charge of ICE criminal investigations in Houston, referring to charges against employers.

Over the past eight months, federal immigration agents have arrested more than 2,900 suspected undocumented workers on administrative immigration charges and another 775 workers on criminal charges such as identity theft or Social Security fraud.

Only 75 business owners, supervisors or human resources workers have been arrested on charges such as harboring or knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants.

That accounts for barely 2 percent of the total of 3,750 workplace immigration arrests since last October.

Louise Whiteford, president of Texans for Immigration Reform in Houston, was pleased to see that employers in the Action Rags case were not ''let go scot-free."

''You can't do one without the other," Whiteford said. ''If you're just going to pick up the illegal aliens and there is no punishment for employers, you're only doing half of the problem. If you put more pressure on the employers we wouldn't have the problem."

http://www.the-tidings.com/2008/070408/ice.htm

Friday, July 4, 2008

Federal immigration raids:

Cathedral hosts hearing on national commission's investigation of alleged abuse by ICE agents at worksites.

By R. W. Dellinger

Addressing members of a federal commission investigating allegations of abuse and misconduct by federal agents against immigrants at worksites, Cardinal Roger Mahony "strongly recommitted" the Catholic Church in the United States to defending the rights of every immigrant.

"To proclaim and defend the dignity and rights of all people - especially our workers - and to point out their wonderful contributions that made this country great is part of our heritage," he told the eight members of the National Commission on ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency) Misconduct and Violations of 4th Amendment Rights and more than 500 workers and activists at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels' Conference Center on June 24.

"It's an irony that these raids are taking place at locations where people are working," the cardinal noted. "They're not having raids on banks because there are no banks being robbed. These are people working, contributing to their own welfare, that of their families, the companies they work for, the community. They're paying taxes and helping make this country strong.

"This is really ironic and such a tragedy for our county," he stressed. "And so we must all work together to lift up our voices to protest this."

Cardinal Mahony said the ICE raids on worksites - which have ranged from large meatpacking plants in the Midwest to textile companies in Massachusetts to printing businesses in California during the last two years - "illustrate like nothing else our broken immigration system."

He noted the imbalance between jobs that need to be performed and American workers available to do them, saying the current system is incapable of closing that divide. Moreover, he said the raids "do nothing" to ensure national security; on the contrary, they create enormous human and family suffering.

The cardinal urged the national commission, composed of labor leaders, politicians, academics and civil rights advocates, to enlist the help of businessmen, industries and commercial leaders, who are not only feeling the economic impact of raids but also fearing arrest themselves. And he said the new president and Congress must pass a reform immigration bill that is truly comprehensive. (Both Senators John McCain and Barack Obama recently promised to enact comprehensive immigration measures if elected president.)

Finally, Cardinal Mahony noted that the current cover of Time magazine was devoted to the immigration debate, displaying an image of "The Great Wall of America."

"It is really a sad commentary that in this great country we have found it necessary to build walls that separate us from people," he said. "This is just really almost a sin on our national heritage. So just count on my help in any way that I can, and count on the Catholic Church in this country walking with you every step of the way."

4th Amendment rights
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union organized the national commission that has held hearings in Washington, Boston, Des Moines, Iowa, and Atlanta, besides Los Angeles, after ICE agents raided and arrested 1,297 workers and detained 12,000 in six Swift meatpacking plants in December 2006.

The non-governmental hearings have investigated allegations that the federal agency, which was formed by the Homeland Security Act after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, have violated the 4th Amendment rights of workers by conducting unreasonable searches and seizures across the nation.

According to its website, fiscal year 2007 was a "break-out" year for the agency, which set new enforcement records. ICE not only deported 276,912 illegal aliens, but arrested nearly 5,000 individuals at worksites, the vast majority being employees not employers for allegedly possession or sale of fraudulent documents, identity theft, Social Security fraud and re-entry after deportation. This is a tenfold increase from just five years before.

