Coloradoan.com
July 18th, 2008
LOVELAND - At least five families connected to Wednesday's immigration raid that led to 18 arrests at a Loveland concrete form company have contacted a "help line" set up by an immigrants advocate group.
Kim Medina, an attorney for Fuerza Latina, a social justice organization in Fort Collins and Loveland that set up the phone line, said her office was still assessing how the raids have affected the families.
Medina said such raids tend to have a devastating effect on the community.
"They separate parents from children and husbands and wives and leave employers without workers," she said. "It's certainly not the solution to the immigration issue that we face."
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers served a search warrant Wednesday morning at Colorado Precast Concrete Inc. in Loveland after receiving a tip that the company was employing illegal immigrants.
Company official Penny Hayward on Wednesday said the company would comment about the raid Thursday; but plant owner, Scott Hayward, didn't return phone calls Thursday requesting an interview.
ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said Thursday that the company didn't know it was employing illegal immigrants and will likely not face criminal charges.
The 18 men who were "administratively arrested" were taken to the Park County Jail in Fairplay, which had available beds. The men could be there for weeks before being deported, Rusnok said.
The office does not release the names of the people arrested, though Rusnok said 17 are from Mexico and one is from El Salvador.
"One of the most frustrating and harmful impacts ... is that ICE is unwilling to release the names," said Julian Ross, director of the Colorado Immigrants Rights Coalition, who also is trying to help the families affected.
He added that sometimes legal immigrants are swept up in raids and are later released when their proper identification is verified. He suspected that could be the case in Loveland.
But Rusnok confirmed Thursday that all 18 of the men arrested were in the United States illegally and will be deported.
"These people are scab labor, that's how I view people coming in and undercutting the labor wage," said Stan Weekes, the director of Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform.
Weekes said the real victims in illegal immigration are American citizens who lose out on jobs given to someone working illegally in the country.
Immigration raids and deportations indeed break up families, Weekes said, but that's a choice illegal immigrants make. Such an argument is rarely made when people are prosecuted and jailed for common criminal offenses.
"I think people who are here illegally in this country should be charged with child neglect for putting their child at that risk," he said.
The last major immigration raid by ICE officers in Northern Colorado occurred in December 2006 when agents raided a Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley and arrested 260 people as part of a nationwide sweep of a half dozen plants.
After that incident, many Greeley city and health and human service officials said the raid hurt the community.
Helen Somersall, director of Catholic Charities Northern in Fort Collins, worked with 120 families connected to the deported illegal immigrants from the Greeley raid, with help from United Way and the Our Lady of Peace Church in Greeley.
She said the families had basic financial problems and needed help paying rent, making car payments and getting food. Many of the people the agency helped were women with young children.
None of the children connected to the Swift raid were without a guardian, and Somersall believes that's because the families had prepared for a possible deportation.
http://www.coloradoimmigrant.org/article.php?id=200
