AFP via Terra Noticias
03 de junio de 2011
Bernardo y José Pablo, dos guatemaltecos que este viernes llegaron deportados desde Estados Unidos a Guatemala en un grupo de 135 indocumentados, esperan encontrar oportunidades para ganarse la vida en este empobrecido país para no tener que emigrar nuevamente.
Bernardo, de 30 años, cuenta que vivió 12 años en Providence, Rhode Island (noreste de EEUU), y está casado desde hace tres años con una estadounidense, con quien tuvo dos hijos y de los que se encuentra separado actualmente.
Su vida cambió cuando fue detenido por conducir un vehículo sin licencia: estuvo nueve meses preso antes de ser deportado al país donde nació.
"Estoy en mi país y me siento libre", dice Bernardo a la AFP, cuya familia vive en Qhiché (norte) y quien se niega a proporcionar su apellido "por seguridad".
José Pablo, de 27 años, fue capturado por agentes de migración en Estados Unidos, luego de vivir una pesadilla en México, donde fue secuestrado por miembros del temido cartel Los Zetas. Tuvo que pagarles 1.200 dólares para que lo liberaran y continuar su camino hacia el "sueño americano".
"Antes de subir al tren me abordaron unos 'coyotes' (traficantes de indocumentados). Caminaron un poco conmigo y luego me encerraron en una casa. Adentro me apuntaron con fusiles, me dijeron que eran de Los Zetas y me exigieron 1.200 dólares para dejarme ir", cuenta a la AFP.
Con Bernardo y José Pablo suman 12.938 los guatemaltecos deportados desde Estados Unidos en 2011, aunque para este viernes todavía estaba pendiente el aterrizaje de otro vuelo con otros 91 expulsados. El año pasado, llegaron 29.095 deportados.
Muchos migrantes intentan llegar nuevamente a Estados Unidos, desafiando los peligros del paso por México, donde el año pasado 72 migrantes de El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador y Brasil fueron masacrados en una hacienda de Tamaulipas.
Para disuadirlos de intentarlo de nuevo, la Dirección General de Migración de Guatemala y la Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (OIM) lanzaron este viernes un programa destinado a dotarlos de oportunidades laborales en el país.
"Se busca la reintegración sostenible de los repatriados. La estrategia con el sector privado se centra en la reintegración socio-económica de los migrantes vulnerables, mediante el establecimiento de alianzas e iniciativas con responsabilidad social empresarial", dijo el jefe de la Misión de la OIM en Guatemala, Delbert Field.
Por su parte, el director general de Migración, Enrique Degenhart, dijo que la idea es conseguirles empleo aprovechando las experiencias que los repatriados adquirieron en Estados Unidos, como en el caso de Bernardo, quien trabajaba en el mantenimiento de motores y máquinas en diferentes fábricas.
El programa contempla asistencia básica a los recién llegados, con la entrega de elementos de higiene personal, apoyo psicológico, asesoría legal y transporte a sus ciudades y aldeas.
Bernardo dice que, además de procurarse un empleo, buscará la manera de juntarse con esposa e hijos, en Guatemala o en Estados Unidos, donde su esposa contrató un abogado para gestionar su regreso.
José Pablo, quien trabajaba en redes de fibra óptica, dice que espera encontrar un empleo en Guatemala, aunque no está dispuesto a esperar mucho, pues necesita alimentar a sus tres hijos.
Si no consigue algo pronto, partirá de nuevo por tierra hacia Estados Unidos, sin importar los riesgos.
En su anterior viaje, mientras iba en un tren con otros migrantes, se durmió un rato. "Cuando desperté me contaron que dos de ellos se cayeron del tren y murieron", cuenta.
http://noticias.terra.com.pe/internacional/latinoamerica/guatemaltecos-deportados-de-eeuu-esperan-opciones-en-su-pais-para-no-migrar,7f98c1bab6750310VgnVCM4000009bf154d0RCRD.html
Showing posts with label Expulsions in RI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Expulsions in RI. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
Immigrant Advocates Push Rhode Island to Refuse “Secure Communities”
Posted by Deportation Nation
January 10, 2011
Even as Rhode Island’s new governor withdrew from a controversial immigration enforcement program last week, the state’s attorney general may enroll in a similar system that has generated mistrust between migrants and police.
“We’re quite concerned that what one public official has given, another is prepared to take away,” said Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island ACLU.
Newly inaugurated Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee met a campaign promise last Wednesday when he rescinded an executive order signed by his predecessor that enrolled the state police in 287(g) and required businesses to check the status of employees through the E-Verify system. Latino voters who helped Chafee win his election looked on and welcomed the move with a standing ovation.
Chafee said the previous order that deputized state police to check immigration status “caused needless anxiety within our Latino community without demonstrating any progress on illegal immigration, an issue I strongly believe must be solved at the federal level.”
Studies documenting the impact of the old order revealed many immigrants had become afraid to leave their houses, while others had moved out of state. The governor said his new executive order encouraged “comprehensive dialogue with our immigrant communities, law enforcement agencies, and all interested parties … to reach a consensus on how best to enforce the law.”
But so far, dialogue with a key decision maker has been limited to protests and unanswered letters.
New Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, a former police captain, supports enrolling the state in “Secure Communities” by the end of January. The program shares arrest data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) so agents can locate immigrants, transfer them into federal custody and deport them.
In December, Kilmartin joined state and local police for a meeting with ICE officials to discuss Secure Communities. Afterward, he said, “I look forward to signing onto this program as Attorney General – which will help move our state towards a more secure future.”
Immigrant advocates protest in the lobby outside Attorney General Kilmartin's office after he refused to meet with them last Wednesday.
Immigrant advocates say Kilmartin has since refused their request for their own meeting to discuss the program.
“He is a public servant and in position to protect the public,” said Camilo Viveiros, director of Rhode Island Jobs With Justice. “He needs to be educated so he does not make a unilateral decision that puts our community in danger.”
Viveiros was among dozens of protesters who gathered in the lobby of Kilmartin’s office last Wednesday. He said Secure Communities has failed to meet its mandate of deporting dangerous criminals, and instead targeted “victims of a broken immigration policy that doesn’t allow a path to citizenship.”
In December Viveiros signed a letter to Kilmartin from several immigrant and civil rights groups that attempted to set the record straight on whether the program is voluntary.
“In suggesting that the harm flowing from the S-Comm program can be mitigated, you have been quoted as saying that local police departments in Rhode Island can opt out of participation,” reads the letter. “Unfortunately, there is substantial evidence that this is incorrect.”
The letter urges Kilmartin to “make clear that those fingerprints coming from “opt-out” police departments are appropriately tagged so that the FBI would be apprised to run those fingerprints only through their usual criminal databases, not the immigration databases that are at the heart of this controversy.”
It also suggests Kilmartin add provisions to the Secure Communities agreement that limit the state to sharing arrest data of persons arrested for Level 1 crimes, and to complying with “holds” that ICE requests for Level 1 offenders. Nationwide, the program has targeted mostly Level 2 and 3 offenders, as well people ICE refers to as “non-criminals.”
While the letters were addressed to Kilmartin and Chafee, a different official may actually be responsible for signing the Secure Communities agreement with ICE. Rhode Island State Police Superintendent Brendan P. Doherty signed the now invalid 287(g) agreement with ICE in October 2009, and agreements in other states have been signed by similar officials in charge of their state’s criminal justice information systems.
The state’s former 287(g) participation resulted in the deportation of 12 immigrants during the 2009 fiscal year, according to ICE.
In 2007, the state chapter of the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Rhode Island State Police for illegally detaining 14 Guatemalan immigrants after a traffic stop. The incident occurred when an officer stopped a van for changing lanes without using a turn signal. He confirmed the license and registration of the driver were valid, but then asked all of the passengers to provide identification and proof of U.S. citizenship. When they were unable to do so he said he would escort them to ICE, and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to escape.
For now, Rhode Island remains free from any agreement with federal immigration authorities to share arrest data. But Doherty said state police “will still communicate and cooperate with ICE in matters of mutual concern.
Newly-elected mayor of Providence, Angel Taveras, could become the first city to try to refuse participation in Secure Communities if the state joins the program.
http://www.deportationnation.org/2011/01/immigrant-advocates-push-rhode-island-to-refuse-secure-communities/
January 10, 2011
Even as Rhode Island’s new governor withdrew from a controversial immigration enforcement program last week, the state’s attorney general may enroll in a similar system that has generated mistrust between migrants and police.
“We’re quite concerned that what one public official has given, another is prepared to take away,” said Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island ACLU.
Newly inaugurated Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee met a campaign promise last Wednesday when he rescinded an executive order signed by his predecessor that enrolled the state police in 287(g) and required businesses to check the status of employees through the E-Verify system. Latino voters who helped Chafee win his election looked on and welcomed the move with a standing ovation.
Chafee said the previous order that deputized state police to check immigration status “caused needless anxiety within our Latino community without demonstrating any progress on illegal immigration, an issue I strongly believe must be solved at the federal level.”
Studies documenting the impact of the old order revealed many immigrants had become afraid to leave their houses, while others had moved out of state. The governor said his new executive order encouraged “comprehensive dialogue with our immigrant communities, law enforcement agencies, and all interested parties … to reach a consensus on how best to enforce the law.”
But so far, dialogue with a key decision maker has been limited to protests and unanswered letters.
New Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, a former police captain, supports enrolling the state in “Secure Communities” by the end of January. The program shares arrest data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) so agents can locate immigrants, transfer them into federal custody and deport them.
In December, Kilmartin joined state and local police for a meeting with ICE officials to discuss Secure Communities. Afterward, he said, “I look forward to signing onto this program as Attorney General – which will help move our state towards a more secure future.”
Immigrant advocates protest in the lobby outside Attorney General Kilmartin's office after he refused to meet with them last Wednesday.
Immigrant advocates say Kilmartin has since refused their request for their own meeting to discuss the program.
“He is a public servant and in position to protect the public,” said Camilo Viveiros, director of Rhode Island Jobs With Justice. “He needs to be educated so he does not make a unilateral decision that puts our community in danger.”
Viveiros was among dozens of protesters who gathered in the lobby of Kilmartin’s office last Wednesday. He said Secure Communities has failed to meet its mandate of deporting dangerous criminals, and instead targeted “victims of a broken immigration policy that doesn’t allow a path to citizenship.”
In December Viveiros signed a letter to Kilmartin from several immigrant and civil rights groups that attempted to set the record straight on whether the program is voluntary.
“In suggesting that the harm flowing from the S-Comm program can be mitigated, you have been quoted as saying that local police departments in Rhode Island can opt out of participation,” reads the letter. “Unfortunately, there is substantial evidence that this is incorrect.”
The letter urges Kilmartin to “make clear that those fingerprints coming from “opt-out” police departments are appropriately tagged so that the FBI would be apprised to run those fingerprints only through their usual criminal databases, not the immigration databases that are at the heart of this controversy.”
It also suggests Kilmartin add provisions to the Secure Communities agreement that limit the state to sharing arrest data of persons arrested for Level 1 crimes, and to complying with “holds” that ICE requests for Level 1 offenders. Nationwide, the program has targeted mostly Level 2 and 3 offenders, as well people ICE refers to as “non-criminals.”
