Workers' arrests lead to tangle of challenges
Hearings set for Nov. 12, but family, property issues remain, say volunteers
By E. Richard Walton, STAFF WRITER
Greenville Online
November 2, 2008
Many of the undocumented workers caught in a federal raid in Greenville last month may be deported, leaving behind family members, homes, cars, clothes and other property which a network of local volunteers is trying to sort and manage.
Court hearings are set to begin Nov. 12, according to a local attorney who has been providing legal advice to workers accused of using fake or falsified paperwork to get jobs at House of Raeford Columbia Farms chicken-processing plant on Rutherford Road. About a dozen supervisors were also arrested prior to the raid.
Patricia Ravenhorst, a lawyer with the Wyche law firm, said some of the workers being held in Georgia jails aren't going to fight the charges. She said they have been transferred to jails in Alabama to be deported.
Ravenhorst said she knows very few instances when undocumented workers caught in a raid like this have been permitted to remain in the United States.
A number of area churches are providing emotional and financial support to the workers and their families in the meantime, said Bill Lancaster, a spokesman for Foothills Presbytery.
More than 230 of the workers, most of them Guatemalans, are being held in two jails in Georgia, according to Ravenhorst. At last count, federal officials have released about 58 workers.
Most of those released were women, primary caregivers or the family's major wage earner, according to a report by Ravenhorst. Those caregivers who were released agreed to wear electronic monitors on their ankles.
Ravenhorst said volunteers are still screening those with court dates and trying to get lawyers to represent them.
"We have 379 people in our database, from which 107 have been released and are still in Greenville," said Adela Mendoza, a member of the Alliance for Collaboration with the Hispanic Community, a nonprofit aided by volunteers.
Mendoza said there are other Hispanic workers who were asking for help, but volunteers wanted to focus solely on those caught in the raid and released from jail.
"We called folks who were wearing bracelets," she said.
Volunteers bought $500 worth of food which they sorted and packed in 100 boxes to distribute. About $10,000 has been donated to those families to pay rent or mortgages that might be due.
While the raid attacked one problem, others remain, Lancaster said. For example, couples from other countries who have lived and worked in the United States for years have children who are American-born.
"It makes things complicated," Lancaster said.
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20081102/NEWS01/811020319/1001/NEWS01
