Raid's Outcome May Signal a Retreat In Immigration Strategy, Critics Say
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 2, 2008; A13
The federal government's handling of a massive immigration raid at a Mississippi manufacturing plant last week has led critics to suggest that the Bush administration is backpedaling from its aggressive use of criminal charges and fast-tracked trials against illegal immigrants caught at workplaces.
U.S. officials reject any suggestion of a retreat or a shift in strategy in the Aug. 25 raid at a Howard Industries transformer plant in Laurel, Miss. In the nation's largest immigration enforcement operation at a single work site, federal agents arrested nearly 600 illegal immigrants there but charged only eight criminally, turning over the rest for civil deportation proceedings, as they have in the past.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency "continues to target egregious employers . . . to identify individuals engaging in identity theft, and we seek criminal charges where appropriate," spokeswoman Kelly A. Nantel said.
Nonetheless, it was a stark departure from the way authorities conducted the previous record-setting sweep 15 weeks earlier.
On May 12, immigration agents apprehended 389 illegal immigrants at an Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. Nearly 300 were charged, convicted and sentenced within 10 days in group trials in temporary courts set up at a fairground. Most pleaded guilty to document fraud, receiving five-month prison sentences.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/01/AR2008090102358.html
