Immigration Raid Spotlights Rift of Have-Nots
Shannon Ogden
Associated Press
January 23, 2009
Workplace raids reached an all-time high in 2008 with 6,287 arrests -- a tenfold rise since 2003. After the 9-11 attacks, in the name of national security, the Bush administration announced it wanted to detain, and then deport, every illegal immigrant in America. Such a drastic change in immigration policy was necessary to safeguard the country against terrorists, said the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.
But swooping down on low-paying jobs has yet to produce terrorism suspects. Asked if any of the raids had produced terror-related arrests, ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez replied, "Not to my knowledge."
Such raids have netted sweatshop workers in Massachusetts, kosher slaughterhouse employees in Iowa and federal courthouse janitors in Rhode Island.
But the biggest roundup -- 592 people arrested, mostly for the crime of illegally entering this country -- was here in Laurel.
Since then, 414 Hispanics have been deported; 23 have left voluntarily and 27 were released on bond pending immigration hearings. One remains incarcerated at a federal detention center in Jena, La. Nine were charged with identity theft for using false identification.
More than 100, mostly women with children, were released pending the outcome of their cases. They wade through a long, confusing current of immigration hearings that will determine their futures. Many fear venturing out, lest they receive withering glances in the Wal-Mart aimed at the electronic monitoring devices on their ankles.
Immigrant groups, religious leaders, and various Democrats have expressed hope that the raids will be curtailed under President Barack Obama. The immigrants in Laurel know this, and they hope Obama's promise of change applies to them.
"We just want to work," says Ismael Cabrera, a 37-year-old father of two, who paid a smuggler $2,000 to walk him across the desert into Arizona, then paid $1,000 more to get a ride to Laurel, where he first worked in a chicken slaughterhouse.
"It's not that we took the jobs from other people," he says in Spanish. "It's that they don't want to work them."
He waits on a deportation hearing and weeps at the prospect of going back to his hometown near Mexico City, where he made little money. His son, Cesar, has few memories of that place. He left when he was 6.
Now a sweet-faced boy of 13, Cesar respectfully interprets for his father in perfect English delivered with a Mississippi drawl.
Cesar is asked how he feels about going back to Mexico.
His gaze drops to his feet. His eyes brim with tears. He wipes his nose with the back of his wrist, sitting in Pentecostal church his family attends. "Bad," he manages to get out. "It would feel bad."
Cabrera wipes his own face with the sleeve of his shirt.
"Sometimes I ask myself if it was worth it to come here," he says in a voice just above a whisper.
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