By Chris Killian
The Kalamazoo Gazette
March 03, 2011
KALAMAZOO – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wrapped up a four-day operation in and around the city of Kalamazoo Wednesday that targeted undocumented immigrants who are criminals or had failed to leave the country after being told to by federal authorities.
Twenty undocumented immigrants – all men – were arrested by ICE agents since the operation began Sunday, said Khaalid Walls, spokesman for the agency’s Detroit field office. Fifteen of those arrested were from Mexico; others were from China and Nigeria.
Agents raided homes, restaurants and other businesses, Walls said. The men, ranging in age from 22 to 53, are all currently being held at an ICE detention facility in Calhoun County. They will either be deported soon or go before an immigration judge, depending on their circumstances, he said.
“This was a targeted operation, not a raid or a dragnet,” Walls said.
Domestic violence, burglary, narcotics possession and drunken-driving convictions were some of the crimes committed by those who were arrested, Walls said.
Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Chief Jeff Hadley said he was not aware of the ICE operation, but added: “If they are ridding our community of bad people, regardless of who they (the agency) are, we’re obviously for that.”
Hadley said his officers don’t actively search for undocumented immigrants living and working in the city. His department doesn’t have the jurisdiction or the capacity to do such investigative work, he said.
The federal government usually handles illegal immigration issues, such as investigation, prosecution and deportation work.
Hadley said he knows issues like undocumented immigration – and the raids that sometimes occur – affects the city’s more than 5,000 member Hispanic community hard.
“It s a touchy issue, especially in this (the Hispanic) community,” he said.
But regardless of the immigration status of the 20 men arrested, the city will now have fewer criminals walking the streets, Hadley said.
“We wouldn’t want them here anyway, regardless of who they are,” he said.
http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2011/03/immigration_enforcement_agents.html
Showing posts with label Other Deportations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Other Deportations. Show all posts
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
A Case Involving the Exploitation of Undocumented Workers in New Haven Draws Attention to the State's Restaurants
By Gregory B. Hladky
The Hartford Advocate
February 07, 2011
A family of Ecuadorian immigrants is rescued from what they claim was virtual servitude at a New Haven bakery. The owner of Mexican restaurants in Southbury and Prospect pleads guilty to hiring undocumented workers as cooks. A multimillion-dollar chain of Dunkin’ Donut shops along the shoreline is sold after its founder goes to prison for recruiting illegal foreign employees.
According to labor lawyers and immigrant-rights activists, Connecticut’s restaurant and food service industry routinely hires undocumented immigrant workers to wash dishes, clean floors, cook, bake and wait tables. The jobs often involve low pay, long hours and tough working conditions.
And if these workers complain or ask for more money or decent benefits, they can find themselves booted out the door or threatened with deportation as “illegal aliens,” says Sheila Hayre, a lawyer with the New Haven Legal Assistance Association.
“I am shocked at how common it is, how rampant it is,” Hayre says.
Peter Goselin, a Hartford labor lawyer, agrees. “There’s no question that undocumented immigrants are working in many Connecticut restaurants,” he says. “It’s a pretty common feature of the restaurant business in Connecticut.”
We’re not talking just about low-rent pizza places and hamburger joints. “Most nice restaurants in Connecticut have undocumented workers doing crappy jobs,” Goselin says.
This winter, employees of two upscale New Haven restaurants (Cafe Goodfellas and Downtown at the Taft) staged demonstrations to protest unfair wages. John Lugo, an activist who helped organize the protests, says several of those involved are undocumented workers.
“The employers are claiming they didn’t know they were undocumented workers,” says Goselin, who is representing some of those employees.
Gennaro Iannacone, owner of Goodfellas, declined to comment. The owners of Downtown at the Taft, who are apparently planning to reopen the restaurant under a new name, couldn’t be reached for comment.
“They know from the beginning these workers were undocumented,” says Lugo, who is with the advocacy group Unidad Latina en Accion. “But when you ask for these people’s rights, [the owners] say, ‘They are illegal, I don’t have to pay them.’“
The lack of a consistent and comprehensive federal policy on people who enter the United States without the required visas or work permits has become a seemingly insoluble political nightmare for the White House, Congress, federal, state and local officials. Despite President Barack Obama’s promises to change the course of federal immigration policy, deportations have actually increased since his administration took office two years ago.