While the letters were addressed to Kilmartin and Chafee, a different official may actually be responsible for signing the Secure Communities agreement with ICE. Rhode Island State Police Superintendent Brendan P. Doherty signed the now invalid 287(g) agreement with ICE in October 2009, and agreements in other states have been signed by similar officials in charge of their state’s criminal justice information systems.
The state’s former 287(g) participation resulted in the deportation of 12 immigrants during the 2009 fiscal year, according to ICE.
In 2007, the state chapter of the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Rhode Island State Police for illegally detaining 14 Guatemalan immigrants after a traffic stop. The incident occurred when an officer stopped a van for changing lanes without using a turn signal. He confirmed the license and registration of the driver were valid, but then asked all of the passengers to provide identification and proof of U.S. citizenship. When they were unable to do so he said he would escort them to ICE, and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to escape.
For now, Rhode Island remains free from any agreement with federal immigration authorities to share arrest data. But Doherty said state police “will still communicate and cooperate with ICE in matters of mutual concern.
Newly-elected mayor of Providence, Angel Taveras, could become the first city to try to refuse participation in Secure Communities if the state joins the program.
http://www.deportationnation.org/2011/01/immigrant-advocates-push-rhode-island-to-refuse-secure-communities/
Friday, January 7, 2011
RI Gov. Chafee rescinds immigration order
By Eric Tucker
The Associated Press
January 5, 2011
PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee on Wednesday rescinded an executive order that cracked down on illegal immigration and said he had directed state police to end a federal agreement under which troopers directly assist with immigration enforcement.
The move fulfills one of Chafee's campaign pledges and cancels one of the more contentious acts taken by his predecessor, Republican Don Carcieri.
The 2008 order, which sparked protests and a heated debate on immigration reform, directed state agencies and vendors that do business with the state to use the federal E-Verify database to check the employment eligibility of new hires.
It also required state police to enter an agreement with federal immigration authorities to help with immigration enforcement. The agreement, known as 287(g), gave specialized immigration enforcement training to some troopers, allowing them direct access to an electronic immigration database to quickly check if a suspect in custody is in the country illegally. The state police routinely check the immigration status of suspects they arrest if troopers have reason to believe they're in the country illegally.
Chafee, speaking before scores of immigrant advocates at the International Institute of Rhode Island, said he considered the executive order divisive and had seen no evidence that it had reined in costs or otherwise been successful.
"My view is that Rhode Island can grow economically by being a tolerant place to do business," Chafee said. "The immigrant-rich areas, I want to see them prosper, and they need it."
Chafee, a former Republican U.S. senator who became an independent in 2007 and was sworn in as governor on Tuesday, reiterated his belief that immigration enforcement needs to be dealt with on a federal level and said he would support measures that provide a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Chafee said he didn't want state troopers enforcing immigration law, but added that he still needed to work out details with Superintendent Brendan Doherty about what precise changes would be implemented. Doherty said he would respect the governor's order to end the 287(g) agreement but also said his troopers would continue to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement whenever someone who's arrested is found to be in the country illegally.
"Let me be perfectly clear that the Rhode Island State Police will still communicate and cooperate with ICE in matters of mutual concern," Doherty said.
Immigrants and their advocates gave Chafee a standing ovation as he entered the room and hailed the repeal of the executive order as a show of tolerance and respect.
"We come here to work hard. I know some people make mistakes -- not all of them. Most of us are working hard, make better lives, live the American dream," said Frank Garcia, a Guatemalan immigrant who lives in Providence and works for a printing company.
New Attorney General Peter Kilmartin has said he plans to enlist the state in the federal government's "Secure Communities" program, which allows local police departments to automatically check fingerprints of arrested suspects against a federal immigration database. Demonstrators gathered at the attorney general's office Wednesday afternoon to protest against the program, but Kilmartin's spokeswoman said he remains committed to having the state participate.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/articles/2011/01/05/ri_gov_chafee_to_rescind_immigration_order/?s_campaign=8315
The Associated Press
January 5, 2011
PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee on Wednesday rescinded an executive order that cracked down on illegal immigration and said he had directed state police to end a federal agreement under which troopers directly assist with immigration enforcement.
The move fulfills one of Chafee's campaign pledges and cancels one of the more contentious acts taken by his predecessor, Republican Don Carcieri.
The 2008 order, which sparked protests and a heated debate on immigration reform, directed state agencies and vendors that do business with the state to use the federal E-Verify database to check the employment eligibility of new hires.
It also required state police to enter an agreement with federal immigration authorities to help with immigration enforcement. The agreement, known as 287(g), gave specialized immigration enforcement training to some troopers, allowing them direct access to an electronic immigration database to quickly check if a suspect in custody is in the country illegally. The state police routinely check the immigration status of suspects they arrest if troopers have reason to believe they're in the country illegally.
Chafee, speaking before scores of immigrant advocates at the International Institute of Rhode Island, said he considered the executive order divisive and had seen no evidence that it had reined in costs or otherwise been successful.
"My view is that Rhode Island can grow economically by being a tolerant place to do business," Chafee said. "The immigrant-rich areas, I want to see them prosper, and they need it."
Chafee, a former Republican U.S. senator who became an independent in 2007 and was sworn in as governor on Tuesday, reiterated his belief that immigration enforcement needs to be dealt with on a federal level and said he would support measures that provide a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Chafee said he didn't want state troopers enforcing immigration law, but added that he still needed to work out details with Superintendent Brendan Doherty about what precise changes would be implemented. Doherty said he would respect the governor's order to end the 287(g) agreement but also said his troopers would continue to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement whenever someone who's arrested is found to be in the country illegally.
"Let me be perfectly clear that the Rhode Island State Police will still communicate and cooperate with ICE in matters of mutual concern," Doherty said.
Immigrants and their advocates gave Chafee a standing ovation as he entered the room and hailed the repeal of the executive order as a show of tolerance and respect.
"We come here to work hard. I know some people make mistakes -- not all of them. Most of us are working hard, make better lives, live the American dream," said Frank Garcia, a Guatemalan immigrant who lives in Providence and works for a printing company.
New Attorney General Peter Kilmartin has said he plans to enlist the state in the federal government's "Secure Communities" program, which allows local police departments to automatically check fingerprints of arrested suspects against a federal immigration database. Demonstrators gathered at the attorney general's office Wednesday afternoon to protest against the program, but Kilmartin's spokeswoman said he remains committed to having the state participate.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/articles/2011/01/05/ri_gov_chafee_to_rescind_immigration_order/?s_campaign=8315
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Arizona’s Hate Legislation
By Gode Davis, Political Staff Columnist
SEO Law Firm
April 22, 2010
On March 27, 2008, Republican Governor Donald B. Carcieri signed a six-point executive order which he said at the time would enable “a vast array of state government agencies” to address illegal immigration in Rhode Island. I happen to live in Rhode Island and find this relevant considering what’s almost certainly to become law in Arizona about two years later. Carcieri said his executive order was a consequence of the federal government “dropping the ball” on immigration reform, leaving state taxpayers to pick up what he said were “the considerable costs of illegal immigration.”
Two years ago, Carcieri ratcheted up the rhetoric, referring to the flow of illegal immigrants into Rhode Island as “epidemic.”
Carcieri’s measure required state agencies and vendors to verify the legal status of all employees; allowed the state to inform people whose identity has been stolen; and directed Rhode Island State Police and Department of Corrections to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “to ensure federal immigration law is enforced.”
Reaction to Carcieri’s order was mixed. “We’re ecstatic that the governor put this executive order out,” said Terry Gorman, president of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement (RIILE), an anti-“illegal” immigration group that supports keeping the smallest state’s immigrant population at “current levels,” which is code language for anti-immigration, a sentiment that must be expressed in shades of nuance within the politically-diverse Northeast. Opponents of the Carcieri measure brought up concerns of vigilantism and racial profiling. “Are people now going to take the law into their own hands? Governor Carcieri didn’t answer that when he was asked,” said Sen. Juan Pichardo (D-Providence), “Rather than tamping down the heated rhetoric on this issue, the governor has increased the fear in the immigrant community – among both documented and undocumented immigrants.”
Stephen Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, predicted that the Rhode Island governor’s executive order “is only going to increase the problem of racial profiling in the state.”
What happened in Little Rhody in 2008 can perhaps be described as a minor prelude to anti-immigration Arizona events unfolding during recent weeks. Here the furor focuses on what’s been described by foes as “hate legislation” recently passed by Arizona legislators. The bill, initially introduced by state Sen. Russell K. Pearce (R-Mesa), will become law if Arizona’s Republican governor Jan Brewer either signs it or does nothing prior to April 24, 2010.
Senate Bill 1070, as originally introduced by Pearce, contains a raft of Draconian provisions drafted with the intent of criminalizing noncitizens and establishing as “less than by legal mandate” anyone who doesn’t look, act, speak, or smell like a “real American,” by which is generally inferred to be Caucasian and Protestant, most preferably. Specific provisions in the imminent statute will require that state officials establish the immigration status of any person encountered in the course of their work if “reasonable suspicion” exists that the person is an illegal immigrant unlawfully present in the United States. The premise of “reasonable suspicion” has raised the hackles of civil libertarians and will almost certainly open the door to the practice of racial profiling and vigilantism if Arizona’s historic legacy is any indicator for events about to transpire. Other provisions contained in the controversial legislation will permit a law enforcement officer, without a warrant, to arrest a person if the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense – i.e. public urination – that can be used as a pretense for deportation. In automobiles, another provision will expand current laws to define the crime of “smuggling” in a much broader sense – potentially conflating a routine grocery excursion for “suspect” U.S. citizens into a traumatic ordeal having hellish bureaucratic implications that might be likened to plights of unfortunate Palestinians or Arabs in Israel, if not also to the immortal Franz Kafka. Embellishing the latter eventuality, Dallas-based immigration lawyer Stewart Rabinowitz asserts that all elements of Arizona’s Hispanic population – U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, persons federally authorized to be in the US, as well as the undocumented – will now be at risk for being uniformly classified in the mindsets of certain proactive law enforcement officers as “incompatible classes of persons” – while being subject to uncertain consequences without any refuge to legal recourse.
The bill’s instigator, Russell K. Pearce, is probably elated. A former deputy sheriff, State Senator Pearce has been advocating racially motivated, anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona for years. His close associates and supporters include a number of “Tim McVeigh-types,” at least in a political sense if not also the criminal, including self-avowed white supremacists “Buffalo Rick” Galeener and J.T. Ready. Galeener once made a political “statement” of sorts when he was cited for publicly urinating in the plain sight of an adult Latina and her child. Ready is known to have close ties with Neo-Nazi organizations and has publicly stated, “I firmly believe in having a minefield across the border, this is one-hundred percent effective.”
Pearce had been pushed out as a state representative after eight years due to term limits, but was elected to the Arizona state Senate in November 2009. Prior to the election, he’d solicited $5 contributions by writing a letter to Glenn Spencer’s anti-immigrant website, www.americanpatrol.com. Other supporters have included Rusty Childress, a Phoenix car dealer and President of United for a Sovereign America, a hard-line nativist activist group; Chris Simcox, chief organizer of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group specializing in vigilantism; and Al Rodriguez, executive director of the outspoken You Don’t Speak For Me! Far from muted, this latter quixotic organization is largely funded by the Federation for American Immigration Reform which has been designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. No wonder Pearce gained the camaraderie of Galeener and can claim Mr. Ready as always “at the ready.”
