1 YEAR LATER , IMMIGRATION RAID ON TONER PLANT M.S.E.

[Anonymous]

http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_11654445
One year later, immigration raid at factory leaves lives in limbo
 A
year ago, Gregorio Perez Cruz stood at his work station at a Van Nuys
factory dismantling printer cartridges, as he had done for the previous
two years.Forty-five minutes into his shift, he walked to a nearby
water fountain for a drink and spotted law enforcement officers with
weapons strapped to their legs and waists. What happened next turned
his tranquil life upside down.”They came in shouting, `Everybody out.
Stop doing what you are doing,”‘ Perez Cruz recalled.He said he was
ushered into a hallway, where he saw anxious co-workers trying to
steady trembling hands. That’s when he heard the word “immigration.”

That
moment was the beginning of an ordeal that continues today for Perez
Cruz and more than 100 others arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agents during a raid at Micro Solutions Enterprises in Van
Nuys on Feb. 7, 2008.In the year that has passed, no resolution has
been reached in the cases of Perez Cruz and the bulk of other arrested
workers accused of being in the country illegally. Some have returned
voluntarily to their homelands; others, like Perez Cruz, wait to see if
they may be deported.Of eight workers facing criminal charges, such as
identity theft, 2010 trial dates have been set for four.And so the
debate rages over what, if anything, was gained by the raid at the
printer cartridge factory.

Civil liberties groups are pressing
claims that authorities violated workers’ rights during the raid.ICE,
meanwhile, argues that even without a resolution to individual cases,
the Van Nuys raid acts as a deterrent to illegal immigration and
hiring.The lack of measurable impact, critics say, reflects a national
stalemate over immigration policy – an impasse likely to drag on as the
country’s economic crisis takes center stage and the Obama
administration shapes its own immigration policy.”Nothing has been
gained,” said Nora Preciado, an attorney for the L.A.-based National
Immigration Law Center, a legal group that advocates for the rights of
low-income immigrants and their families. “People’s lives have been
destroyed.”

Perez Cruz, who is represented by the American Civil
Liberties Union, is trying to get his charges dismissed, arguing the
raid wasn’t conducted properly.”The agents flagrantly violated both
immigration regulations and the Constitution,” said Ahilan Arulananthm,
Perez Cruz’s lead attorney and the ACLU’s director of immigrants’
rights and national security.”Most importantly, instead of only
detaining those people who they suspected of being unlawfully present,
they chose just to round up everyone first and gather evidence
later.”Perez Cruz said he was handcuffed, arrested and questioned five
times without being read his rights and without an attorney present. He
says he didn’t get anything to eat for 18 hours after the raid, and he
said he had to drink water from a bathroom sink in the detention
center, where he was taken from the factory.He wasn’t able to use a
bathroom until he got to the detention center, hours after the arrest.

Similar allegations
Other
detainees have made the same charges, which ICE refutes.”It’s our
policy to treat all persons humanely,” said Virginia Kice, an ICE
spokeswoman. “That includes providing adequate food, water and access
to restrooms.”Separate from the immigration and criminal cases, more
than 100 people at the Van Nuys plant filed claims for damages against
the U.S. government, charging that they were unlawfully detained – a
charge ICE disagrees with.”We maintain that the search was conducted
properly in accordance with the terms of the warrant, the federal rules
of criminal procedure and ICE policies,” Kice said.Peter Schey,
president of the L.A.-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional
Law and an attorney for the 115 people from the Van Nuys plant, said
that in addition to emotional distress, such raids cause economic
turmoil for U.S. workers, customers, investors and businesses.

After
raids, business owners consider outsourcing, selling their company,
closing their doors or opening a site outside the United States, Schey
said. The increased costs of doing business are passed on to customers
or remaining workers.”The ripple effect of the economic consequences
are enormous,” Schey said.Plus, the raids do nothing to seriously
address the millions of illegals in the country, he said.During the Van
Nuys raid, ICE arrested 138 people out of the millions of illegals in
the Los Angeles area.”It’s like a grain of sand on the beach,” Schey
said. “It is entirely symbolic.”He suggests a different approach – ICE
officials could audit employment paperwork, identify illegal workers
and then work with employers.

Enforcing the law
Kice noted
that ICE is enforcing the country’s laws and the outcome of this case
is not final.What is definite is that hiring illegal workers doesn’t
benefit business owners, the economy or legal residents and citizens,
the ICE spokeswoman said.In some cases, illegal workers have stolen a
legal resident or citizen’s identity in order to forge the necessary
employment paperwork. Some employers have smuggled workers into the
United States and exploited them, paying them dismal wages.

Raids,
which ICE calls work-site enforcement actions, protect the integrity of
the nation’s legal immigration system, Kice said.”The prospect of
employment is one of the most significant factors fueling illegal
immigration,” she said. “That is why work-site enforcement has been a
important facet of the nation’s immigration enforcement
strategy.”Illegal immigration is down nationwide and increased raids
are likely part of the reason, according to a July 2008 study – called
Homeward Bound – by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington,
D.C.Through last May, the number of illegal immigrants in the country
declined by 1.3 million people compared with the peak during the
previous summer. The center estimates the current illegal population at
11.2 million.

The worsening economy is among the main reasons for the decline.
Barbara
Coe, founder and president of the California Coalition for Immigration
Reform, a Huntington Beach-based nonprofit that advocates enforcing the
nation’s immigration laws, disputes the findings that illegal
immigration has decreased.The election of Barack Obama as president has
changed the atmosphere dramatically, Coe said.”Those statistics are now
a thing of the past,” Coe said. “I am talking to people on the border
who are watching a deluge of illegal aliens coming in, sniffing amnesty
in the air.”

Obama campaigned on having undocumented residents
register, pay fines and begin a path to legalization, which opponents
tag as amnesty, said Angela Kelley, director of the Washington,
D.C.-based Immigration Policy Center, the research arm of the
pro-immigrant American Immigration Law Foundation.Three million
children born in the United States have at least one parent who is
undocumented, Kelley said. And of the 11 million to 12 million
undocumented people in the United States, 60 percent have been here
eight years or longer.”You can’t divide up the family barbecue and put
undocumented on one side and citizens on the other,” Kelley said. “You
are breaking up families.”

The immigration quandary won’t be
solved anytime soon since the economy is taking center stage, said
Steven Camarota, director of research for the Washington, D.C.-based
Center for Immigration Studies, which supports immigration law
enforcement.”Immigration is not going to come up that much,” Camarota
said. “When it does, the political stalemate in Washington is likely to
remain.”That means, if his charges are dropped, Gregorio Perez Cruz’s
life will stay in the same limbo as before, except now he has a
6-month-old son.”I want to stay here,” the 24-year-old said. “I feel
like I am part of this country. I have a family here.”

[Author]

February 10, 2009 at 3:06 PM