A new report by the Pew Hispanic Center estimated the number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. last year at 11.2 million, about the same as in 2009. The nonpartisan research group’s study also found that the number of undocumented employees in the American workforce also remained steady at about 8 million despite the recession, high unemployment and state crackdowns.
Connecticut’s illegal-immigration issues are mild compared to states like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. The Pew report estimated Connecticut was home to about 120,000 undocumented immigrants in 2010; but that represents a big increase from the approximately 75,000 illegal immigrants who were believed to be here a decade ago.
Their presence has produced its share of controversy here, from New Haven’s 2007 decision to offer city identification cards to undocumented immigrants to the Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton’s proposals to use state and local police to cooperate with federal agents in rounding up undocumented immigrants. Raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents several years ago sparked angry protests in some cities.
Most of the undocumented immigrants in Connecticut are here for the work, whether it’s in construction or landscaping or any of the other businesses willing to hire them. Experts food service is one area where they find low-wage jobs most available, and where they often find themselves exploited. “The vast majority of them work in the food industry,” says Hayre.
Goselin says their situations cover a broad spectrum, from horrific conditions that may even include sexual abuse, to employers who treat undocumented workers just as they treat American-born employees.
The plight of those six Ecuadorians who were working at Rocco’s Bakery on Ferry Street in New Haven is an example of how bad things can get, according to Hayre.
The bakery’s owner, Antonio DiBenedetto of North Branford, pleaded guilty last month to one count of unlawful employment of aliens and now faces a potential fine of up to $250,000 and up to five years in prison. His lawyer, Hugh F. Keefe, insists that DiBenedetto was only trying to help these immigrants by providing them with work and a place to live.
The Ecuadorians have filed a civil suit accusing DiBenedetto and his two sons of sexual and verbal abuse of the women in the family, of threatening them with deportation if they complained about long hours and unfairly low pay. “They were terrified,” Hayre says. “It was just terrible treatment.”
Hayre says this case is unusual because the immigrants involved decided to seek help from local activists, lawyers and federal officials. “Very, very few ever come forward,” she says, explaining most undocumented immigrants fear that if they make an official complaint about an employer violating state and federal labor laws, they will be deported no matter what happens to the employer.
In the Rocco Bakery case, ICE has granted several members of the Ecuadorian family temporary work permits that will allow them to stay in U.S., at least for now.
Lugo acknowledges that not all restaurants hiring undocumented workers are trying to exploit them. “I know some owners who are pretty decent,” he says.
Treating undocumented immigrants decently won’t protect an employer if the feds decide to make an example of him, says Diane Polan, an immigration lawyer. She represented Andrew Adames, an Oxford resident who was prosecuted in 2009 for hiring illegal workers at his chain of Mexican restaurants. She insists Adames never abused his employees, paid them fairly and treated them well.
Polan believes ICE agents went after Adames to make him “the Connecticut poster boy for the federal government’s ... misguided strategy” for solving the problem of undocumented workers. She says the idea was, “If you go and prosecute restaurants, that will solve the problem.”
“How does that help the problem,” Polan asks, “making my client into a convicted felon?” Adames pleaded guilty, paid ICE $150,000, and was given 150 hours of community service.
People in Connecticut’s restaurant and food service industry insist that hiring undocumented workers just isn’t a big deal in this state. Several of the experts attending a recent Farm-To-Chef Annual Meeting in Old Saybrook last month claimed they’d never encountered illegal workers at restaurants where they’d been employed.
John Turenne, a former chef at Yale University who is now with Sustainable Food Systems, says larger food service institutions and companies won’t employ undocumented workers because of the potential for legal problems. “I think they’re out there in smaller businesses,” he argues. “If there was a crackdown, it’s the little guy who would be in trouble.”