Another staunch advocate of Senate Bill 1070 has been the media-friendly Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an incongruously-prominent law enforcement officer who has been accused by officials in the Obama Administration (in his mind unfairly singled out) of systematic racial profiling and civil rights violations in Latino communities. He’s quite fond of the USCIS’s 287 (g) program, which purports to contain procedural safeguards, but may well have been guilty of being over-zealous on occasion. Sheriff Arpaio was recently quoted on MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Show, asserting that “This new law will be another valuable tool for law enforcement.” Quizzed by Matthews about any potential downside to the Pearce-inspired statute, Arpaio blithely stated, “I don’t really see any. I trust the judgment of my officers. They’re extremely well-trained.”
Arizona tensions were exacerbated early on Saturday morning, March 27, 2010, when 58-year-old rancher Robert Krentz was said to be murdered after surprising an armed illegal immigrant in the lonely hinterlands of his sprawling 34,000-acre cattle ranch located about 35 miles from Douglas, Arizona, and perhaps 15 miles north of the US-Mexican border. Krentz’s tragic murder has served as a rallying cry for nativists and anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic zealots in a manner reminiscent of Pancho Villa’s banditry and raids circa 1915-1916, although the international implications are greatly tamped down almost a century later. Over the decades before and since the controversial Villa, a larger-than-life figure described alternately as hero and villain – indiscriminate killings, including lynchings, of perhaps 2,000 “brown-skinned” men, women, and children have tainted Anglo-Latino relations – and such murders have not been confined to Arizona.
As a predictor of what might occur with what’s been described by opponents as “Arizona’s Hate Legislation” and compared rhetorically to something hatched by Hitler’s Goebbels circa 1935, recent experience with the federal immigration-related 287 (g) may unfortunately prove contemporaneously instructive. In its statement of April 1, 2010, calling on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to immediately terminate the 287 (g) program as administered by ICE, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) cited ICE’s failure to properly administer 287(g) and described numerous abuses of power affecting ICE detainees. AILA pointed to a dismal record of “abject failure” that included neglect, abuse, and deaths of detainees. Horrors said by AILA to be perpetrated by cold-hearted agents of ICE may rival the hidden human rights ledgers of the world’s most oppressive regimes, and receive scant scrutiny in the American mainstream media. One such instance featured the plight of one Boubacar Bah, who, after mysteriously suffering a skull fracture, was handcuffed by ICE officials while writhing in agony in his own vomit on the floor of a New Jersey detention center, and subsequently locked up in an isolation cell for 13 hours without receiving medical treatment. By the time he was finally taken to a hospital in a coma, it was too late to save him, and he died.
It has been mentioned that 287 (g), albeit quite notorious in its own right, contains procedural safeguards that Arizona Senate Bill 1070 inherently lacks. In a state such as Arizona, where the premise of “reasonable suspicion” may itself be dubious, the consequences of the new law may become dire indeed. That said – notable politicians such as the illustrious Republican John McCain, currently engaged in a fierce primary battle for his long-held U.S. Senate seat with the ultra-right wing talk show host J.D. Hayworth, has come out strongly in favor of Senate Bill 1070 in an effort to demonstrate his “bonafide” Conservative credentials. Hayworth is a staunch advocate of another contemporary nativist plank, the strange bid to prove that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fraudulent, and that the “President of color” is not a real American because he was born in Kenya, thus undermining the legitimacy of his Presidency. In such a context, even so-called “hate legislation” may rise above the level of “reasonable suspicion.”
http://www.seolawfirm.com/2010/04/arizonas-hate-legislation/
SEO Law Firm
April 22, 2010
On March 27, 2008, Republican Governor Donald B. Carcieri signed a six-point executive order which he said at the time would enable “a vast array of state government agencies” to address illegal immigration in Rhode Island. I happen to live in Rhode Island and find this relevant considering what’s almost certainly to become law in Arizona about two years later. Carcieri said his executive order was a consequence of the federal government “dropping the ball” on immigration reform, leaving state taxpayers to pick up what he said were “the considerable costs of illegal immigration.”
Two years ago, Carcieri ratcheted up the rhetoric, referring to the flow of illegal immigrants into Rhode Island as “epidemic.”
Carcieri’s measure required state agencies and vendors to verify the legal status of all employees; allowed the state to inform people whose identity has been stolen; and directed Rhode Island State Police and Department of Corrections to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “to ensure federal immigration law is enforced.”
Reaction to Carcieri’s order was mixed. “We’re ecstatic that the governor put this executive order out,” said Terry Gorman, president of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement (RIILE), an anti-“illegal” immigration group that supports keeping the smallest state’s immigrant population at “current levels,” which is code language for anti-immigration, a sentiment that must be expressed in shades of nuance within the politically-diverse Northeast. Opponents of the Carcieri measure brought up concerns of vigilantism and racial profiling. “Are people now going to take the law into their own hands? Governor Carcieri didn’t answer that when he was asked,” said Sen. Juan Pichardo (D-Providence), “Rather than tamping down the heated rhetoric on this issue, the governor has increased the fear in the immigrant community – among both documented and undocumented immigrants.”
Stephen Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, predicted that the Rhode Island governor’s executive order “is only going to increase the problem of racial profiling in the state.”
What happened in Little Rhody in 2008 can perhaps be described as a minor prelude to anti-immigration Arizona events unfolding during recent weeks. Here the furor focuses on what’s been described by foes as “hate legislation” recently passed by Arizona legislators. The bill, initially introduced by state Sen. Russell K. Pearce (R-Mesa), will become law if Arizona’s Republican governor Jan Brewer either signs it or does nothing prior to April 24, 2010.
Senate Bill 1070, as originally introduced by Pearce, contains a raft of Draconian provisions drafted with the intent of criminalizing noncitizens and establishing as “less than by legal mandate” anyone who doesn’t look, act, speak, or smell like a “real American,” by which is generally inferred to be Caucasian and Protestant, most preferably. Specific provisions in the imminent statute will require that state officials establish the immigration status of any person encountered in the course of their work if “reasonable suspicion” exists that the person is an illegal immigrant unlawfully present in the United States. The premise of “reasonable suspicion” has raised the hackles of civil libertarians and will almost certainly open the door to the practice of racial profiling and vigilantism if Arizona’s historic legacy is any indicator for events about to transpire. Other provisions contained in the controversial legislation will permit a law enforcement officer, without a warrant, to arrest a person if the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense – i.e. public urination – that can be used as a pretense for deportation. In automobiles, another provision will expand current laws to define the crime of “smuggling” in a much broader sense – potentially conflating a routine grocery excursion for “suspect” U.S. citizens into a traumatic ordeal having hellish bureaucratic implications that might be likened to plights of unfortunate Palestinians or Arabs in Israel, if not also to the immortal Franz Kafka. Embellishing the latter eventuality, Dallas-based immigration lawyer Stewart Rabinowitz asserts that all elements of Arizona’s Hispanic population – U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, persons federally authorized to be in the US, as well as the undocumented – will now be at risk for being uniformly classified in the mindsets of certain proactive law enforcement officers as “incompatible classes of persons” – while being subject to uncertain consequences without any refuge to legal recourse.
The bill’s instigator, Russell K. Pearce, is probably elated. A former deputy sheriff, State Senator Pearce has been advocating racially motivated, anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona for years. His close associates and supporters include a number of “Tim McVeigh-types,” at least in a political sense if not also the criminal, including self-avowed white supremacists “Buffalo Rick” Galeener and J.T. Ready. Galeener once made a political “statement” of sorts when he was cited for publicly urinating in the plain sight of an adult Latina and her child. Ready is known to have close ties with Neo-Nazi organizations and has publicly stated, “I firmly believe in having a minefield across the border, this is one-hundred percent effective.”
Pearce had been pushed out as a state representative after eight years due to term limits, but was elected to the Arizona state Senate in November 2009. Prior to the election, he’d solicited $5 contributions by writing a letter to Glenn Spencer’s anti-immigrant website, www.americanpatrol.com. Other supporters have included Rusty Childress, a Phoenix car dealer and President of United for a Sovereign America, a hard-line nativist activist group; Chris Simcox, chief organizer of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group specializing in vigilantism; and Al Rodriguez, executive director of the outspoken You Don’t Speak For Me! Far from muted, this latter quixotic organization is largely funded by the Federation for American Immigration Reform which has been designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. No wonder Pearce gained the camaraderie of Galeener and can claim Mr. Ready as always “at the ready.”
Another staunch advocate of Senate Bill 1070 has been the media-friendly Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an incongruously-prominent law enforcement officer who has been accused by officials in the Obama Administration (in his mind unfairly singled out) of systematic racial profiling and civil rights violations in Latino communities. He’s quite fond of the USCIS’s 287 (g) program, which purports to contain procedural safeguards, but may well have been guilty of being over-zealous on occasion. Sheriff Arpaio was recently quoted on MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Show, asserting that “This new law will be another valuable tool for law enforcement.” Quizzed by Matthews about any potential downside to the Pearce-inspired statute, Arpaio blithely stated, “I don’t really see any. I trust the judgment of my officers. They’re extremely well-trained.”
Arizona tensions were exacerbated early on Saturday morning, March 27, 2010, when 58-year-old rancher Robert Krentz was said to be murdered after surprising an armed illegal immigrant in the lonely hinterlands of his sprawling 34,000-acre cattle ranch located about 35 miles from Douglas, Arizona, and perhaps 15 miles north of the US-Mexican border. Krentz’s tragic murder has served as a rallying cry for nativists and anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic zealots in a manner reminiscent of Pancho Villa’s banditry and raids circa 1915-1916, although the international implications are greatly tamped down almost a century later. Over the decades before and since the controversial Villa, a larger-than-life figure described alternately as hero and villain – indiscriminate killings, including lynchings, of perhaps 2,000 “brown-skinned” men, women, and children have tainted Anglo-Latino relations – and such murders have not been confined to Arizona.
As a predictor of what might occur with what’s been described by opponents as “Arizona’s Hate Legislation” and compared rhetorically to something hatched by Hitler’s Goebbels circa 1935, recent experience with the federal immigration-related 287 (g) may unfortunately prove contemporaneously instructive. In its statement of April 1, 2010, calling on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to immediately terminate the 287 (g) program as administered by ICE, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) cited ICE’s failure to properly administer 287(g) and described numerous abuses of power affecting ICE detainees. AILA pointed to a dismal record of “abject failure” that included neglect, abuse, and deaths of detainees. Horrors said by AILA to be perpetrated by cold-hearted agents of ICE may rival the hidden human rights ledgers of the world’s most oppressive regimes, and receive scant scrutiny in the American mainstream media. One such instance featured the plight of one Boubacar Bah, who, after mysteriously suffering a skull fracture, was handcuffed by ICE officials while writhing in agony in his own vomit on the floor of a New Jersey detention center, and subsequently locked up in an isolation cell for 13 hours without receiving medical treatment. By the time he was finally taken to a hospital in a coma, it was too late to save him, and he died.