Victims of ICE raids in California who testified at the nearly three-hour hearing reported they were not only intimidated and mocked by agents, but never informed of their rights. Magdalena, who like other workers only gave her first name, said that when the heavily armed agents showed up February 7 at Micro Solutions Enterprises (MSE) in Van Nuys they locked all the doors and wouldn't let anyone leave, even legal permanent residents.

"They never told us about any rights or any opportunity we had to consult with an attorney," the mother stated in Spanish, which was translated into English by an interpreter. "They took some of us in a room, and an ICE agent literally was dancing and mocking us. She made fun of us, and I felt extremely offended by the actions of this ICE agent. And I'd like to ask the president and the Congress to please reform our immigration laws in this country."

Flora, who also worked at MSE, testified that nearly 200 federal agents came shouting and screaming into the computer printer cartridge manufacturing plant at about 4 p.m. After separating men from women, agents briefly interrogated them in the company's cafeteria. She refused to answer any questions or give her name until she talked to an attorney.

"They said, 'No!' she recalled. "My interview was very short. They just wrapped my hands with plastic handcuffs, and they loaded us on a bus, pushing and pulling us. Then they unloaded us, took our pictures and reloaded us back in the bus. They took us to the [government building], where they continued to harass us, to offend us. They would call us names and insult us all the way around.

"We weren't processed until 10 o'clock. We were put in cells, 25 to 30 apiece, and we stayed up all night long. In the middle of the night, they started to interrogate all of us again. I was interrogated several times."

Flora added, "I'm sorry that I don't have more time [today] to talk about the suffering that me and my coworkers experienced for months and months afterwards. But I also ask that you ask Congress and the government to pass laws that will treat workers and immigrants more fairly.

"We are workers, not criminals," she said, "and we need your help."

Heavy-handed enforcement
Others who testified included immigrant advocates, attorneys, relatives of deported undocumented workers and mental health professionals. All decried ICE's enforcement tactics as not only inhumane, but also as illegal violations of the 4th Amendment.

Lawyer Rosie Cho defended immigrants taken into custody and arrested during ICE raids on small businesses in Northern California last year. She testified that agents didn't identify themselves and kept detainees in custody for up to 14 hours.

"Most of the workers were told they didn't have a right to counsel," she said. "Most were interrogated in isolation. They didn't know there were volunteer attorneys just outside their holding area waiting to assist them. Many of these workers were interviewed and threatened, coerced. Many of them signed forms waiving their right to an attorney."

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), noted that Los Angeles has the largest number of immigrants impacted by ICE raids. Every day agents are going into people's worksites, homes and communities, she asserted, and every night thousands of men and women are locked away in immigration jails.

Salas reported that 84 percent of Angeleno families have at least one member who's an immigrant, while 63 percent of local children have an immigrant parent, although 87 percent of these girls and boys are U.S. citizens.

"We have seen that the inaction certainly by Congress and the brazen abuse by ICE agents have often given a green light to other law enforcement agencies in the state," said Salas. "So local police inside and outside Los Angeles feel that they can abuse these workers and their families and detain them, and not believe that their rights be protected.

"These raids are shameful, and they're contrary to our nation's values of justice and freedom," she declared. "For all of immigration there's only one solution - stop the raids and enact just and humane immigration reform. A day laborer in Chicago said it best: 'Working hands do not deserve handcuffs.' None of these workers deserve handcuffs. They deserve the protections of our constitution and to be treated with fairness and dignity."

Joseph Cervantes, chair of the American Psychological Association's Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs, said the APA has been concerned about the impact of immigration raids on children and families. In treating Latino families and children for three decades, the professor of counseling at California State University, Fullerton, has seen firsthand the "increasing common emotional difficult experience that ICE raids are having on undocumented families."

He testified that the raids have four specific psychological consequences. When fathers are taken away in immigration sweeps, there's a direct impact on the financial insecurity of women and children. And because of increased fear, families often don't participate in normal community activities such as school or civic events.

Cervantes also pointed out the raids can cause a decreasing distrust of neighbors. And, finally, he said there's a "generalization of trauma" for kids present when agents break into their home and they witness a parent being taken away.