Hayre believes it’s far more widespread. She recalls a time a few years ago when a rumor was spread that ICE agents were planning to raid lots of restaurants in New Haven. Hayre and some friends happened to be going out to dinner that night, and at two of the city’s top restaurants, they were told the kitchens had been shut down. Virtually everyone had fled in fear.
“It really brought home for me how hidden these workers are,” she says, “and how totally dependent we are on them.”
http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/featured-news/a-case-involving-the-exploitation-of-undocumented-workers-in-new-haven-draws-attention-to-the-states-restaurants-058472
The Hartford Advocate
February 07, 2011
A family of Ecuadorian immigrants is rescued from what they claim was virtual servitude at a New Haven bakery. The owner of Mexican restaurants in Southbury and Prospect pleads guilty to hiring undocumented workers as cooks. A multimillion-dollar chain of Dunkin’ Donut shops along the shoreline is sold after its founder goes to prison for recruiting illegal foreign employees.
According to labor lawyers and immigrant-rights activists, Connecticut’s restaurant and food service industry routinely hires undocumented immigrant workers to wash dishes, clean floors, cook, bake and wait tables. The jobs often involve low pay, long hours and tough working conditions.
And if these workers complain or ask for more money or decent benefits, they can find themselves booted out the door or threatened with deportation as “illegal aliens,” says Sheila Hayre, a lawyer with the New Haven Legal Assistance Association.
“I am shocked at how common it is, how rampant it is,” Hayre says.
Peter Goselin, a Hartford labor lawyer, agrees. “There’s no question that undocumented immigrants are working in many Connecticut restaurants,” he says. “It’s a pretty common feature of the restaurant business in Connecticut.”
We’re not talking just about low-rent pizza places and hamburger joints. “Most nice restaurants in Connecticut have undocumented workers doing crappy jobs,” Goselin says.
This winter, employees of two upscale New Haven restaurants (Cafe Goodfellas and Downtown at the Taft) staged demonstrations to protest unfair wages. John Lugo, an activist who helped organize the protests, says several of those involved are undocumented workers.
“The employers are claiming they didn’t know they were undocumented workers,” says Goselin, who is representing some of those employees.
Gennaro Iannacone, owner of Goodfellas, declined to comment. The owners of Downtown at the Taft, who are apparently planning to reopen the restaurant under a new name, couldn’t be reached for comment.
“They know from the beginning these workers were undocumented,” says Lugo, who is with the advocacy group Unidad Latina en Accion. “But when you ask for these people’s rights, [the owners] say, ‘They are illegal, I don’t have to pay them.’“
The lack of a consistent and comprehensive federal policy on people who enter the United States without the required visas or work permits has become a seemingly insoluble political nightmare for the White House, Congress, federal, state and local officials. Despite President Barack Obama’s promises to change the course of federal immigration policy, deportations have actually increased since his administration took office two years ago.
A new report by the Pew Hispanic Center estimated the number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. last year at 11.2 million, about the same as in 2009. The nonpartisan research group’s study also found that the number of undocumented employees in the American workforce also remained steady at about 8 million despite the recession, high unemployment and state crackdowns.
Connecticut’s illegal-immigration issues are mild compared to states like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. The Pew report estimated Connecticut was home to about 120,000 undocumented immigrants in 2010; but that represents a big increase from the approximately 75,000 illegal immigrants who were believed to be here a decade ago.
Their presence has produced its share of controversy here, from New Haven’s 2007 decision to offer city identification cards to undocumented immigrants to the Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton’s proposals to use state and local police to cooperate with federal agents in rounding up undocumented immigrants. Raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents several years ago sparked angry protests in some cities.
Most of the undocumented immigrants in Connecticut are here for the work, whether it’s in construction or landscaping or any of the other businesses willing to hire them. Experts food service is one area where they find low-wage jobs most available, and where they often find themselves exploited. “The vast majority of them work in the food industry,” says Hayre.
Goselin says their situations cover a broad spectrum, from horrific conditions that may even include sexual abuse, to employers who treat undocumented workers just as they treat American-born employees.
The plight of those six Ecuadorians who were working at Rocco’s Bakery on Ferry Street in New Haven is an example of how bad things can get, according to Hayre.