It has been mentioned that 287 (g), albeit quite notorious in its own right, contains procedural safeguards that Arizona Senate Bill 1070 inherently lacks. In a state such as Arizona, where the premise of “reasonable suspicion” may itself be dubious, the consequences of the new law may become dire indeed. That said – notable politicians such as the illustrious Republican John McCain, currently engaged in a fierce primary battle for his long-held U.S. Senate seat with the ultra-right wing talk show host J.D. Hayworth, has come out strongly in favor of Senate Bill 1070 in an effort to demonstrate his “bonafide” Conservative credentials. Hayworth is a staunch advocate of another contemporary nativist plank, the strange bid to prove that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fraudulent, and that the “President of color” is not a real American because he was born in Kenya, thus undermining the legitimacy of his Presidency. In such a context, even so-called “hate legislation” may rise above the level of “reasonable suspicion.”
http://www.seolawfirm.com/2010/04/arizonas-hate-legislation/
Sunday, January 31, 2010
How did dozens of illegal immigrants end up shoveling snow at Gillette?
By Karen Lee Ziner
The Providence Journal
Journal Staff Writer
January 31, 2010
Four days before the New England Patriots’ playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens, 60 Guatemalan day workers headed in a caravan from Providence toward Gillette Stadium, prepared to shovel out the world-class home of one of the most valuable football franchises in the country.
The team’s road to the Super Bowl — and nearly 70,000 seats — had to be first cleared of snow.
But early on Jan. 6, federal immigration agents targeting “specific fugitives from deportation” stopped the work crew in Foxboro. Nine were taken into custody. The rest were told to show up at future immigration proceedings, and then cleared to go to the stadium. In fact, the agents drove them there.
On a day that never got above freezing, some were ill equipped for the cold — and the rigors of the job.
They shivered in sweatshirts and hoodies and frozen sneakers as they hurled the snow into giant chutes.
One woman was pregnant. Seven workers were minors. The youngest was a 14-year-old boy.
That Sunday, the Patriots got crushed in a snow-free arena. Their Super Bowl chances melted away.
Back in Providence, community groups and the Guatemalan Consulate were organizing legal and humanitarian aid. And the workers began describing a word-of-mouth, “ask no questions,” cash-only network that led them from Rhode Island to Gillette.
How did dozens of undocumented Guatemalans end up shoveling snow at the home of a $1.4-billion football team?
The answer may lie with the now-vacated “office” of Legal Pro-Temps in Dorchester, and a job pipeline from Providence.
Two days after the immigration road stop, Patriots spokesman Stacey James said the Patriots had severed its contract with the agency that he said had provided the workers. In an e-mail, he later told The Journal that the agency was Legal Pro-Temps; a company he said the Patriots organization had contracted with since January 2008.
Before that, he said, the Patriots used a different temp agency, All Stars Labor, also of Dorchester, from July 2007 through December 2007. Workers performed the same jobs: shoveling snow and picking up trash.
If the workers were undocumented, ill-equipped or exploited, that was the vendor’s fault, James said.
The Patriots insisted on a signed contract that called for qualified workers “dressed appropriately for the job.” They paid Legal Pro-Temps “an hourly rate, well in excess of minimum wage for each day-hire worker for the entire time they are on the site,” James said.
An on-the-job Gillette supervisor gave the workers morning breaks, with hot chocolate and bottled water, said James, and hour-long lunch breaks. And “as a courtesy,” workers who did not bring lunches got hot dogs, soup and hot chocolate.
“This doesn’t involve us. We’re not involved. If anything, we’re upset at the vendor and they’ve got to be held responsible,” James said when he announced that the Patriots would no longer be doing business with Legal Pro-Temps.
“We require all third-party vendors to abide by all state and federal labor laws. The failure of Legal Pro-Temps to do so resulted in the Patriots terminating our relationship with them,” James said.
He said the Patriots organization is considering safeguards to avoid such situations in the future.
The brick building where Legal Pro-Temps conducted business is just off the Southeast Expressway in Dorchester, at 79-83 Freeport Ave. The company’s name on a brass mailbox provided the only exterior locator for anyone unfamiliar with the business.
But the single room that Legal Pro-Temps maintained within a second-floor accountant’s office was cleared a week or so after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stopped the workers on Jan. 6 in their “targeted” search for specific deportable immigrants.
The accountant, Thanh Tham, who said he did the payroll for Legal Pro-Temps, said the company’s owner, Xuong Phu La, had rented the small space from the landlord, until he reportedly left for Vietnam last November. The owner left his son, Elburke Lamson, in charge, Tham said. (The landlord confirmed that Xuong Phu La paid $400 a month for the space.)
Tham said La worked three days a week, for two hours a day. To Tham’s knowledge, no job-seekers ever came to the office.
“He filled out invoices,” Tham said of the owner.
Tham said that before Elburke Lamson took over his father’s business, he worked for All Stars Labor — the company the Patriots previously used to clean the stadium.
Tham said he came to work one morning several weeks ago — after the January incident — and discovered that someone — he assumed it was Lamson — had cleared out the Legal Pro-Temps office space.
Lamson invited a reporter into his condominium in Chelsea, Mass., two weeks ago.
A woman Lamson introduced as his girlfriend translated the reporter’s questions. Lamson replied in broken English: he answered many questions without requiring translation.
Lamson said that when the stadium asked for day laborers, he called the phone number of a Providence man that his father had provided for him. Asked how his father had located the man, Lamson said, “Through a friend.”
Lamson said he instructed the man who assembled the snow-shoveling crew to make sure they had identification. Lamson said the man told him that ‘It was an emergency’ — that’s why he didn’t get [the] papers” from the workers who went to the stadium.
The Providence man who organized the crew called on the morning of Jan. 6, a Wednesday, Lamson said.
“He said police stopped them,” Lamson said, and “it was nothing.” Later, Lamson said, the man told him “the people he took to work — a few of them got arrested.”
Lamson confirmed that he had subsequently cleared his desk and files at the Dorchester office. He added, “I sold the computer.” He didn’t say why.
The workers were more familiar with raising corn or chickens in the K’iché region of Guatemala than hoisting plastic snow shovels. Catarina Castro, 24, told her story Thursday at the Providence storefront office of Immigrants in Action Committee, one of several advocacy groups helping the workers.
Castro came to the office in sandals and bare feet, and a fleece sweatshirt with “Alaska” stitched on the front that, she said, is identical, all but in color, to the one she wore to the stadium. She said she does not own a winter coat.
Castro said through a translator that she crossed illegally through the desert into the United States eight years ago so she could support a child she left in her mother’s care. She picked up trash at Gillette Stadium several weeks ago, she said, but had never shoveled snow until Jan. 6.
On that day, her sneakers froze, “and my pants were all wet … they were soaking wet up to my knees, and my fingers were frozen as well.” When she returned home that day, “My body hurt.”
She and her friend, Roberto Poel Castro (no relation), 20, said they were given just one half-hour break between 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., and were each provided a hot dog and hot chocolate for lunch.
They said they had time for “only a few sips” of water, because their “American” supervisor “would yell” if they took too long, or talked too much. Workers snuck toward the back of the stadium to drink water “when he [the supervisor] wasn’t looking,” Roberto Castro said.
Guillermo Ramos, another of the workers, said on Friday, “The gringo said, ‘Hurry up, you are here to work, not to drink.’ ” He said the supervisor wore a Gillette jacket.
Ramos said his socks got clotted with ice as he shoveled in snow nearly up to his knees. He said he does not own a heavy coat or boots.
He added, “If you stop with your shovel, they say, ‘Hey, what happened?’ ”
None of the workers had heard of a company called Legal Pro-Temps, nor had they ever filled out a job application. Workers who crowded into the office of the Guatemalan Consulate in Providence the week after the incident gave similar accounts.
Some of the workers said they were paid $5 to $7 an hour, below minimum wage, and were charged up to $7 a day for transportation, according to members of the Central Falls advocacy group Fuerza Laboral who interviewed them.
The workers’ situation sent shock waves through a Providence Latino community well acquainted with immigration raids, and replayed a familiar theme: of workers in a widespread underground economy.
In July 2008, ICE agents rounded up 32 janitors who scrubbed floors and toilets at Rhode Island courthouses. In 2007, Rhode Islanders were among more than 350 undocumented factory workers detained during an ICE raid at the Michael Bianco Inc. plant in New Bedford.
The courthouse workers also described word-of-mouth hiring without background checks. Their pay stubs reflected no benefits, insurance or tax deductions.
Catherine Ruckelshaus, legal codirector of the National Employment Law Project, in New York City, said undocumented workers have legal rights intended to protect them against exploitation. But as the use of temp agencies grows, she said, “The temp firms often act as a shield between employers with means and resources” to hire full-time workers.
The Gillette snow-shovelers’ case represents “a perfect storm of failed immigration policy; no enforcement of labor standards; and the stadium subbing out more intensive pieces of labor,” Ruckelshaus said.
Whether the Jan. 6 incident is under investigation beyond the immigration aspects is unclear. Tom Connell, spokesman for Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha, said he “will neither confirm nor deny” an investigation. John Chavez, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Labor in Boston, said he also “can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation by the [Boston] wage and hour division into this matter.”
An ICE spokeswoman last week said six of the nine individuals initially arrested during the “targeted fugitive operation” remain in custody. Two were charged with immigration violations and released pending court hearings. One other individual was released for humanitarian reasons, pending deportation.
Roberto Gonzalez, an East Providence attorney who is among those providing legal aid, said some of the workers are considering asylum claims. Legal aid is being organized in Rhode Island and in Boston. Gonzalez said the people with deportable offenses have agreed to leave the country, rather than fight their cases. Most are expected to be deported within the next month.
Meanwhile, workers have begun presenting themselves at the Warwick ICE office for processing, and will appear before an immigration judge in Boston between now and the end of March, said Carlos Escobedo, the regional Guatemalan consul general. Escobedo added, “All the people are following the process. Nobody disappeared. Everybody is following the process.”
http://www.projo.com/news/content/GILLETTE_IMMIGRANTS.1_01-31-10_KLH973K_v46.398871c.html#
The Providence Journal
Journal Staff Writer
January 31, 2010
Four days before the New England Patriots’ playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens, 60 Guatemalan day workers headed in a caravan from Providence toward Gillette Stadium, prepared to shovel out the world-class home of one of the most valuable football franchises in the country.
The team’s road to the Super Bowl — and nearly 70,000 seats — had to be first cleared of snow.
But early on Jan. 6, federal immigration agents targeting “specific fugitives from deportation” stopped the work crew in Foxboro. Nine were taken into custody. The rest were told to show up at future immigration proceedings, and then cleared to go to the stadium. In fact, the agents drove them there.
On a day that never got above freezing, some were ill equipped for the cold — and the rigors of the job.
They shivered in sweatshirts and hoodies and frozen sneakers as they hurled the snow into giant chutes.
One woman was pregnant. Seven workers were minors. The youngest was a 14-year-old boy.
That Sunday, the Patriots got crushed in a snow-free arena. Their Super Bowl chances melted away.
Back in Providence, community groups and the Guatemalan Consulate were organizing legal and humanitarian aid. And the workers began describing a word-of-mouth, “ask no questions,” cash-only network that led them from Rhode Island to Gillette.