"Some of the more specific psychological outcomes for children include eating and sleeping problems, generalized anxiety, separation anxiety problems," he said. "In addition, the experience of a traumatic episode often results in significant psychiatric problems that can be long lasting.

"It is time that we stop these situations where our children are caused unneeded trauma - not only in their lives, but also the lives of the families from where they're from. APA is dedicated to the documentation, research and advocacy and policy development relative to the wellbeing of children and families as a result of the trauma and injustice caused by ICE raids."

'Tremendous cost'
In his closing remarks, Joe Hansen, chair of the national commission and president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said in hearing after hearing in Washington, Boston, Des Moines, Atlanta and now Los Angeles, "We have learned of the tragic consequences and the violation of rights that come from an ill conceived immigration enforcement-only policy."

He called the abuse and misconduct by ICE violations of human rights that have a "tremendous cost" to individuals, families, communities and American society. He was particularly outraged by the misuse of Section 287 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which authorizes local police officers who have gone through ICE training to enforce federal immigration laws. He maintained that the so-called cross-training of local police has led to racial profiling and has been used to terrorize communities.

"Workers are not criminals," Hansen said. "A broken immigration system is no excuse for ICE agents to break the law or to violate the Constitution. It is time for our government to bring that immigration policy into the 21st century.

"We have to decide as a society if we want an immigration system that promotes participation in American society or one that encourages companies to game the system and exploit workers. Our country works, our democracy works because it's inclusive. If America's about anything, it is about hope, it is about opportunity - and, especially, hope to achieve the American dream.

"We must have an immigration system that helps turn that hope and those dreams into reality for all workers," he said, "native born and new immigrants alike."

Immigration raids not in sync with policies

By Matt O'Brien
Contra Costa Times
Article Launched: 07/06/2008 12:03:09 AM PDT

HAYWARD — From about 1 to 5 a.m. on March 23 of last year, undercover federal agents parked outside Glenio Silva's pizzeria and took notes.

They watched as delivery crews and cooks entered and exited The Pizza House, a tiny fast-food restaurant in Hayward's historic downtown. The agents returned in April and May, staying long enough each trip to watch the business close at 3 a.m., and to confirm that some of the workers never left because they lived in the building.

Tipped off by an informant, an illegal immigrant who quit the restaurant in 2006 after a feud, the agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement explained in a request for a search warrant that they were building a case against a business they had reason to believe was criminally violating the nation's immigration laws.

On June 15, 2007, the agents came back in full force, raiding the Hayward establishment and a sister shop in San Francisco on a busy Friday night, arresting six unauthorized workers from Brazil and charging Silva, the business owner, with concealing and harboring illegal immigrants — a federal felony.

ICE officials said the case fits into the agency's strategy of increasingly relying on criminal prosecutions against employers to enforce immigration law. Yet a review of Bay Area immigration prosecutions indicates that such prosecutions remain a rarity, and they are hardly routine. In the first six months of the current fiscal year, only three people were convicted of concealing and harboring illegal immigrants in federal court in California's Northern District, which covers the Bay Area and all of coastal California from Monterey to the Oregon border, according to data culled from the nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

"I don't think the laws are really in sync with reality," said Silva, who is now contesting his criminal charges in a San Francisco court. "All the restaurants I know — everybody with a busy restaurant — has illegal people. I don't think this is fair."

His lawyer, Steven Gruel, a former federal prosecutor, calls Silva's situation a case of "unconstitutionally arbitrary enforcement" — and is using ICE's haphazard enforcement record as one reason the case should be dismissed.

"ICE's enforcement of worksite violations is bewildering," Gruel wrote in a motion to dismiss the case, filed last week. "Major violators receive a slap on the wrist or no action whatsoever, undocumented aliens are openly harbored as they seek refuge in sanctuary cities, and yet a lone pizzeria owner with six undocumented workers is caught up in the whirlpool of this federal criminal prosecution."

The charge Silva faces is one of the key tools ICE can use to criminally charge unscrupulous employers, and comes with a penalty of as many as five years of prison and deportation, even though Silva is a lawful permanent resident. In a written statement last month, the agency said that its strategy "differs dramatically from the approach of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which focused on imposing civil fines on employers who hired illegal aliens."