The bakery’s owner, Antonio DiBenedetto of North Branford, pleaded guilty last month to one count of unlawful employment of aliens and now faces a potential fine of up to $250,000 and up to five years in prison. His lawyer, Hugh F. Keefe, insists that DiBenedetto was only trying to help these immigrants by providing them with work and a place to live.
The Ecuadorians have filed a civil suit accusing DiBenedetto and his two sons of sexual and verbal abuse of the women in the family, of threatening them with deportation if they complained about long hours and unfairly low pay. “They were terrified,” Hayre says. “It was just terrible treatment.”
Hayre says this case is unusual because the immigrants involved decided to seek help from local activists, lawyers and federal officials. “Very, very few ever come forward,” she says, explaining most undocumented immigrants fear that if they make an official complaint about an employer violating state and federal labor laws, they will be deported no matter what happens to the employer.
In the Rocco Bakery case, ICE has granted several members of the Ecuadorian family temporary work permits that will allow them to stay in U.S., at least for now.
Lugo acknowledges that not all restaurants hiring undocumented workers are trying to exploit them. “I know some owners who are pretty decent,” he says.
Treating undocumented immigrants decently won’t protect an employer if the feds decide to make an example of him, says Diane Polan, an immigration lawyer. She represented Andrew Adames, an Oxford resident who was prosecuted in 2009 for hiring illegal workers at his chain of Mexican restaurants. She insists Adames never abused his employees, paid them fairly and treated them well.
Polan believes ICE agents went after Adames to make him “the Connecticut poster boy for the federal government’s ... misguided strategy” for solving the problem of undocumented workers. She says the idea was, “If you go and prosecute restaurants, that will solve the problem.”
“How does that help the problem,” Polan asks, “making my client into a convicted felon?” Adames pleaded guilty, paid ICE $150,000, and was given 150 hours of community service.
People in Connecticut’s restaurant and food service industry insist that hiring undocumented workers just isn’t a big deal in this state. Several of the experts attending a recent Farm-To-Chef Annual Meeting in Old Saybrook last month claimed they’d never encountered illegal workers at restaurants where they’d been employed.
John Turenne, a former chef at Yale University who is now with Sustainable Food Systems, says larger food service institutions and companies won’t employ undocumented workers because of the potential for legal problems. “I think they’re out there in smaller businesses,” he argues. “If there was a crackdown, it’s the little guy who would be in trouble.”
Hayre believes it’s far more widespread. She recalls a time a few years ago when a rumor was spread that ICE agents were planning to raid lots of restaurants in New Haven. Hayre and some friends happened to be going out to dinner that night, and at two of the city’s top restaurants, they were told the kitchens had been shut down. Virtually everyone had fled in fear.
“It really brought home for me how hidden these workers are,” she says, “and how totally dependent we are on them.”
http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/featured-news/a-case-involving-the-exploitation-of-undocumented-workers-in-new-haven-draws-attention-to-the-states-restaurants-058472
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Immigration raids net people from 5 countries
WJMN.COM
Jan 21, 2011
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Federal agents arrested 77 people from Mexico and other counties during immigration raids across southwest Lower Michigan.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detroit field office Director Rebecca Adducci says agents in the Grand Rapids area targeted illegal residents, immigration fugitives and immigration violators during a four-day operation ending late Thursday.
Alducci says agents arrested 41 people from Mexico, 27 from Guatemala, seven from Honduras, and one each from China and Laos.
The Grand Rapids Press says two large-scale fake document operations have been busted in that city over the past 18 months.
Arrests occurred in Kent, Ottawa, Kalamazoo, Mason, Berrien, Calhoun and St. Joseph counties.
Of those arrested, 22 had prior convictions, six had previously been deported and 35 were immigration fugitives who failed to comply with deportation orders.
http://www.wfrv.com/news/michigan/114373974.html
Jan 21, 2011
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Federal agents arrested 77 people from Mexico and other counties during immigration raids across southwest Lower Michigan.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detroit field office Director Rebecca Adducci says agents in the Grand Rapids area targeted illegal residents, immigration fugitives and immigration violators during a four-day operation ending late Thursday.