How did dozens of undocumented Guatemalans end up shoveling snow at the home of a $1.4-billion football team?
The answer may lie with the now-vacated “office” of Legal Pro-Temps in Dorchester, and a job pipeline from Providence.
Two days after the immigration road stop, Patriots spokesman Stacey James said the Patriots had severed its contract with the agency that he said had provided the workers. In an e-mail, he later told The Journal that the agency was Legal Pro-Temps; a company he said the Patriots organization had contracted with since January 2008.
Before that, he said, the Patriots used a different temp agency, All Stars Labor, also of Dorchester, from July 2007 through December 2007. Workers performed the same jobs: shoveling snow and picking up trash.
If the workers were undocumented, ill-equipped or exploited, that was the vendor’s fault, James said.
The Patriots insisted on a signed contract that called for qualified workers “dressed appropriately for the job.” They paid Legal Pro-Temps “an hourly rate, well in excess of minimum wage for each day-hire worker for the entire time they are on the site,” James said.
An on-the-job Gillette supervisor gave the workers morning breaks, with hot chocolate and bottled water, said James, and hour-long lunch breaks. And “as a courtesy,” workers who did not bring lunches got hot dogs, soup and hot chocolate.
“This doesn’t involve us. We’re not involved. If anything, we’re upset at the vendor and they’ve got to be held responsible,” James said when he announced that the Patriots would no longer be doing business with Legal Pro-Temps.
“We require all third-party vendors to abide by all state and federal labor laws. The failure of Legal Pro-Temps to do so resulted in the Patriots terminating our relationship with them,” James said.
He said the Patriots organization is considering safeguards to avoid such situations in the future.
The brick building where Legal Pro-Temps conducted business is just off the Southeast Expressway in Dorchester, at 79-83 Freeport Ave. The company’s name on a brass mailbox provided the only exterior locator for anyone unfamiliar with the business.
But the single room that Legal Pro-Temps maintained within a second-floor accountant’s office was cleared a week or so after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stopped the workers on Jan. 6 in their “targeted” search for specific deportable immigrants.
The accountant, Thanh Tham, who said he did the payroll for Legal Pro-Temps, said the company’s owner, Xuong Phu La, had rented the small space from the landlord, until he reportedly left for Vietnam last November. The owner left his son, Elburke Lamson, in charge, Tham said. (The landlord confirmed that Xuong Phu La paid $400 a month for the space.)
Tham said La worked three days a week, for two hours a day. To Tham’s knowledge, no job-seekers ever came to the office.
“He filled out invoices,” Tham said of the owner.
Tham said that before Elburke Lamson took over his father’s business, he worked for All Stars Labor — the company the Patriots previously used to clean the stadium.
Tham said he came to work one morning several weeks ago — after the January incident — and discovered that someone — he assumed it was Lamson — had cleared out the Legal Pro-Temps office space.
Lamson invited a reporter into his condominium in Chelsea, Mass., two weeks ago.
A woman Lamson introduced as his girlfriend translated the reporter’s questions. Lamson replied in broken English: he answered many questions without requiring translation.
Lamson said that when the stadium asked for day laborers, he called the phone number of a Providence man that his father had provided for him. Asked how his father had located the man, Lamson said, “Through a friend.”
Lamson said he instructed the man who assembled the snow-shoveling crew to make sure they had identification. Lamson said the man told him that ‘It was an emergency’ — that’s why he didn’t get [the] papers” from the workers who went to the stadium.
The Providence man who organized the crew called on the morning of Jan. 6, a Wednesday, Lamson said.
“He said police stopped them,” Lamson said, and “it was nothing.” Later, Lamson said, the man told him “the people he took to work — a few of them got arrested.”
Lamson confirmed that he had subsequently cleared his desk and files at the Dorchester office. He added, “I sold the computer.” He didn’t say why.
The workers were more familiar with raising corn or chickens in the K’iché region of Guatemala than hoisting plastic snow shovels. Catarina Castro, 24, told her story Thursday at the Providence storefront office of Immigrants in Action Committee, one of several advocacy groups helping the workers.
Castro came to the office in sandals and bare feet, and a fleece sweatshirt with “Alaska” stitched on the front that, she said, is identical, all but in color, to the one she wore to the stadium. She said she does not own a winter coat.
Castro said through a translator that she crossed illegally through the desert into the United States eight years ago so she could support a child she left in her mother’s care. She picked up trash at Gillette Stadium several weeks ago, she said, but had never shoveled snow until Jan. 6.
On that day, her sneakers froze, “and my pants were all wet … they were soaking wet up to my knees, and my fingers were frozen as well.” When she returned home that day, “My body hurt.”
She and her friend, Roberto Poel Castro (no relation), 20, said they were given just one half-hour break between 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., and were each provided a hot dog and hot chocolate for lunch.
They said they had time for “only a few sips” of water, because their “American” supervisor “would yell” if they took too long, or talked too much. Workers snuck toward the back of the stadium to drink water “when he [the supervisor] wasn’t looking,” Roberto Castro said.
Guillermo Ramos, another of the workers, said on Friday, “The gringo said, ‘Hurry up, you are here to work, not to drink.’ ” He said the supervisor wore a Gillette jacket.
Ramos said his socks got clotted with ice as he shoveled in snow nearly up to his knees. He said he does not own a heavy coat or boots.
He added, “If you stop with your shovel, they say, ‘Hey, what happened?’ ”
None of the workers had heard of a company called Legal Pro-Temps, nor had they ever filled out a job application. Workers who crowded into the office of the Guatemalan Consulate in Providence the week after the incident gave similar accounts.
Some of the workers said they were paid $5 to $7 an hour, below minimum wage, and were charged up to $7 a day for transportation, according to members of the Central Falls advocacy group Fuerza Laboral who interviewed them.
The workers’ situation sent shock waves through a Providence Latino community well acquainted with immigration raids, and replayed a familiar theme: of workers in a widespread underground economy.
In July 2008, ICE agents rounded up 32 janitors who scrubbed floors and toilets at Rhode Island courthouses. In 2007, Rhode Islanders were among more than 350 undocumented factory workers detained during an ICE raid at the Michael Bianco Inc. plant in New Bedford.
The courthouse workers also described word-of-mouth hiring without background checks. Their pay stubs reflected no benefits, insurance or tax deductions.
Catherine Ruckelshaus, legal codirector of the National Employment Law Project, in New York City, said undocumented workers have legal rights intended to protect them against exploitation. But as the use of temp agencies grows, she said, “The temp firms often act as a shield between employers with means and resources” to hire full-time workers.
The Gillette snow-shovelers’ case represents “a perfect storm of failed immigration policy; no enforcement of labor standards; and the stadium subbing out more intensive pieces of labor,” Ruckelshaus said.
Whether the Jan. 6 incident is under investigation beyond the immigration aspects is unclear. Tom Connell, spokesman for Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha, said he “will neither confirm nor deny” an investigation. John Chavez, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Labor in Boston, said he also “can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation by the [Boston] wage and hour division into this matter.”
An ICE spokeswoman last week said six of the nine individuals initially arrested during the “targeted fugitive operation” remain in custody. Two were charged with immigration violations and released pending court hearings. One other individual was released for humanitarian reasons, pending deportation.
Roberto Gonzalez, an East Providence attorney who is among those providing legal aid, said some of the workers are considering asylum claims. Legal aid is being organized in Rhode Island and in Boston. Gonzalez said the people with deportable offenses have agreed to leave the country, rather than fight their cases. Most are expected to be deported within the next month.
Meanwhile, workers have begun presenting themselves at the Warwick ICE office for processing, and will appear before an immigration judge in Boston between now and the end of March, said Carlos Escobedo, the regional Guatemalan consul general. Escobedo added, “All the people are following the process. Nobody disappeared. Everybody is following the process.”
http://www.projo.com/news/content/GILLETTE_IMMIGRANTS.1_01-31-10_KLH973K_v46.398871c.html#
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Guatemalan Janitor In R.I. Wins Permanent Residency
By Karen Lee Ziner
InsideCostaRica.Com
Boston – Gustavo Cabrera, one of 31 janitors arrested last year in a high-profile raid on state courthouses, yesterday won the right to remain permanently in the United States, based on a 1997 law that legal experts say has provided relief to fewer than 200,000 people.
U.S. Immigration Judge Francis L. Cramer granted Cabrera’s permanent residency based on the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Relief Act, which provides relief from deportations to certain Nicaraguans, Cubans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans and other foreign nationals. The judge said he was persuaded that Cabrera and his family — his wife, a legal permanent resident; and their four children who are U.S. citizens — would face “considerable hardship” should Cabrera be deported to Guatemala, a country he left 25 years ago.
Cabrera, 49, the subject of a September 2008 Providence Journal article, is now eligible for a green card and, eventually, citizenship.
He is believed to be only the third courthouse detainee to have won the right to stay in the country. Earlier this year, one woman won asylum based on years of extreme domestic violence she was fleeing in Guatemala. According to Cabrera, another detainee recently won a family-based petition. but that could not be confirmed.
A look back . . .
His whole family is here, but he may be sent back
8.31.08: Suspected illegal immigrant waits to see if he�s deported
Gallery: The Cabrera family in crisis
8.31.08: Hispanics deplore climate of fear
Video: Others speak out on the impact of the illegal-immigrant crackdown on Rhode Island's communities
8.31.08: Cases proceeding against suspected illegal immigrants
9.01.08: Carcieri finds immigration an issue that people are talking about
7.16.08: Dozens arrested in raids at R.I. courthouses
East Providence lawyer Roberto Gonzalez cited Cabrera’s medical condition, the emotional and economic stresss on the family since Cabrera’s arrest on a civil immigration violation on July 15, 2008, and the threatened disruption of the family if he were forced to leave.
Cabrera suffered a near-fatal diabetic coma last year. He also said his family has also been in financial free-fall.
“We were looking at the potential of a family that was going to be torn apart,” Gonzalez said, “a man with a medical condition who would not be able to adequately treat it in his home country. He was going to be sent to live in a country he hasn’t seen in 25 years,” and where ageism and illness would probably prevent him from finding work.
After a brief trial during which the government offered no contest, Cramer told Cabrera, “Congratulations, sir.”
When Cabrera thanked the judge on behalf of his family, Cramer said, “Don’t forget to thank your attorney.” Cabrera replied, “Right now, I’m not even able to speak.”
Afterward, Cabrera, his wife, Elena Marin, and their daughter Melissa, a freshman at Classical High School in Providence, expressed relief.
“Now, I am going to go home and have a good, deep sleep,” Cabrera said. “I haven’t been able to sleep.”
He said he wants, and needs, to find a job.
He said after his daughter Cindy’s scholarship was unexpectedly cut in half at the University of Rhode Island, “They didn’t cover all the expenses, so we’re worried about making up the difference. I had to stop injecting insulin. I don’t have the money [to pay for it],” so his insulin levels are dangerously high. He said friends and strangers alike have helped the family stay afloat. One of Melissa’s teachers has sent money every month.