Being in the country illegally is still an administrative violation, not a crime. But there are several related crimes, ranging from fraudulent use of visas to conspiracy to bring illegal aliens into the country. And in contrast to its predecessor, INS, which was disbanded in 2003 when ICE was formed, ICE officials say their new agency "relies heavily on criminal prosecutions and the seizure of company assets to gain compliance from businesses that violate the employment provisions of our nation's immigration laws."

The total number of immigration crime prosecutions nationwide has risen sharply this year, mostly because of Operation Streamline, a new effort in border states to charge those who cross the border with low-level crimes. But prosecution rates in other parts of the country have not changed as much.

The records-gathering organization reported that 75 people were convicted of immigration crimes in the Northern District of California during the first six months of this fiscal year, the vast majority for the charge of re-entering the United States after being deported — a charge that is frequently attached to cases against people charged with other crimes.

The total number of prosecutions and convictions on immigration charges in the region has remained relatively steady throughout the Bush administration. The highest year for immigration convictions in the region was from Oct. 1, 2000 through September 2001, following a surge in prosecutions issued during the last year of the Clinton administration.

Defenders of current methods to battle illegal immigration say the local prosecution numbers don't reflect the wide array of approaches used to deal with the issue.

"Rather than going after the garden-variety employer who is hiring illegals, the criminal emphasis is on those who are exploiting them," said Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney in charge of the San Francisco region, explaining why the number of employer convictions is so low.

Russoniello said prosecutors focus on the most egregious cases, while ICE is responsible for dealing with employers who should face fines rather than criminal charges.

"We could probably fill up the docket with employment cases," Russoniello said. "It wouldn't do us a lot of good. It would bleed off a lot of resources."

Minimum fines against employers increased this year from $275 to $375 per illegal employee, while the maximum penalty for one illegal employee increased from $11,000 to $16,000. In fiscal year 2007, ICE said it secured more than $30 million in criminal and civil fines from worksite enforcement cases nationwide, arrested 863 people on criminal charges and made more than 4,000 administrative arrests in those worksite cases.

In fiscal year 2008, ICE worksite enforcement teams have arrested more than 2,900 people on administrative violations during the first half of the year, and arrested 850 people so far on criminal charges. Of those people, 75 are in the "supervisory chain" of owners, supervisors and managers, the agency said.

But critics of ICE's methods say the government has targeted more and more undocumented immigrants with costly detention and deportation in recent years while leaving employers who hire them off the hook.

"When you start realizing where all of their resources are going to, it's really about picking up undocumented immigrants," said Evelyn Sanchez, director of the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition. "They kind of see it as a badge of honor that on a yearly basis, they detain almost 1 million immigrants."

Sanchez is providing legal assistance for some of the 63 illegal workers, most from Mexico, who were detained by ICE on May 2 when the agency raided El Balazo, a chain of taquerias across the East Bay and in San Francisco. The owners of the restaurant chain have not faced any criminal charges, but ICE said the business is still under investigation.

Small restaurant chains have been one of the main targets of the most high-profile immigration raids in California. In May, ICE raided a French bakery in San Diego and arrested 15 suspected illegal immigrants there. The bakery owners have not been charged with crimes.

Silva, who sold his family's San Ramon house last year because of the financial losses he has faced following the raid on his two pizzerias, is fighting the allegations that he knowingly hired illegal Brazilian immigrants.

But the part of the situation that causes him to bristle most is that some of the Brazilians who were not authorized to work for him had previously worked at much bigger pizza chains. Why, he asked, hasn't the government gone after those chains?

Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for stricter enforcement, said he has little sympathy for such arguments, and said that a combination of increased enforcement activity and the poor economy has already caused many illegal immigrants to leave.