Alducci says agents arrested 41 people from Mexico, 27 from Guatemala, seven from Honduras, and one each from China and Laos.
The Grand Rapids Press says two large-scale fake document operations have been busted in that city over the past 18 months.
Arrests occurred in Kent, Ottawa, Kalamazoo, Mason, Berrien, Calhoun and St. Joseph counties.
Of those arrested, 22 had prior convictions, six had previously been deported and 35 were immigration fugitives who failed to comply with deportation orders.
http://www.wfrv.com/news/michigan/114373974.html
Saturday, December 25, 2010
ICE Confirms 5 Seized in Raids
By Patric Hedlund
The Mountain Enterprise
December 24, 2010
Officials have confirmed that five people were seized Friday, Dec. 3 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Rumors alleging that 30 people were taken into custody appear to be untrue.
ICE officers with the Fugitive Operations Team based in Bakersfield “arrested five males in the Frazier Park area on December 3,” according to ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice. “The subjects included a Mexican national with an outstanding order of deportation. He was arrested at a residence where officers located two additional Mexican nationals who were also determined to be in the country illegally. One of the two had a prior DUI conviction. All three of these individuals have since been repatriated to Mexico,” she said.
The other subjects taken into custody, according to Kice, include a naturalized French citizen of Lebanese descent who overstayed his visa and a Syrian national who was determined to have entered the country illegally.
“Both of these men have been placed in removal proceedings and remain in ICE custody pending a hearing before an immigration judge,” Kice said.
The two still detained pending hearings are said to be in the Lerdo Corrections Facility. Both were employees of Sam’s Liquor Market in Lebec, friends have confirmed.
A family member said they have an attorney’s assistance and “they are being treated very well.”
In the early morning action that began at 4:30 a.m., the five were taken from Frazier Park and Lebec, according to a call that went through Kern County Sheriff’s dispatch. The Bakersfield ICE office originally told The Mountain Enterprise that the only way to officially confirm the number of people seized from the Mountain Communities would be through a Freedom of Information Act filing in Washington D.C. By Friday, Dec. 17 the ICE offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles began providing factual information.
Meanwhile, rumors were running wild in the affected neighborhoods of the Frazier Mountain Communities.
Rumors that mothers and fathers were seized, leaving children at the El Tejon School are not true, according to Principal Dena Kiouses. She said she is positive that reports circulating in the community of “agents in black uniforms visiting the school to tell children their parents are in custody and that they would be going into foster care” are not true.
“This is a time of year when parents do tend to move, and we sometimes do not know why,” Kiouses said, adding that if children go into foster care the school is typically not notified. One kindergarten-age child enrolled at Frazier Park School is said to have gone back to Mexico with his father.
Parents have reported to The Mountain Enterprise that children and families are fearful of going outside or answering the door.
The popular Lebec man known as “Nathan,” (his last name is not confirmed) who reportedly managed Sam’s Liquor for seven years, had been a frequent donor to children’s sports activities in the Mountain Communities. He is well-known in the region for generosity to families in need, friends say. Some children are said to be confused regarding his disappearance. Children have been reported to have heard the word “visa” was in the newspaper, and told their parents: “Nathan is being deported because he didn’t pay his visa bill.” More than one parent reported this confusion to reporters.
Although The Mountain Enterprise was unable to obtain immediate official confirmation of the facts, two preliminary stories were published on December 10 and 17. Because of the delicacy of personal and legal issues, community sources have been slow to allow their names to be used. The national ICE office spokespersons were also slow to respond. Retired ICE agents and a former immigration judge have been helpful in providing details about ICE procedures.
Joseph Whalen of Buffalo, New York, a retired adjudication officer, who worked making decisions on citizenship, explained that information about a person in ICE custody—and communication with the prisoner— is available only to “an accredited representative, as designated on form G-28, from the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review and signed by the alien.”
Whalen warned that he has seen some people known as “notarios” exploit families with immigration status problems. Sometimes they represent themselves as lawyers (abogados), but they are not,” he said.