Asked if he planned to become a citizen, Cabrera replied, “Como se dice en America [as they say in America] – ‘Of course.’ ”
MARY GIOVAGNOLI, director of the Immigration Policy Center, a research arm of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that the NACARA Act applies to a “very, very tiny group of people” of roughly 500,000 across the country. “Altogether, about 200,000 of those cases have been filed since the program opened for business,” Giovagnoli said. Though the grant rate “is extremely high” within that pool, she said it nonetheless represents “a very small piece of the [immigration] puzzle.”
Hardship petitions under the NACARA Act “essentially applied to a small category of people who came to the U.S. as part of civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador,” she said. [Qualifying Soviet bloc petitioners generally filed for political asylum]. “Most of the folks who are here illegally today, the 11 to 12 million we talk about, they have no shot at a program like this.”
Gonzalez, the lawyer who represented Cabrera, said he discovered both that Cabrera’s wife had won permanent residency through NACARA, and that Cabrera had once applied for asylum within the eligible time period. Based on that, Gonzalez pursued relief for Cabrera under the NACARA Act.
CABRERA told The Journal last year that he left Guatemala in 1984 for political and economic reasons, and crossed the border in a car trunk stuffed with four other men.
“That was the worst time in my country, because of the civil war,” he told the judge yesterday. “There were kidnappings, and no work, so it was bad, really bad.”
In Rhode Island, he worked menial jobs: packing fish, butchering chickens, sorting recyclables at the landfill; and shaking vermin out of industrial laundry.
In February of 2007, he got a janitor job through a friend who worked for Falcon Maintenance, LLC, a former Johnston employment agency. He kept his job after Falcon’s state contract ran out that December and TriState Enterprises of North Providence took over. The companies previously held contracts to clean more than four dozen state buildings, including the courthouses. (Falcon’s owner, Vincent D’Elia, later served six months in a half-way house for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants).
Cabrera scrubbed toilets and mopped floors in the holding cells at the J. Joseph Garrahy Judicial Complex in downtown Providence until his arrest. He was charged with a civil violation of being in the country illegally, fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet and sent home with the knowledge he might be deported.
He waited, while the cases began dragging through the backlogged U.S. immigration courts. Of the 31 detainees, 3 agreed to return to Mexico voluntarily in January, and 15 are believed to have cases pending.
Four were charged criminally for identity theft and/or document fraud; of those, 3 were deported and a fugitive warrant was issued for the fourth.
After the judge granted his petition yesterday, Cabrera walked out into the hallway, wiped his hand across his forehead and said, “Phew.”
Outside the courthouse, he began calling friends and family with his good news.
http://insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2009/october/04/centralamerica-091004-04.htm
InsideCostaRica.Com
Boston – Gustavo Cabrera, one of 31 janitors arrested last year in a high-profile raid on state courthouses, yesterday won the right to remain permanently in the United States, based on a 1997 law that legal experts say has provided relief to fewer than 200,000 people.
U.S. Immigration Judge Francis L. Cramer granted Cabrera’s permanent residency based on the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Relief Act, which provides relief from deportations to certain Nicaraguans, Cubans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans and other foreign nationals. The judge said he was persuaded that Cabrera and his family — his wife, a legal permanent resident; and their four children who are U.S. citizens — would face “considerable hardship” should Cabrera be deported to Guatemala, a country he left 25 years ago.
Cabrera, 49, the subject of a September 2008 Providence Journal article, is now eligible for a green card and, eventually, citizenship.
He is believed to be only the third courthouse detainee to have won the right to stay in the country. Earlier this year, one woman won asylum based on years of extreme domestic violence she was fleeing in Guatemala. According to Cabrera, another detainee recently won a family-based petition. but that could not be confirmed.
A look back . . .
His whole family is here, but he may be sent back
8.31.08: Suspected illegal immigrant waits to see if he�s deported
Gallery: The Cabrera family in crisis
8.31.08: Hispanics deplore climate of fear
Video: Others speak out on the impact of the illegal-immigrant crackdown on Rhode Island's communities
8.31.08: Cases proceeding against suspected illegal immigrants
9.01.08: Carcieri finds immigration an issue that people are talking about
7.16.08: Dozens arrested in raids at R.I. courthouses
East Providence lawyer Roberto Gonzalez cited Cabrera’s medical condition, the emotional and economic stresss on the family since Cabrera’s arrest on a civil immigration violation on July 15, 2008, and the threatened disruption of the family if he were forced to leave.
Cabrera suffered a near-fatal diabetic coma last year. He also said his family has also been in financial free-fall.
“We were looking at the potential of a family that was going to be torn apart,” Gonzalez said, “a man with a medical condition who would not be able to adequately treat it in his home country. He was going to be sent to live in a country he hasn’t seen in 25 years,” and where ageism and illness would probably prevent him from finding work.
After a brief trial during which the government offered no contest, Cramer told Cabrera, “Congratulations, sir.”
When Cabrera thanked the judge on behalf of his family, Cramer said, “Don’t forget to thank your attorney.” Cabrera replied, “Right now, I’m not even able to speak.”
Afterward, Cabrera, his wife, Elena Marin, and their daughter Melissa, a freshman at Classical High School in Providence, expressed relief.
“Now, I am going to go home and have a good, deep sleep,” Cabrera said. “I haven’t been able to sleep.”
He said he wants, and needs, to find a job.
He said after his daughter Cindy’s scholarship was unexpectedly cut in half at the University of Rhode Island, “They didn’t cover all the expenses, so we’re worried about making up the difference. I had to stop injecting insulin. I don’t have the money [to pay for it],” so his insulin levels are dangerously high. He said friends and strangers alike have helped the family stay afloat. One of Melissa’s teachers has sent money every month.
Asked if he planned to become a citizen, Cabrera replied, “Como se dice en America [as they say in America] – ‘Of course.’ ”
MARY GIOVAGNOLI, director of the Immigration Policy Center, a research arm of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that the NACARA Act applies to a “very, very tiny group of people” of roughly 500,000 across the country. “Altogether, about 200,000 of those cases have been filed since the program opened for business,” Giovagnoli said. Though the grant rate “is extremely high” within that pool, she said it nonetheless represents “a very small piece of the [immigration] puzzle.”
Hardship petitions under the NACARA Act “essentially applied to a small category of people who came to the U.S. as part of civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador,” she said. [Qualifying Soviet bloc petitioners generally filed for political asylum]. “Most of the folks who are here illegally today, the 11 to 12 million we talk about, they have no shot at a program like this.”
Gonzalez, the lawyer who represented Cabrera, said he discovered both that Cabrera’s wife had won permanent residency through NACARA, and that Cabrera had once applied for asylum within the eligible time period. Based on that, Gonzalez pursued relief for Cabrera under the NACARA Act.
CABRERA told The Journal last year that he left Guatemala in 1984 for political and economic reasons, and crossed the border in a car trunk stuffed with four other men.
“That was the worst time in my country, because of the civil war,” he told the judge yesterday. “There were kidnappings, and no work, so it was bad, really bad.”
In Rhode Island, he worked menial jobs: packing fish, butchering chickens, sorting recyclables at the landfill; and shaking vermin out of industrial laundry.
In February of 2007, he got a janitor job through a friend who worked for Falcon Maintenance, LLC, a former Johnston employment agency. He kept his job after Falcon’s state contract ran out that December and TriState Enterprises of North Providence took over. The companies previously held contracts to clean more than four dozen state buildings, including the courthouses. (Falcon’s owner, Vincent D’Elia, later served six months in a half-way house for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants).
Cabrera scrubbed toilets and mopped floors in the holding cells at the J. Joseph Garrahy Judicial Complex in downtown Providence until his arrest. He was charged with a civil violation of being in the country illegally, fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet and sent home with the knowledge he might be deported.
He waited, while the cases began dragging through the backlogged U.S. immigration courts. Of the 31 detainees, 3 agreed to return to Mexico voluntarily in January, and 15 are believed to have cases pending.
Four were charged criminally for identity theft and/or document fraud; of those, 3 were deported and a fugitive warrant was issued for the fourth.
After the judge granted his petition yesterday, Cabrera walked out into the hallway, wiped his hand across his forehead and said, “Phew.”
Outside the courthouse, he began calling friends and family with his good news.
http://insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2009/october/04/centralamerica-091004-04.htm
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Carcieri stands by immigration order at last panel session
Karen Ziner
The Providence Journal
Sep 01, 2009
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Governor Carcieri's advisory panel monitoring his 2008 executive order on illegal immigration met for the last time Tuesday, with Carcieri reiterating that the issue "was a tough one, a complicated one," but one that he had no regrets about tackling.
"What I'm trying to do in a measured, limited way, is to begin to deal with an issue that has an enormous impact on our state and our nation, and awaken our federal legislators that something's gotta be done," the governor said.
The order directed Rhode Island State Police and corrections authorities to forge agreements with the federal government that would give them some limited immigration-law enforcement powers, and called for state executive departments to screen potential employees through a federal E-Verify system to determine their work eligibility. It also called for state vendors to use the E-Verify system.
A report the panel issued in January said the order had created "an overriding sense of fear" among all immigrants -- whether legal and undocumented. Among its recommendations were that Carcieri clarify the intent of his order, and that the state determine its costs.
Carcieri said he knew that some people had labeled him as "anti-immigrant" after issuing the order, but "nothing could be farther from the truth."
One member, Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, said the panel "served a very important role" by "diffusing a very volatile situation a year and a half ago" when Carcieri issued his order..
But the head of the Providence Diocese added, "I still personally believe that the executive order was a mistake, and I still can't think of one good thing the executive order has done for this state. The only thing was to create divisions which were not helpful, and that raised the rhetoric" about illegal immigration.
Carcieri said his intent was to effect "process and procedure" of determining how many illegal immigrants were in state custody, and expediting their transfer to federal immigration custody rather than put them back into the community. And, a so-called 287(g) agreement would give state police to access ICE data bases.
The intent "was never for state police nor local law enforcement to conduct raids," said Carcieri, but noted the "unfortunate" timing of a federal raid of state courthouses as the panel met for the first time last year. Carcieri reiterated that he had no prior knowledge of the raid.
Carcieri said state police have been "grossly unfairly been painted by people with an agenda" to have engaged in racial profiling, and expressed confidence in that agency.
He said that over time, the public would see that neither state police nor local law-enforcement agencies will use the executive order to engage in immigration raids.
He also said he believed that requiring state executive departments to use E-Verify system is a prudent one, and noted "the current (Obama) administration has chosen to go forward to use that system."
http://newsblog.projo.com/2009/09/caricieri-advis.html
The Providence Journal
Sep 01, 2009
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Governor Carcieri's advisory panel monitoring his 2008 executive order on illegal immigration met for the last time Tuesday, with Carcieri reiterating that the issue "was a tough one, a complicated one," but one that he had no regrets about tackling.
"What I'm trying to do in a measured, limited way, is to begin to deal with an issue that has an enormous impact on our state and our nation, and awaken our federal legislators that something's gotta be done," the governor said.
The order directed Rhode Island State Police and corrections authorities to forge agreements with the federal government that would give them some limited immigration-law enforcement powers, and called for state executive departments to screen potential employees through a federal E-Verify system to determine their work eligibility. It also called for state vendors to use the E-Verify system.