"Raids are important," Krikorian said. "The importance of enforcement is not to arrest every illegal immigrant. But the point is to send a message, to both workers and employers, that the party is over."

http://origin.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_9799197?nclick_check=1

Women workers rounded up in ICE raid

"With helicopters whirring overhead and Houston police providing perimeter security, 150 to 200 federal agents raided Action Rags USA, a rag-exporting factory, at 7 a.m. on June 25 and led 166 people away in Homeland Security vans. The federal agents in body armor stalked around the work site questioning workers." Workers World, July 7, 2008.

http://www.workers.org/2008/us/ice_raid_0710/

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?articl...618cd178f8fb06c8473c

The Young Victims of Iowa ICE Raids

New America Media, News Report , Marcelo Ballve, Posted: Jul 10, 2008

Editor's Note: In the aftermath of ICE raids the world has turned upside down for hundreds of Postville youth who once led normal lives — attending church and school, playing sports and starting garage bands. Marcelo Balve is a New York based writer for New America Media.

POSTVILLE, Iowa – Jairo Chuy Melendrez, 13, played the drums. His brother Aldo, 11, played the bass. Their 14-year-old friends Jonter Gómez and Mainor Ordoñez played the 12-string guitar and accordion, respectively.

They might have been typical American youth starting their first garage band. Except in this case they played Christian music in Spanish as Grupo Sin Fronteras. They performed once a week at evangelical services, which were attended primarily by Guatemalan immigrants and held at a borrowed venue in this small Iowa town.

The boys were talented enough so that with the help of 28-year-old bandleader and vocalist Gabriel de León they put out a self-produced CD last year called "Derribando Fronteras," or "Tearing Down Borders."

On May 12, all of this changed. An immigration raid led to the arrest of not only De León, the bandleader, but also the church's pastor, Eddy Santos, and the boys' mothers. Two months after the raid, De León has been deported to Mexico, Santos is in prison, and the boys' mothers still wear ankle bracelets so they can be monitored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while they await court dates for immigration charges.

Sonia Melendrez, 28, the mother of Jairo and Aldo, expects to be deported to Guatemala once she goes to court, and is trying to figure out how to send her kids back home ahead of her.

"My boys will have to leave behind their dream," she says. "That's what fills me with the most regret."

The story of Grupo Sin Fronteras is one example among many of young lives that unraveled in the aftermath of the Postville raid, in which scores of armed agents, with helicopter backup, arrested nearly 400 undocumented workers at the local Agriprocessors meatpacking plant.

"I'm really sad about it. I think about Gabriel (the bandleader) and feel really strange" that he's gone, says Jairo, a skinny teenager who was sprawled out on a couch at home, watching TV with his three siblings. "I know I'll probably never play music with him again."

In tiny Postville, the world has turned upside down for hundreds of children and teenagers who once led relatively normal lives — attending church and school, speaking two languages, playing sports.

The change came suddenly, in the course of a single day.

Many in Postville remember how teachers went from classroom to classroom at the local school the day of the raid, separating out the children of those who had been arrested so they could be taken to St. Bridget's Catholic Church. The church became the gathering place for scores of fearful immigrant families once the news spread. It was where they hid in fear of being arrested, and where they anxiously awaited news of relatives' fates. It was also where some of the roughly 40 women released on humanitarian grounds — with ankle bracelet monitoring devices — had tearful reunions with their children.

More than 300 other workers, including many mothers and fathers, would not be seen again in Postville.

"I don't know if we can really comprehend how this has affected the children," says Sister Mary McCauley of St. Bridget's Church. "I'm wondering what the long term effect of this is going to be. It has really shattered family life."

'A thousand times my fault'

Some young people didn't lose their parents, but their jobs. At least 17 underage workers, ranging in ages from 14 to 17, were arrested the day of the raid, according to attorney Sonia Parras Konrad.

Three of them are presently in custody of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement — in Chicago, San Diego and New York City — because the children claimed they were in the country as unaccompanied minors.

Parras says in two of these cases this wasn't true: the children lied simply out of fear of putting their parents in harm's way. She is now working to have both released.

Another minor already has been deported to Guatemala.

Parras also represents 11 undocumented underage workers in a pro-bono effort to obtain U visas, which are given to victims of violence or abuse and would allow the teenagers to remain in the country.