Whalen added that the League of United Latin American Citizens (http:// lulac.org) is a resource for Latinos seeking accurate immigrant rights information.
http://mountainenterprise.com/atf.php?sid=7961¤t_edition=2010-12-24
The Mountain Enterprise
December 24, 2010
Officials have confirmed that five people were seized Friday, Dec. 3 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Rumors alleging that 30 people were taken into custody appear to be untrue.
ICE officers with the Fugitive Operations Team based in Bakersfield “arrested five males in the Frazier Park area on December 3,” according to ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice. “The subjects included a Mexican national with an outstanding order of deportation. He was arrested at a residence where officers located two additional Mexican nationals who were also determined to be in the country illegally. One of the two had a prior DUI conviction. All three of these individuals have since been repatriated to Mexico,” she said.
The other subjects taken into custody, according to Kice, include a naturalized French citizen of Lebanese descent who overstayed his visa and a Syrian national who was determined to have entered the country illegally.
“Both of these men have been placed in removal proceedings and remain in ICE custody pending a hearing before an immigration judge,” Kice said.
The two still detained pending hearings are said to be in the Lerdo Corrections Facility. Both were employees of Sam’s Liquor Market in Lebec, friends have confirmed.
A family member said they have an attorney’s assistance and “they are being treated very well.”
In the early morning action that began at 4:30 a.m., the five were taken from Frazier Park and Lebec, according to a call that went through Kern County Sheriff’s dispatch. The Bakersfield ICE office originally told The Mountain Enterprise that the only way to officially confirm the number of people seized from the Mountain Communities would be through a Freedom of Information Act filing in Washington D.C. By Friday, Dec. 17 the ICE offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles began providing factual information.
Meanwhile, rumors were running wild in the affected neighborhoods of the Frazier Mountain Communities.
Rumors that mothers and fathers were seized, leaving children at the El Tejon School are not true, according to Principal Dena Kiouses. She said she is positive that reports circulating in the community of “agents in black uniforms visiting the school to tell children their parents are in custody and that they would be going into foster care” are not true.
“This is a time of year when parents do tend to move, and we sometimes do not know why,” Kiouses said, adding that if children go into foster care the school is typically not notified. One kindergarten-age child enrolled at Frazier Park School is said to have gone back to Mexico with his father.
Parents have reported to The Mountain Enterprise that children and families are fearful of going outside or answering the door.
The popular Lebec man known as “Nathan,” (his last name is not confirmed) who reportedly managed Sam’s Liquor for seven years, had been a frequent donor to children’s sports activities in the Mountain Communities. He is well-known in the region for generosity to families in need, friends say. Some children are said to be confused regarding his disappearance. Children have been reported to have heard the word “visa” was in the newspaper, and told their parents: “Nathan is being deported because he didn’t pay his visa bill.” More than one parent reported this confusion to reporters.
Although The Mountain Enterprise was unable to obtain immediate official confirmation of the facts, two preliminary stories were published on December 10 and 17. Because of the delicacy of personal and legal issues, community sources have been slow to allow their names to be used. The national ICE office spokespersons were also slow to respond. Retired ICE agents and a former immigration judge have been helpful in providing details about ICE procedures.
Joseph Whalen of Buffalo, New York, a retired adjudication officer, who worked making decisions on citizenship, explained that information about a person in ICE custody—and communication with the prisoner— is available only to “an accredited representative, as designated on form G-28, from the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review and signed by the alien.”
Whalen warned that he has seen some people known as “notarios” exploit families with immigration status problems. Sometimes they represent themselves as lawyers (abogados), but they are not,” he said.
Whalen added that the League of United Latin American Citizens (http:// lulac.org) is a resource for Latinos seeking accurate immigrant rights information.
http://mountainenterprise.com/atf.php?sid=7961¤t_edition=2010-12-24
Saturday, September 25, 2010
39 fugitive immigrants arrested in S.D. County
By Morgan Lee
San Diego Union Tribune
September 20, 2010
Federal authorities have detained 39 immigrants in San Diego County during a three-day effort to catch fugitives linked to crimes and pending deportation orders, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a news release Monday.