A report the panel issued in January said the order had created "an overriding sense of fear" among all immigrants -- whether legal and undocumented. Among its recommendations were that Carcieri clarify the intent of his order, and that the state determine its costs.
Carcieri said he knew that some people had labeled him as "anti-immigrant" after issuing the order, but "nothing could be farther from the truth."
One member, Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, said the panel "served a very important role" by "diffusing a very volatile situation a year and a half ago" when Carcieri issued his order..
But the head of the Providence Diocese added, "I still personally believe that the executive order was a mistake, and I still can't think of one good thing the executive order has done for this state. The only thing was to create divisions which were not helpful, and that raised the rhetoric" about illegal immigration.
Carcieri said his intent was to effect "process and procedure" of determining how many illegal immigrants were in state custody, and expediting their transfer to federal immigration custody rather than put them back into the community. And, a so-called 287(g) agreement would give state police to access ICE data bases.
The intent "was never for state police nor local law enforcement to conduct raids," said Carcieri, but noted the "unfortunate" timing of a federal raid of state courthouses as the panel met for the first time last year. Carcieri reiterated that he had no prior knowledge of the raid.
Carcieri said state police have been "grossly unfairly been painted by people with an agenda" to have engaged in racial profiling, and expressed confidence in that agency.
He said that over time, the public would see that neither state police nor local law-enforcement agencies will use the executive order to engage in immigration raids.
He also said he believed that requiring state executive departments to use E-Verify system is a prudent one, and noted "the current (Obama) administration has chosen to go forward to use that system."
http://newsblog.projo.com/2009/09/caricieri-advis.html
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Sentencing for RI man who hired
Sentencing for man who hired illegals
03 Apr 2009
WPRI.COM
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A janitorial contractor whose workers were arrested during immigration raids at Rhode Island courthouses will soon learn his fate.
Vincent D’Elia pleaded guilty in October to knowlingly hiring illegal immigrants. Federal prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge William Smith to send D’Elia prison and impose a fine.
D’Elia is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.
His company, Falcon Maintenance, was one of two whose workers were arrested during the raids. Proseuctors say all but five of his 23 courthouse workers were illegal immigrants and many are now facing deportation.
Prosecutors say in court documents a lenient sentence could send a “perverse” message that only his workers would suffer for his scheme.
D’Elia’s defense attorney declined to comment
http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/local_news/local_wpri_sentencing_for_man_who_hired_illegals20090403
03 Apr 2009
WPRI.COM
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A janitorial contractor whose workers were arrested during immigration raids at Rhode Island courthouses will soon learn his fate.
Vincent D’Elia pleaded guilty in October to knowlingly hiring illegal immigrants. Federal prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge William Smith to send D’Elia prison and impose a fine.
D’Elia is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.
His company, Falcon Maintenance, was one of two whose workers were arrested during the raids. Proseuctors say all but five of his 23 courthouse workers were illegal immigrants and many are now facing deportation.
Prosecutors say in court documents a lenient sentence could send a “perverse” message that only his workers would suffer for his scheme.
D’Elia’s defense attorney declined to comment
http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/local_news/local_wpri_sentencing_for_man_who_hired_illegals20090403
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Leaning on Jail, City of Immigrants Fills Cells With Its Own
Leaning on Jail, City of Immigrants Fills Cells With Its Own
By NINA BERNSTEIN
December 27, 2008
The New York Times
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — Few in this threadbare little mill town gave much thought to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, the maximum-security jail beside the public ball fields at the edge of town. Even when it expanded and added barbed wire, Wyatt was just the backdrop for Little League games, its name stitched on the caps of the team it sponsored.
Then people began to disappear: the leader of a prayer group at St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church; the father of a second grader at the public charter school; a woman who mopped floors in a Providence courthouse.
After days of searching, their families found them locked up inside Wyatt — only blocks from home, but in a separate world.
In this mostly Latino city, hardly anyone had realized that in addition to detaining the accused drug dealers and mobsters everyone heard about, the jail held hundreds of people charged with no crime — people caught in the nation’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Fewer still knew that Wyatt was a portal into an expanding network of other jails, bigger and more remote, all propelling detainees toward deportation with little chance to protest.
If anything, the people of Central Falls saw Wyatt as the economic engine that city fathers had promised, a steady source of jobs and federal money to pay for services like police and fire protection. Even that, it turns out, was an illusion.
Wyatt offers a rare look into the fastest-growing, least-examined type of incarceration in America, an industry that detains half a million people a year, up from a few thousand just 15 years ago. The system operates without the rules that protect criminal suspects, and has grown up with little oversight, often in the backyards of communities desperate for any source of money and work.
Last spring, The New York Times set out to examine this small city of 19,000 and its big detention center as a microcosm of the nation’s new relationship with immigration detention, which is now sweeping up not just recent border-jumpers and convicted felons but foreign-born residents with strong ties to places like Central Falls. Wyatt, nationally accredited, clean and modern, seemed like one of the better jails in the system, a patchwork of county lockups, private prisons and federal detention centers where government investigations and the news media have recently documented substandard, sometimes lethal, conditions.
But last summer, a detainee died in Wyatt’s custody. Immigration authorities investigating the death removed all immigration detainees this month — along with the $101.76 a day the federal government paid the jail for each one. In Central Falls, where many families have members without papers, a state campaign against illegal immigrants spread fear that also took a toll: People went into hiding and businesses lost Latino customers in droves. Slowly, the city awoke to its role in the detention system, and to the pitfalls of the bargain it had struck.
In a sinking economy, immigration detention is a rare growth industry. Congress has doubled annual spending on it in the last four years, to $2.4 billion approved in October as part of $5.9 billion allotted for immigration enforcement through next September — even more than the Bush administration had requested.
Seeking a slice of that bounty, communities like Farmville, Va., and Pahrump, Nev., are signing up with developers of new detention centers. Jails from New England to New Mexico have already made the crackdown pay off — for the private companies that dominate the industry, for some investors and, at least in theory, for places like Central Falls, a city so strapped that the state pays for its schools.
Here, a specially created municipal corporation built the jail in the early 1990s to hold federal inmates, and last year more than doubled its size. As the City Council president, William Benson Jr., put it, “The more inmates they have, the more money we get.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27detain.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
By NINA BERNSTEIN
December 27, 2008
The New York Times
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — Few in this threadbare little mill town gave much thought to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, the maximum-security jail beside the public ball fields at the edge of town. Even when it expanded and added barbed wire, Wyatt was just the backdrop for Little League games, its name stitched on the caps of the team it sponsored.
Then people began to disappear: the leader of a prayer group at St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church; the father of a second grader at the public charter school; a woman who mopped floors in a Providence courthouse.
After days of searching, their families found them locked up inside Wyatt — only blocks from home, but in a separate world.
In this mostly Latino city, hardly anyone had realized that in addition to detaining the accused drug dealers and mobsters everyone heard about, the jail held hundreds of people charged with no crime — people caught in the nation’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Fewer still knew that Wyatt was a portal into an expanding network of other jails, bigger and more remote, all propelling detainees toward deportation with little chance to protest.
If anything, the people of Central Falls saw Wyatt as the economic engine that city fathers had promised, a steady source of jobs and federal money to pay for services like police and fire protection. Even that, it turns out, was an illusion.
Wyatt offers a rare look into the fastest-growing, least-examined type of incarceration in America, an industry that detains half a million people a year, up from a few thousand just 15 years ago. The system operates without the rules that protect criminal suspects, and has grown up with little oversight, often in the backyards of communities desperate for any source of money and work.
Last spring, The New York Times set out to examine this small city of 19,000 and its big detention center as a microcosm of the nation’s new relationship with immigration detention, which is now sweeping up not just recent border-jumpers and convicted felons but foreign-born residents with strong ties to places like Central Falls. Wyatt, nationally accredited, clean and modern, seemed like one of the better jails in the system, a patchwork of county lockups, private prisons and federal detention centers where government investigations and the news media have recently documented substandard, sometimes lethal, conditions.
But last summer, a detainee died in Wyatt’s custody. Immigration authorities investigating the death removed all immigration detainees this month — along with the $101.76 a day the federal government paid the jail for each one. In Central Falls, where many families have members without papers, a state campaign against illegal immigrants spread fear that also took a toll: People went into hiding and businesses lost Latino customers in droves. Slowly, the city awoke to its role in the detention system, and to the pitfalls of the bargain it had struck.
In a sinking economy, immigration detention is a rare growth industry. Congress has doubled annual spending on it in the last four years, to $2.4 billion approved in October as part of $5.9 billion allotted for immigration enforcement through next September — even more than the Bush administration had requested.
Seeking a slice of that bounty, communities like Farmville, Va., and Pahrump, Nev., are signing up with developers of new detention centers. Jails from New England to New Mexico have already made the crackdown pay off — for the private companies that dominate the industry, for some investors and, at least in theory, for places like Central Falls, a city so strapped that the state pays for its schools.
Here, a specially created municipal corporation built the jail in the early 1990s to hold federal inmates, and last year more than doubled its size. As the City Council president, William Benson Jr., put it, “The more inmates they have, the more money we get.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27detain.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Rhode Island bishop leaps into public arena
Rhode Island bishop leaps into public arena
By RAY HENRY
September 20, 2008
Hattiesburg American
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - The motto of Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin comes from a Bible verse reminding believers that God has given them "no cowardly spirit."
And he has not been timid during three years as the most prominent religious leader in Rhode Island, the nation's most heavily Catholic state.
Tobin used his edgy humor last year to publicly skewer former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is Catholic and supports abortion rights. In the diocesan newspaper, during the Republican presidential primary, Tobin addressed the candidate by first name - "Hey Rudy" - and called his stand on abortion pathetic.
Tobin recently took on U.S. immigration authorities and Gov. Don Carcieri, himself a Catholic, by condemning mass immigration raids in the state. An annoyed Carcieri pushed back, saying some priests don't agree with the bishop's stand.
Tobin realizes his social pronouncements are unpopular with many people, perhaps the majority of his diocese, which covers the entire state. He doesn't care.
"When we teach, we don't take a public opinion poll first," Tobin said in a recent interview. "Jesus didn't do surveys."
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080920/LIFESTYLE/809200320
By RAY HENRY
September 20, 2008
Hattiesburg American
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - The motto of Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin comes from a Bible verse reminding believers that God has given them "no cowardly spirit."
And he has not been timid during three years as the most prominent religious leader in Rhode Island, the nation's most heavily Catholic state.
Tobin used his edgy humor last year to publicly skewer former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is Catholic and supports abortion rights. In the diocesan newspaper, during the Republican presidential primary, Tobin addressed the candidate by first name - "Hey Rudy" - and called his stand on abortion pathetic.
Tobin recently took on U.S. immigration authorities and Gov. Don Carcieri, himself a Catholic, by condemning mass immigration raids in the state. An annoyed Carcieri pushed back, saying some priests don't agree with the bishop's stand.
Tobin realizes his social pronouncements are unpopular with many people, perhaps the majority of his diocese, which covers the entire state. He doesn't care.
"When we teach, we don't take a public opinion poll first," Tobin said in a recent interview. "Jesus didn't do surveys."