"These kids, these minors, they're scared, they don't know what's going on," she says. "They worked hard to do the right thing by their families, to help support them. Now they have been caught in this web of law enforcement, of officers with uniforms and guns. Imagine how frightening the scenario is for a teenager."

ICE has been cooperative and efficient in handling the minors' cases, she notes. The minors do not wear ankle bracelets, but only intermittently are required to report to immigration authorities in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in order to prove they are still physically in the country. The liberal supervision regime doesn't mean it's easy for them, however.

"You wouldn't believe the panicked situation when they learned they had to report," says Parras. "They thought they were going to be sent home to their countries, if that word 'home' has any meaning for them anymore, because some of them really don't have a home," in their country of origin.

That's the case for Luis Nava Gonzá***, 17, a stocky teenager with clipped black hair and a gruff attitude who was brought to the United States from Mexico at the age of three. He worked at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in order to support his widowed mother and two younger siblings. Along with other underage workers, he operated a sort of chainsaw used to dismember cows.

His mother, Consuelo Gonzá***, a former Agriprocessors employee herself, suffered a workplace accident — she fell down some stairs —and is no longer able to handle heavy work. She has supplemented her son's income with babysitting and daycare work.

Now, she doesn't know how she'll support herself without him as the principal breadwinner. And he faces deportation to a country where he has no real experience and no one to look after him besides distant aunts and uncles.

"I hug him at night and talk to him like they do in the soap operas," says Consuelo. "I say, 'Don't go, mi bombón de chocolate.' He acts tough, but he's extremely nervous all the time. He's having a very hard time. He asks me, 'What am I going to do in Mexico?'"

One afternoon, Luis opens their apartment's screen door halfway to ask his mother if he can go with some friends to Wal-Mart in Decorah, a town a half-hour away. She looks fearfully at him and makes him solemnly promise he won't drive.

"None of this is his fault," she says after he leaves. "It's my fault. It's a thousand times my fault for having brought him here."

A few blocks across Main Street, Abner López, 17, lives with his father Cleotildo, 40, who is one of the few men released with an ankle bracelet device. Abner also worked at the meatpacking plant, and when asked about work conditions, he simply smiles and says, "Very cold," and curls his hands into claws to show how his fingers would stiffen in the course of a day's work.

The day of the raid, says Cleotildo, he embraced his son once he found him outside the plant where the detainees were being processed. He told Abner to place himself in God's hands, "because there's nothing else we can do now."

According to federal labor law, children under the age of 18 are prohibited from "operating power-driven meat-processing machines, and slaughtering, meat packing or processing, and rendering." It's alleged that children were involved in many of these activities at Agriprocessors.

"We have cases of kids... who were using chainsaws to open up cows. That's pretty dangerous," says Parras. "A lot of them were using knives." She also alleges that there was a concerted practice at Agriprocessors of hiring underage workers in order to fill an incessant need for manpower. Some of the detainees have alleged that Agriprocessors knowingly overlooked the age of workers.

Juda Engelmayer, senior vice president for 5WPR, a New York PR firm working for the meatpacker, denies that Agriprocessors had a policy of hiring underage workers or that the company knowingly did so.

Considering that many of the workers were arrested on identity theft charges, he says, "It is possible that some underage people assumed the identities of individuals of legal age." Engelmayer adds that Agriprocessors would fire any employee determined to be lying about being over 18.

'I have nothing in Mexico'

Although ICE intended it as a humanitarian gesture when they allowed certain parents to return home to their children, the released arrestees are hobbled by the shame of the monitoring device — not to mention their inability to provide for their children while waiting for court dates. In all, some 70 children are now living in Postville with parents wearing ankle bracelets.

Since the parents can't legally work, and can't yet leave, they must rely on Postville's overtaxed food pantry and religious charities for checks to help them pay the factory town's inflated rents: as much as $800 for an apartment in a town of 2,000 people in remote northeastern Iowa.