Of the illegal immigrants arrested last week by an agency Fugitive Operations Team, half had prior convictions for crimes including domestic violence, indecent exposure, vehicle theft, fraud, driving under the influence and drug violations. Most faced outstanding orders for deportation or had returned after being deported.
But none appeared to be a major threat to public security as defined by the agency’s Fugitive Operations Program, which has emphasized catching transnational street gang members and child sex offenders.
Locally the program has made 1,343 arrests since October 2009. Those arrests are part of a nationwide effort to deal with the nearly 525,000 estimated people who remain in the U.S. despite orders to leave or stay away.
Those detained last week in San Diego were foreign nationals from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador , Somalia and the Philippines.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/sep/20/39-fugitive-immigrants-arrested-in-sd-county/
San Diego Union Tribune
September 20, 2010
Federal authorities have detained 39 immigrants in San Diego County during a three-day effort to catch fugitives linked to crimes and pending deportation orders, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a news release Monday.
Of the illegal immigrants arrested last week by an agency Fugitive Operations Team, half had prior convictions for crimes including domestic violence, indecent exposure, vehicle theft, fraud, driving under the influence and drug violations. Most faced outstanding orders for deportation or had returned after being deported.
But none appeared to be a major threat to public security as defined by the agency’s Fugitive Operations Program, which has emphasized catching transnational street gang members and child sex offenders.
Locally the program has made 1,343 arrests since October 2009. Those arrests are part of a nationwide effort to deal with the nearly 525,000 estimated people who remain in the U.S. despite orders to leave or stay away.
Those detained last week in San Diego were foreign nationals from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador , Somalia and the Philippines.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/sep/20/39-fugitive-immigrants-arrested-in-sd-county/
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
US Deporting More Guatemalans
US Deporting More Guatemalans
Guatemala, Sep 3 (Prensa Latina)
The wave of raids and deportations is increasing in the United States and 18,119 Guatemalans have been expelled, according to the most recent evaluation from the Operation Division of the General Migration Board.
August is until now the month with the greatest quantity of repatriations, including 2,846 cases, noted the source.
Most of them were captured in work centers, in public places and even in their houses and then gathered together in five states from where the flights with people without identity papers depart.
Some of them had mortgaged or sold their houses in pursuit of the so-called American Dream.
Others were living in US for over 10 years and now they have no family, house, or place to return.
The Human Mobility Pastoral from Guatemala Episcopal Conference expressed concern for the increase of deportations and massive raids in US
San Marcos Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini considered that this phenomenon must not only be seen as a result of the economic impact or the fall in the number of remittances, but as a violation of Human Rights against immigrants.
Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared in a meeting mid-August with migrants in that northern country that Guatemalans do not arrive in this country to commit crimes but for jobs.
Around 1.5 million Guatemalans live in that country, and more than half do not have documents and are subjected to prison and expulsion.
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BDBDEAB48-D071-4447-B232-2F564BC901A6%7D)&language=EN
Guatemala, Sep 3 (Prensa Latina)
The wave of raids and deportations is increasing in the United States and 18,119 Guatemalans have been expelled, according to the most recent evaluation from the Operation Division of the General Migration Board.
August is until now the month with the greatest quantity of repatriations, including 2,846 cases, noted the source.
Most of them were captured in work centers, in public places and even in their houses and then gathered together in five states from where the flights with people without identity papers depart.
Some of them had mortgaged or sold their houses in pursuit of the so-called American Dream.
Others were living in US for over 10 years and now they have no family, house, or place to return.
The Human Mobility Pastoral from Guatemala Episcopal Conference expressed concern for the increase of deportations and massive raids in US
San Marcos Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini considered that this phenomenon must not only be seen as a result of the economic impact or the fall in the number of remittances, but as a violation of Human Rights against immigrants.
Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared in a meeting mid-August with migrants in that northern country that Guatemalans do not arrive in this country to commit crimes but for jobs.
Around 1.5 million Guatemalans live in that country, and more than half do not have documents and are subjected to prison and expulsion.
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BDBDEAB48-D071-4447-B232-2F564BC901A6%7D)&language=EN
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)