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080920/LIFESTYLE/809200320
Friday, August 22, 2008
RI bishop wants US to halt mass immigration raids
RI bishop wants US to halt mass immigration raids
By RAY HENRY
August 22, 2008
The Associate Press
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Rhode Island's Roman Catholic bishop is calling on U.S. authorities to halt mass immigration raids and says agents who refuse to participate in such raids on moral grounds deserve to be treated as conscientious objectors.
Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin asked for a blanket moratorium on immigration raids in Rhode Island until the nation adopts comprehensive immigration reform. Tobin made the requests in a letter sent Tuesday to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Boston.
The letter was sent Tuesday and publicly released Thursday.
"We often ask, 'What would Jesus do?'" Tobin said in an interview Thursday. "I know for sure what Jesus would not do, would be to sweep into a community, gather up large numbers of people, separate them from one another and deport them to another country. In my own mind, in my own conscience, that's crystal clear: Jesus would not do that."
Tobin's action comes during a heated debate over illegal immigration in heavily Catholic Rhode Island. Authorities recently raided six courthouses looking for illegal immigrant maintenance workers and Gov. Don Carcieri, himself a Catholic, signed an order requiring state police and prison officials to identify illegal immigrants for possible deportation.
"We believe that raids on the immigrant community are unjust, unnecessary, and counterproductive," the bishop's letter says. It urges individual federal agents to consider the morality of their actions and refuse to participate if their conscience dictates.
In such cases, he said, "we urge the Federal Government to fully respect the well-founded principles of conscientious objection."
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gEs6RUeap5i0N9b8MOWoBo6EQS7AD92MT5KG0
By RAY HENRY
August 22, 2008
The Associate Press
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Rhode Island's Roman Catholic bishop is calling on U.S. authorities to halt mass immigration raids and says agents who refuse to participate in such raids on moral grounds deserve to be treated as conscientious objectors.
Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin asked for a blanket moratorium on immigration raids in Rhode Island until the nation adopts comprehensive immigration reform. Tobin made the requests in a letter sent Tuesday to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Boston.
The letter was sent Tuesday and publicly released Thursday.
"We often ask, 'What would Jesus do?'" Tobin said in an interview Thursday. "I know for sure what Jesus would not do, would be to sweep into a community, gather up large numbers of people, separate them from one another and deport them to another country. In my own mind, in my own conscience, that's crystal clear: Jesus would not do that."
Tobin's action comes during a heated debate over illegal immigration in heavily Catholic Rhode Island. Authorities recently raided six courthouses looking for illegal immigrant maintenance workers and Gov. Don Carcieri, himself a Catholic, signed an order requiring state police and prison officials to identify illegal immigrants for possible deportation.
"We believe that raids on the immigrant community are unjust, unnecessary, and counterproductive," the bishop's letter says. It urges individual federal agents to consider the morality of their actions and refuse to participate if their conscience dictates.
In such cases, he said, "we urge the Federal Government to fully respect the well-founded principles of conscientious objection."
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gEs6RUeap5i0N9b8MOWoBo6EQS7AD92MT5KG0
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Dozens arrested in raids at courthouses
BY KAREN LEE ZINER and FELICE J. FREYER
Providence Journal Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
PROVIDENCE — Federal immigration agents and state police raided six Rhode Island courthouses yesterday, arresting dozens of people employed by two contractors hired by the state. The detainees are all believed to be maintenance workers.
The raid led to a noisy demonstration by at least 100 people outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at 200 Dyer St. last night. Police officers arrived as the crowd grew; at one point the police pushed a line of demonstrators across the parking lot.
Some in the crowd were relatives of the arrestees. Others included clergy and at least one state representative, Grace Diaz, and members of immigrant advocacy groups.
Leonardo Tornes said his sister, Francesca Tornes, an undocumented worker from Mexico, was arrested at the Kent County Courthouse.
“She has two children — one and five years old,” he said through an interpreter. “A friend who worked with her called, and said they have taken everyone,” he said.
Related links
Extra: Read the governor's executive order (PDF)
Craig N. Berke, spokesman for the Rhode Island judiciary, said the raids occurred simultaneously at 5 p.m. at all six Rhode Island courthouses. He said a “substantial” percentage of employees of two contractors hired by the state were taken into custody.
Berke declined to name the contractors, however relatives of some of the detainees identified one company as the Tri-State Enterprises employment agency on North Main Street.
Berke said those who were arrested “are not state employees. They are not employees of the judiciary.” He said “dozens” of people were arrested but he did not have an exact count.
“The investigation was initiated by the judiciary,” Berke said. “In early June, we forwarded evidence to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Rhode Island State Police. The judiciary has been cooperating with that investigation on a daily basis since then.” Berke declined to say what the evidence was.
“I also know that there was at least one courthouse –– I’m not sure if there was more than one –– in which no employees of the vendor were taken into custody,” Berke said. “They were screened but not taken into custody.”
In the two Providence courthouses, the workers were just starting their shift at 5 p.m. and would have normally stayed till 9 or 10 p.m. In the other courthouses, the workers come in earlier and are normally done by 6 p.m.
Asked who will clean the courthouses today, Berke said, “They’ll be cleaned. Not every employee of the vendor was taken into custody today. And we also have daytime maintenance staff who will have to do double duty” today.
Berke said that as of last night the two contractors were still employed by the judiciary.
The courthouses that were raided are: the Garrahy Judicial Complex and the Licht Judicial Complex, both in Providence; the McGrath Judicial Complex in Wakefield; the Murray Judicial Complex in Newport; Kent County Courthouse in Warwick, and the Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal in Cranston.
Paula Grenier, an ICE spokeswoman in Boston, said an enforcement action had been carried out “as a result of a joint investigation by federal and state authorities.” Grenier said the action “is part of an ongoing criminal investigation.” She would not confirm that the courthouses were raided, or say how many people were detained.
The raids occurred during the first meeting of a governor’s advisory panel, charged with monitoring any “unintended consequences” of Governor Carcieri’s executive order cracking down on illegal immigration. The order issued in March requires that state police be deputized with certain immigration enforcement powers.
News of yesterday’s raids spread rapidly as courthouse workers phoned relatives, friends and community leaders. Demonstrators assembled outside the ICE building in Providence at about 8 p.m. As police arrived, the group divided and people rushed to doors at the front and rear of the building.
Juan Garcia, organizer for Immigrants in Action at St. Teresa Church in Olneyville, said his cell phone began buzzing at 4:45 p.m. as he was driving toward Newport from Providence to discuss fallout from an immigration raid there several weeks ago that led to 42 arrests at stores, restaurants and apartments.
He said he learned the arrests had occurred at the Kent County courthouse “and right here in Providence,” he said pointing to the Garrahy Judicial Complex across the street from ICE headquarters.
Some of the women who were arrested “have little kids, bigger kids,” he said.
Garcia said, “This is the consequence of the governor’s executive order. All companies receiving money from the state will review the legal status of people.” (The order requires using a federal E-Verify system for all new hires, but not current employees).
Monica and Jacqueline Lorenti said their stepfather was arrested at Superior Court.
“His boss called. He said he couldn’t do anything, nothing — everybody had the handcuffs on.”
http://www.projo.com/news/content/ICE_RAID_16_07-16-08_LJASKP5_v29.42cad22.html#
Providence Journal Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
PROVIDENCE — Federal immigration agents and state police raided six Rhode Island courthouses yesterday, arresting dozens of people employed by two contractors hired by the state. The detainees are all believed to be maintenance workers.
The raid led to a noisy demonstration by at least 100 people outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at 200 Dyer St. last night. Police officers arrived as the crowd grew; at one point the police pushed a line of demonstrators across the parking lot.
Some in the crowd were relatives of the arrestees. Others included clergy and at least one state representative, Grace Diaz, and members of immigrant advocacy groups.
Leonardo Tornes said his sister, Francesca Tornes, an undocumented worker from Mexico, was arrested at the Kent County Courthouse.
“She has two children — one and five years old,” he said through an interpreter. “A friend who worked with her called, and said they have taken everyone,” he said.
Related links
Extra: Read the governor's executive order (PDF)
Craig N. Berke, spokesman for the Rhode Island judiciary, said the raids occurred simultaneously at 5 p.m. at all six Rhode Island courthouses. He said a “substantial” percentage of employees of two contractors hired by the state were taken into custody.
Berke declined to name the contractors, however relatives of some of the detainees identified one company as the Tri-State Enterprises employment agency on North Main Street.
Berke said those who were arrested “are not state employees. They are not employees of the judiciary.” He said “dozens” of people were arrested but he did not have an exact count.
“The investigation was initiated by the judiciary,” Berke said. “In early June, we forwarded evidence to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Rhode Island State Police. The judiciary has been cooperating with that investigation on a daily basis since then.” Berke declined to say what the evidence was.
“I also know that there was at least one courthouse –– I’m not sure if there was more than one –– in which no employees of the vendor were taken into custody,” Berke said. “They were screened but not taken into custody.”
In the two Providence courthouses, the workers were just starting their shift at 5 p.m. and would have normally stayed till 9 or 10 p.m. In the other courthouses, the workers come in earlier and are normally done by 6 p.m.
Asked who will clean the courthouses today, Berke said, “They’ll be cleaned. Not every employee of the vendor was taken into custody today. And we also have daytime maintenance staff who will have to do double duty” today.
Berke said that as of last night the two contractors were still employed by the judiciary.
The courthouses that were raided are: the Garrahy Judicial Complex and the Licht Judicial Complex, both in Providence; the McGrath Judicial Complex in Wakefield; the Murray Judicial Complex in Newport; Kent County Courthouse in Warwick, and the Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal in Cranston.
Paula Grenier, an ICE spokeswoman in Boston, said an enforcement action had been carried out “as a result of a joint investigation by federal and state authorities.” Grenier said the action “is part of an ongoing criminal investigation.” She would not confirm that the courthouses were raided, or say how many people were detained.
The raids occurred during the first meeting of a governor’s advisory panel, charged with monitoring any “unintended consequences” of Governor Carcieri’s executive order cracking down on illegal immigration. The order issued in March requires that state police be deputized with certain immigration enforcement powers.
News of yesterday’s raids spread rapidly as courthouse workers phoned relatives, friends and community leaders. Demonstrators assembled outside the ICE building in Providence at about 8 p.m. As police arrived, the group divided and people rushed to doors at the front and rear of the building.
Juan Garcia, organizer for Immigrants in Action at St. Teresa Church in Olneyville, said his cell phone began buzzing at 4:45 p.m. as he was driving toward Newport from Providence to discuss fallout from an immigration raid there several weeks ago that led to 42 arrests at stores, restaurants and apartments.
He said he learned the arrests had occurred at the Kent County courthouse “and right here in Providence,” he said pointing to the Garrahy Judicial Complex across the street from ICE headquarters.
Some of the women who were arrested “have little kids, bigger kids,” he said.
Garcia said, “This is the consequence of the governor’s executive order. All companies receiving money from the state will review the legal status of people.” (The order requires using a federal E-Verify system for all new hires, but not current employees).
Monica and Jacqueline Lorenti said their stepfather was arrested at Superior Court.
“His boss called. He said he couldn’t do anything, nothing — everybody had the handcuffs on.”
http://www.projo.com/news/content/ICE_RAID_16_07-16-08_LJASKP5_v29.42cad22.html#
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