Thread: 186 Captured In Long Island Immigration Raids

186 people captured in Long Island immigration raids


By FRANK ELTMAN | Associated Press Writer
5:06 PM EDT, October 1, 2007


GARDEN CITY, N.Y. - A series of immigration raids last week snared 186 people, many of whom federal authorities identified Monday as gang members, although a top local police official disputed the gang figures and said his officers would not cooperate in future arrests.

The arrests, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Community Shield operation, targeted members of street gangs, including MS-13, the Latin Kings and Vatos Locos, said special agent Peter J. Smith, of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, a division of the DHS.

Of the 186, 92 were arrested in Nassau County and 65 were taken into custody in Suffolk County. Included were 157 gang members or associates, who were held on menacing, weapons violations and other charges, Smith said. Most likely would face deportation back to their native countries, he added.



The arrests drew criticism not only from groups advocating for undocumented aliens but also from the commissioner of the Nassau County Police Department, who complained his officers were kept in the dark about many of the details of the raids.

"We withdrew from any involvement in any further operations," Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey said on Friday. "There will be no further cooperation unless these issues are ironed out."

Mulvey said ICE agents repeatedly were asked to supply to the local police department a list of suspected gang members targeted with arrest warrants but the request was granted only last Thursday afternoon, four days after the raids started.

"We had asked for a list of the targets on the warrants because we have a very accurate and up-to-date database on gangs in Nassau County," Mulvey said. "It was promised and not delivered."

He also said the ICE agents appeared to have come from various locations across the country and didn't even wear the same uniforms.

"There was a lack of communication ... tactical weapons were mismatched," he said. "When we do an operation, there's planning, there's organization, there's discipline. We wouldn't engage in that kind of operation."

Only a handful of those arrested were gang members, Mulvey added.

Nassau County officials scheduled a Tuesday press conference, at which they were expected to call for a federal review of ICE tactics.

Smith dismissed the complaints by Mulvey as nothing more than a misunderstanding.

"These things have happened in the past, and we have always worked it out," he said. "It is no big deal."

When asked to explain the discrepancy between ICE's claims of 157 gang members being arrested and Mulvey's contention that only a few were gang-related, Smith said, "Obviously his numbers are not correct. We will be discussing this further."

Also last week, advocates for undocumented workers complained the arrests were inhumane and in some cases endangered the welfare of children because parents were taken away.

"Raids that break up families is not the answer to immigration," Nadia Marin-Molina, executive director of the Workplace Project, said in a statement. "Raids that create fear within the community hurt business, create a culture of mistrust and in the end drive more people underground and outside of the system."

Smith disputed that children were left home alone because of the arrests.

"We always have Social Services available for these types of cases," he said.






http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ ... 4238.story

You go ICE!!!!!!!!!!!! Love Ya....as a former Long Islander, I applaud ICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah! They are gang members too and that makes it even better!!

Smith disputed that children were left home alone because of the arrests.

I seriously doubt that. Unless they instructed them to hide somewhere and told the police no kids were there. They always care for the kids.

"When asked to explain the discrepancy between ICE's claims of 157 gang members being arrested and Mulvey's contention that only a few were gang-related, Smith said, "Obviously his numbers are not correct. We will be discussing this further"

Whether they are gang members or not they are illegal aliens and breaking federal laws to be in this country.

ADIOS MUCHACHOS!!!

October 2, 2007
Officials Protest Antigang Raids Focused on Immigrants
By NINA BERNSTEIN

Nassau County officials today will call for a federal investigation into a series of antigang raids last week that resulted in the arrests of 186 immigrants on Long Island. They said that the vast majority of those arrested were not gang members and that local police were misled and endangered by the operation.

Until yesterday, officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement who conducted the operation would not answer questions about the raids, which began last Monday and ended Sunday night, and have drawn protests from immigrant families and their advocates.

But yesterday afternoon, Peter J. Smith, a special agent in charge of the operation, said the raids, conducted by federal agents from all over the country, were a result of a two-month investigation based on a list of possible gang members supplied by state, county and local officials.

