*Immigrants' Rights and Civil Rights Groups Call for a Moratorium on Immigration Raids*
==============================================================
National Immigration Project
Of the National Lawyers Guild
------------
----------------------------------------------
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 20, 2007
Contact: Paromita Shah, National Immigration Project, 617-227-9727 x. 1
Marielena Hincapié, National Immigration Law Center, 213-639-3900 x. 112
*IMMIGRANTS' RIGHTS AND CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS CALL FOR A MORATORIUM ON
IMMIGRATION RAIDS*
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 26, 2007
Contact: Paromita Shah, National Immigration Project, 617-227-9727 x. 1
Marielena Hincapié, National Immigration Law Center, 213-639-3900 x. 112
*IMMIGRANTS' RIGHTS AND CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS CALL FOR A MORATORIUM ON
IMMIGRATION RAIDS*
On Tuesday, March 27, 2007, the United States House Appropriations
Subcommittee on Homeland Security will be holding a hearing on the
enforcement of immigration laws, in which Julie Myers, the Assistant
Secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement
will be testifying.
The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, the
National Immigration Law Center, Asista Immigration Technical
Assistance, Interfaith Worker Justice, Laborers' International Union of
North America, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, National
Employment Law Project, National Lawyers Guild, National Network to End
Violence Against Immigrant Women, Service Employees International Union,
The Family Violence Prevention Fund, and The Immigrant Women's Project
of Legal Momentum jointly call on the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to immediately halt
the immigration raids that have been devastating communities across the
United States. The brutal, unfair, and hostile treatment that
accompanies these raids is an affront to both the immigrant and citizen
communities. Furthermore, these raids underscore the need for
immigration reform that restores due process, fairness, and
accountability to everyone who enters the immigration system.
The recent raid in New Bedford, Massachusetts, underscores the cruel and
inhumane impact on the workers detained, their families, their U.S.
citizen children, and the broader community. In recent months DHS has
overzealously conducted an increased number of raids in several states,
including California, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota,
Mississippi, Nebraska, and Texas. In these often military-style
operations, DHS has arrested and detained a massive number of workers
who could not immediately prove their immigration status. The
undersigned object to the indiscriminate scope of these raids, DHS's
violations of the constitutional and due process rights of those
detained, the inhumane manner in which the raids were conducted, and the
inappropriate timing of these enforcement actions as Congress stands
poised to enact immigration reform.
We also call on DHS to:
1. Investigate allegations that detained individuals have been denied
access to counsel, illegally interrogated, and subjected to abusive
treatment.
2. Halt transfers of those arrested by DHS.
3. Provide accurate and timely lists of pro bono attorneys and nonprofit
agencies that may assist detainees in securing legal representation.
4. Notify counsel and family members within 24 hours of transferring any
detainee.
5. Provide prompt custody hearings, and release individuals on their own
recognizance.
6. Promulgate humane and enforceable regulations for the treatment of
those detained, including provisions for dealing with minor children of
detainees.
7. Allow state service-providers to access individuals detained by DHS
to assist with care of minor children or other vulnerable family members.
8. Afford detained workers who have been unfairly and illegally
exploited at the raided places of employment to pursue labor claims
against their employers.
*/As our organizations struggle to assist families and communities
devastated by these raids, we have witnessed the following:/*
*/Indiscriminate, discriminatory raids. /*Reports from around the
country show that with the escalation of raids in recent months, no part
of our communities has been left unscathed. Instead of targeting
individual wrongdoers or those engaged in widespread criminal
enterprise, DHS agents have arrested people based on their racial/ethnic
appearance, accent, or limited English skills. In Minnesota during the
Swift raids, workers and advocates in the Swift plant reported that
individuals were first divided into groups by the color of their skin
and that white workers were not even questioned. Using military-style
tactics, DHS agents terrorized communities and workers by barging into
apartments and seizing the occupants, apprehending parents picking up
their children from school, confronting restaurant patrons about their
immigration status, raiding day laborer sites, and sweeping up workers
wherever they could. Entire communities have been devastated - children
abandoned and ripped apart from their parents, families made fearful to
leave their homes and terrified to send their children to school - which
in turn has made all our communities less safe.
*/Due process rights violated and inhumane treatment of arrested
individuals. /*Even more disturbing are the reports of cruel treatment
of workers during and after the raids. Our organizations have received
reports that common practices have included the following:
1. DHS entered factory floors with semi-automatic weapons and proceeded
to physically restrain those suspected of lacking immigration status.
2. DHS agents used inappropriate force in carrying out raids
3. DHS refused or failed to provide for the most basic needs - including
food, water, and medical treatment - of detained workers, including
pregnant women.
4. DHS intentionally and routinely utilized a process of transferring
detained workers to far-flung detention centers across the country, even
in cases where the transfer separated them from minor children or
vulnerable family members. For example, within hours of arrest in
Massachusetts, workers were flown to remote detention facilities in
south and west Texas. These transfers effectively bar access to counsel
and cause wide-scale panic in communities whose members do not know how
to find or help their loved ones. DHS is one of the largest jailers in
the world and continues to hold individuals in prisons, jails, and
detention centers where thousands of detainees are routinely denied
necessary medical care, visitation, legal materials, or functioning
telephones. These violations underscore the need for regulations to
govern the treatment of those detained by DHS.
5. The raids separated hundreds children from their mothers, who often
were their only care-takers. Members of our organizations working with
detainees discovered that a significant number of the undocumented women
and children detained in these raids are eligible for status,
particularly as victims of crimes, but ICE did not inform them of this.
Unfortunately many women and children were summarily deported before
they could learn of the special routes to status Congress created for
them. Such enforcement actions seriously undermine the Congressional and
national goals of challenging violence against women and children.
*//*
*/No day in court for workers./* Coercive tactics are often used to
obtain signatures from the detained workers on "stipulated removal
orders," which can result in their being removed from the U.S. and
losing any opportunity to present a defense or obtain permanent status
and be reunited with family members - without the workers ever even
having the opportunity to appear before a judge.
//
As stated earlier/, /Congress stands poised to take up federal
immigration reform and to possibly enact a comprehensive reform package
that would allow some of the very immigrants being targeted in these
raids to legalize their status. The workers being targeted for arrest,
detention, and deportation are some of the very workers on whom United
States employers and communities rely for their needed skills and their
willingness to fill a variety of U.S. jobs. These workers are often
toiling in substandard conditions akin to those of 100 years ago that
led to the adoption of today's labor laws (no breaks, no overtime,
horrible health and safety conditions, etc) that are barely enforced.
Many of these families are those whom our broken immigration system has
failed - gladly taking their hard work, but having no immigration status
to provide them in return. Against the backdrop of the immigration
reform debate, DHS creates and facilitates a climate of fear in our
communities. We must halt these unlawful raids and create humane and
fair processes for everyone entering the immigration system.