"I feel like I might as well be in prison," says Anacleta Taj Taj López, 24, mother of a chubby and rambunctious seven-year-old. Her husband and three brothers also were arrested in the raids. She comforts her son by telling him that his father is already back home in Guatemala – although he is actually in prison. "He says he wants to be back in Guatemala with his father," she says.

The strain may show most clearly on the parents, but it's the children who probably absorb the anxiety and fear most deeply.

María Guadalupe López, 42, says her young daughter clings to her at different times throughout the day, asking if her mother is going to be taken away again.

"I can't imagine the grief of these children, the loss they've felt," says David Vázquez, campus pastor at Luther College in Decorah, and one of those involved in the ecumenical relief effort. He remembers a little girl who not so long after the raids pointed at a plane and asked if it was coming to take her family away.

The children face another major change: the realization that they'll have to leave the only school they've known. Sonia Melendrez, 28, the musicians' mother, had a lump in her throat when the school enrollment officer came to her door recently and she had to say there was no need for her to enroll her kids this year.

Quendi Alejandra García, 22, has been in the United States nine years and both of her daughters were born here. She prays to be allowed to stay when she has her court date Oct. 14, so that she can keep two-year-old Edith and six-year-old Gabriela in their school, and avoid having to start from scratch in Mexico. "I don't have a house there, I don't have savings, I don't have anything," she says. When she sees the judge, she says she is "going to ask him to let me stay here in my daughters’ country, so they can study, so they can be somebody, and never have to suffer what I suffered."

'What else?'

Two brothers were left without their wives in the raid's aftermath.

The women, fearing their children and husbands would be apprehended if they admitted to having them, lied to immigration agents after the raid and said their husbands and children were in Mexico. So instead of being released with ankle bracelets to look after their children, they were taken to prison.

Their husbands were left to care for seven children between them.

The father with five children did not want to be identified or answer questions, for fear of being detained and deported, but a visit to his home gave a clear indication of how heavily the burden of housekeeping and child-rearing was weighing on him. The five children, dressed haphazardly, stood around listlessly while their father slumped next to the kitchen table, obviously exhausted.

Two twin 11-year-old girls were his only help with the chores and childcare. A toddler sat in a high chair, though he was not being fed.

Flies buzzed around a naked bulb above the kitchen table.

When asked whether he would manage okay, the father shrugged: "¿Qué más?" "What else?"

The Children Should Never Be made to suffer! Twas The Lies And deceit In The beginning By The Parents That Created this unfortunately.

Children Are Indirectly Used As leverage "TOOL" Too Often!!! As Means Of Sympathy To Stay. I Never Wanted To Believe this!!! . But I Swear Is True!!! Having American Born Children Helped Give Security and Protection In The Past. And The Parents knew This .

NEVER EVER USE CHILDREN AS YOUR BULLET PROOF VEST! NEITHER FOR YOUR FAMILY OR SELF!!! Sorry.

Very interesting perspective from an interpreter who worked during a recent ICE Raid.

Interpreting after the Largest ICE Raid in US History: A Personal Account

by Erik Camayd-Freixas

On Monday, May 12, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., in an operation involving some 900 agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed a raid of Agriprocessors Inc, the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant located in the town of Postville, Iowa. The raid -- officials boasted -- was "the largest single-site operation of its kind in American history." At that same hour, 26 federally certified interpreters from all over the country were en route to the small neighboring city of Waterloo, Iowa, having no idea what their mission was about. The investigation had started more than a year earlier. Raid preparations had begun in December. The Clerk's Office of the U.S. District Court had contracted the interpreters a month ahead, but was not at liberty to tell us the whole truth, lest the impending raid be compromised. The operation was led by ICE, which belongs to the executive branch, whereas the U.S. District Court, belonging to the judicial branch, had to formulate its own official reason for participating. Accordingly, the Court had to move for two weeks to a remote location as part of a "Continuity of Operation Exercise" in case they were ever disrupted by an emergency, which in Iowa is likely to be a tornado or flood. That is what we were told, but, frankly, I was not prepared for a disaster of such a different kind, one which was entirely man-made.