“The county gave us a list of more than 2,000 suspects from Nassau that we vetted jointly,â€

The Workplace Project

Main office in Hempstead
91 N. Franklin St., Suite 207
Hempstead, NY 11550
Phone: 516-565-5377
Fax: 516-565-5469

Satellite office in Farmingville

1266 Waverly Ave.
Farmingville, NY
Phone: 631-732-4713


Our Mission:

To end the exploitation of Latino immigrant workers on Long Island and to achieve socioeconomic justice by promoting the full political, economic and cultural participation of these workers in the communities in which they live.

What we are fighting for:

Immigration Policy Reform
¨ Legalization for all
¨ An end to the detentions, deportations, raids and collaboration of police with ICE
¨ Family reunification
¨ No to the wall, which will waste millions of dollars and will force more immigrants to die at the border
¨ Workers rights and protection of labor rights


Workers Rights

¨ Domestic Workers Bill of Rights—statewide
¨ Reforming NYS Dept of Labor for better enforcement
¨ Supporting workers standing up against worker abuse at workplaces across Long Island

Housing
¨ Stopping discrimination in housing
¨ Increasing affordable housing

Civic Inclusion

¨For immigrants to be considered a welcome and integral part of the Long Island political, economic and cultural community
¨ Registration of voters

Local govt complains they dont want to do the job for the fed govt. And when the fed govt does their job they complain again. If its good for the citizens of their community, they ought to ask how they can help get more off the streets, not complain about how its done.

On the other hand, the newspaper may just be airing the complaints of one or two locals to support their viewpoint...

Federal agents acted like "cowboys" in immigration raids
Suozzi, Mulvey ask the Department of Homeland Security to investigate the behavior and practices of agents.
BY WILLIAM MURPHY


12:58 PM EDT, October 2, 2007

Federal agents acted like "cowboys" -- even wearing cowboy hats and mistakenly pulling their weapons on Nassau Police officers -- during immigration raids in the Nassau County last week, the county police commissioner charged Tuesday.

On two separate occasions during the raids, the federal agents mistakenly aimed their weapons at Nassau County police officers who were serving as back-up, Nassau County Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey said at a press conference with County Executive Thomas Suozzi.

Mulvey said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had asked for county police to assist them in arresting gang members on warrants, but the agents appeared to be just rounding up undocumented immigrants.

Both Mulvey and Suozzi asked that the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the immigration agency, investigate the behavior and practices of the agents.

However, the special agent in charge of the federal operation, Peter Smith, strongly denied that his agents acted improperly, or that they ever aimed their weapons at Nassau officers.

"We stand behind our operation," Smith said. He said all agents and local officers wore distinctive marking on their vests or shirts, but he said "a couple" of agents from other parts of the country might have worn cowboy hats.

Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said his officer saw no such conduct during the raids conducted in his county. "They were very professionally done. I asked about this 'cowboy' thing and they said they didn't see that," Dormer said.

The immigration agency told the Associated Press earlier this week that 156 of the 192 people it arrested in the raids in Nassau and Suffolk Counties were gang members or associates.

However, Mulvey said that of the 40 people picked up Oct. 1 in Nassau County, only three were "actively affiliated" with gangs in the county. He said the federal agents apparently classified people as gang members if they were arrested at the same address as gang members.

An undetermined number of people were detained by the federal agents, but released after they produced identification, Mulvey said. A Police Department spokesman said later that the agency did not know how many people had been detained and released because the federal agency ran the operation and had all the records.

"The operation Monday lacked current intel," Mulvey said in a letter to Joseph Palmese, resident agent in charge of at the Bohemia office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "My members report that your addresses were in may cases wrong and your pictures outdated. In one case you were looking for a subject born in 1979 and had a picture of him when he was 7 years old."

"Tactically, the operation was structured poorly," Mulvey wrote. "You had border patrol personnel from different parts of the country that clearly do not train together."

The federal agents also failed to share a list of the targets prior to the raid, and may have disrupted local investigations into gang activity, he said.

Mulvey said his agency would no longer support federal immigration officers unless they began to share information and improve their tactics.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-li ... ?track=rss