By ELISABETH HULETTE, Staff Writer
The Capitol (Annapolis)
Published July 09, 2008
A week ago, David Espana walked out of the shower and found his living room full of police officers.
They broke a bathroom mirror - shards are still caught in the rug - and took him to Baltimore in handcuffs.
He was scared. He wasn't alone.
Doors were smashed in, glass was shattered and guns were thrust in the faces of whole families last Monday when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents backed by county police officers raided at least 15 Annapolis-area homes, arresting 46 undocumented immigrants. The homes belonged to employees of Annapolis Painting Services, which has been under investigation for 18 months for hiring illegal immigrants.
A week later, many of the homes remain as broken as the families.
ICE, which sent 75 agents on the raids, justifies the tactics used in the raids. Breaking down doors, carrying guns and using handcuffs is necessary to protect police and the community, said Scot R. Rittenberg, an assistant special agent for ICE.
"We never know what's behind that door," he said. "Often (in immigrant raids) we've opened the door and found guns pointed at us. We never know if it's MS-13 gang members or just illegal immigrants."
County police, who sent 50 officers to the raids, wouldn't comment on the tactics used. "We were just the support role," said Lt. Thomas Kohlmann.
County Executive John R. Leopold said cracking down on undocumented immigrants is necessary to keep the employers who hire them - like Annapolis Painting Services - from un-dercutting legitimate businesses. He would not comment on the methods used in the raids.
Audra Harrison, a spokesman for his office, said: "The county executive is not an expert on these sorts of investigations, and therefore he leaves it to the experts to determine the tactics."
But the people whose doors were forced open - and their families - think differently. Their only crime is working without papers, yet they were served with violence, they say.
Take Eduardo Delgado. His front door was smashed down by police before he was taken into custody.
"They are no criminals," said Nico Ramos, Mr. Delgado's cousin. "They are hard-working people."
Eric Daniels watched one raid on his way into work.
Across the street from his family's business, The Palate Pleasers catering company, police climbed out of at least three marked and unmarked police cars and suited up in bulletproof vests.
"They're not dangerous," he said. "They're the opposite of dangerous. They're not intending to be sneaky, they just want to work."
Marlin Velasquez, a legal immigrant who works in the kitchen at The Palate Pleasers, said she's been hearing about the raids from friends. In one house, she said, police slashed mattresses looking for documents; in another they cuffed a man's hands and feet.
Ingrid Munoz, an American citizen married to a legal resident who worked for Annapolis Painting Services, said she woke up when agents pounded on her door. They wouldn't let her or her husband get dressed, so she answered their questions wearing a tank top, her underwear and a towel.
ICE didn't even have a warrant to search her home.
Mr. Rittenberg said ICE did a "knock-and-talk search" on two or three houses. That's when agents approach a house they believe, based on investigation, is hiding immigrants, and ask for permission to search.
"You feel safe in your home, you never think that's going to happen to you," Ms. Munoz said. "I've never been in trouble."
The white wooden door frame on Jaclyn Munoz's house off Forest Drive was splintered when agents broke into her home. She's not even an illegal immigrant, she said.
Shannon Brown, an American citizen, said when her boyfriend opened their door, the house was surrounded by at least 20 agents. One pointed a gun at him, yelling in Spanish.
"He doesn't even speak Spanish," she said.
They searched the apartment while she got her two daughters, ages 4 and 7, out. She didn't want them to see the raid.
"They had one man handcuffed to a chair. He was shaking like a leaf," she said of one man who worked with her boyfriend at Annapolis Painting Services.
Ms. Brown spent the day after the raids fixing one family's house, where the doors all had been beaten down. That family's in a quandary, she said. The father was taken in the raids, but the mother is a citizen. The mother went to Mexico so she can meet up with him after he's deported.
"I can't imagine trying to raise a family there," Ms. Brown said. "They don't speak Spanish. They're Americans."
One woman, an immigrant who declined to give her name, said police broke through a glass door and hit her boyfriend in the chest with the handle of a gun. She doesn't know where he was taken.
Mr. Rittenburg said no one was hit like that.
Mario Quiroz-Servellon, a spokesman for CASA de Maryland, an immigrant advocacy organization, said treating undocumented immigrants like criminals, particularly in front of their children, will hurt police and the community in the long run.
"Immigration is a civil offense, not a criminal offense," he said. "So when they act like this, what they're doing is scaring people and breaking the trust that people have in law enforcement."
For the families of people taken in raids, it always happens the same way, said David Perechocky of the Capital Area Immigrants' Rights Coalition. A child doesn't get picked up from school, someone disappears, and no one knows why. Family members begin to panic. They get very little information, and what they do hear is in English, so they don't understand.
"It's a lot of confusion, and it's a scary situation," Mr. Perechocky said.
Liz Alex of CASA de Maryland, has been helping the families. At first, calls came from people trying to find the immigrants who were taken, she said.
"Now we're getting the second wave, of families who are homeless or have lost their breadwinner," she said.
Rev. John Lavin of St. Mary's Parish in Annapolis has seen firsthand the poverty that immigrants from El Salvador faced before they came to America. Seventeen people lived in one house he visited; one woman earned just $6 a day.
"The reason they come here and do these kinds of jobs is that they come from poverty," he said. "They're here trying to help their families. They are family people."
Jonathan Greene, an attorney and a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says the nation's immigration system is broken. America needs immigrant workers just as much as they need to work here. But not nearly enough visas are available - just 5,000 permanent visas are given out each year for low-skilled "essential" workers when there's enough demand for a million.
Congress could change the laws and issue more visas, creating an easier path to legal immigration and taking pressure off the border with Mexico, but hasn't yet, he said.
"If you do that, then the people who are protecting the border can focus on real threats to America - drugs, gangs and real terrorists - instead of chasing people who risk dying across the desert to simply work," he said.
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