. . . http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/camayd-freixas120708.html

quote:

Originally posted by MakeItRight!:
The Children Should Never Be made to suffer! Twas The Lies And deceit In The beginning By The Parents That Created this unfortunately.

Children Are Indirectly Used As leverage "TOOL" Too Often!!! As Means Of Sympathy To Stay. I Never Wanted To Believe this!!! . But I Swear Is True!!! Having American Born Children Helped Give Security and Protection In The Past. And The Parents knew This .

NEVER EVER USE CHILDREN AS YOUR BULLET PROOF VEST! NEITHER FOR YOUR FAMILY OR SELF!!! Sorry.

The problem is the parents are using the kids as an anti-immigration enforcement tool. The pro illegal media is a willing accomplice to this form of child abuse.


Reading the full article disclosed some important facts. One is the illegals were offered a deal. Based on the known fact they were using a USC ssn for employment and being here illegal they were offered a plea bargain and minimal prosecution. Where is the media's sympathy vote for the wronged USC? Where is the media's support for firmer prosecution of law breakers? Viewing the source it leaves no doubt concerning that absence. The reporter and their employer are both pro-illegal agenda pushers. If each supporter were asked to provide their SSN and name for each illegal to use would they support the cause with the same fervor? I doubt it.

The one individual they used as the anchor was a weeping Guatemalan with kids. They did mention he was illiterate and had several children. My question is this. If there was an illiterate American caught doing something illegal regardless of the so-called noble intentions would they receive wringing hands pleas for compassion?

I agree !!!
Stop child and spousal abuse !!!, stop refrain from deportation of illegal parents solely because they may have USC children, spouses, parents or relatives !!!
Immediate deportation of all illegals NOW !!!
No more weeping, kleenex soaking Guatemalans in US !!!

quote:

Originally posted by davdah:

quote:

Originally posted by MakeItRight!:
The Children Should Never Be made to suffer! Twas The Lies And deceit In The beginning By The Parents That Created this unfortunately.

Children Are Indirectly Used As leverage "TOOL" Too Often!!! As Means Of Sympathy To Stay. I Never Wanted To Believe this!!! . But I Swear Is True!!! Having American Born Children Helped Give Security and Protection In The Past. And The Parents knew This .

NEVER EVER USE CHILDREN AS YOUR BULLET PROOF VEST! NEITHER FOR YOUR FAMILY OR SELF!!! Sorry.

The problem is the parents are using the kids as an anti-immigration enforcement tool. The pro illegal media is a willing accomplice to this form of child abuse.


Reading the full article disclosed some important facts. One is the illegals were offered a deal. Based on the known fact they were using a USC ssn for employment and being here illegal they were offered a plea bargain and minimal prosecution. Where is the media's sympathy vote for the wronged USC? Where is the media's support for firmer prosecution of law breakers? Viewing the source it leaves no doubt concerning that absence. The reporter and their employer are both pro-illegal agenda pushers. If each supporter were asked to provide their SSN and name for each illegal to use would they support the cause with the same fervor? I doubt it.

The one individual they used as the anchor was a weeping Guatemalan with kids. They did mention he was illiterate and had several children. My question is this. If there was an illiterate American caught doing something illegal regardless of the so-called noble intentions would they receive wringing hands pleas for compassion?

Human Rights and The Media Alike!! Twisting truths. Using and Projecting Sympathy Onto Others. Manipulation Of Compassion. What Gives More Power Than Sympathizing And feeling For Children and The Elderly?

Don't get Me wrong The parents Love Their Children For What They Understand It To Be?? But Many Do and Have Known The POWER Of This for Generations. It Is Abused!

Creating Sympathy In My Eyes Is The Greatest Power To Those Seeking Something Here. And Too Many Are Extremely Good At Gaining This. Even Within Our Own Organizations, Media, System.

Very SOUR Topic For Me.

Quote By Davdah
"If there was an illiterate American caught doing something illegal regardless of the so-called noble intentions would they receive wringing hands pleas for compassion?"

The Answer Is "NO" Because We Should Have Known Better!!! In Their Eyes. Illiterate Or Not!! Sad Fact!