One year later, immigration raid at factory leaves lives in limbo
Contracosta Times
By Jerry Berrios, Staff Writer
Posted: 02/08/2009
A year ago, Gregorio Perez Cruz stood at his work station at a Van Nuys factory dismantling printer cartridges, as he had done for the previous two years.
Forty-five minutes into his shift, he walked to a nearby water fountain for a drink and spotted law enforcement officers with weapons strapped to their legs and waists. What happened next turned his tranquil life upside down.
"They came in shouting, `Everybody out. Stop doing what you are doing,"' Perez Cruz recalled.
He said he was ushered into a hallway, where he saw anxious co-workers trying to steady trembling hands. That's when he heard the word "immigration."
That moment was the beginning of an ordeal that continues today for Perez Cruz and more than 100 others arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during a raid at Micro Solutions Enterprises in Van Nuys on Feb. 7, 2008.
In the year that has passed, no resolution has been reached in the cases of Perez Cruz and the bulk of other arrested workers accused of being in the country illegally. Some have returned voluntarily to their homelands; others, like Perez Cruz, wait to see if they may be deported.
Of eight workers facing criminal charges, such as identity theft, 2010 trial dates have been set for four.
And so the debate rages over what, if anything, was gained by the raid at the printer cartridge factory.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_11654445
