Thread: In Arkansas town, a US crackdown finds resistance

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/artic ... ty?mode=PF



Raid on immigrants violates sense of community
In Arkansas town, a US crackdown finds resistance
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times | July 24, 2006

ARKADELPHIA, Ark. -- The immigration agents arrived at the Petit Jean Poultry plant just before the 7:30 breakfast break, armed and dressed in khaki uniforms. They went to the room where more than 100 Mexican workers in tan smocks were cutting up chicken, then they shouted in Spanish for everyone to freeze.

Some workers started crying. A few made quick cellphone calls, alerting relatives to care for children who would soon be left behind. The plant manager watched as 119 workers -- half his day shift -- were bound with plastic handcuffs and taken to a detention center, from which most would be deported to Mexico.

Immigration officials said they were cracking down on document fraud and illegal hiring. But what happened after the raid last July came as a surprise to many people in this conservative, Bible-belt region: Rather than feel reassured that immigration laws were being enforced, many believed that their community had been disrupted.

The Petit Jean workers had come to be church friends, schoolmates, and competitors in a local softball league. And so some residents responded to the raid by helping workers fight deportation, writing to lawmakers for help.

Others donated money, food, and clothing to the families of workers who had been detained or sent back to Mexico.

One year after agents arrived at the poultry plant, the Petit Jean crackdown shows how the effects of an immigration raid can reach far beyond workers and businesses. Many residents say they feel more sympathetic to undocumented workers and angry at the government.

The government's critics range from prominent Arkadelphia citizens to Republican Governor Mike Huckabee and Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln. Even officials charged with enforcing the law in Arkadelphia have criticized the raid for removing people who belonged to their community.

``We take them into our public schools. We accept them into our churches. They play on our football, soccer teams," said Troy Tucker, the county sheriff at the time of the raid. ``And then one day Immigration comes in and sweeps them all away."

The anger in this part of Arkansas arose amid new efforts by federal authorities to enforce laws against hiring illegal workers. About 2,100 people have been arrested in workplace raids so far during fiscal year 2006, up from 1,145 in 2005 and 845 in 2004.

In addition to the federal crackdown, illegal immigrants have faced more scrutiny from state and local officials across the country. On Saturday, residents of Avon Park, Fla., held a rally to protest a proposed city ordinance that would deny licenses to businesses that employ illegal immigrants and fine landlords who rent properties to them.

The crackdown at Petit Jean raises questions about the effectiveness of immigration raids. According to two community leaders, about 60 percent of the deported Petit Jean workers have returned.

Arkadelphia, a city of 11,000 in a county where alcohol sales are forbidden, has been drawing Hispanic immigrants for about a decade. Some formed friendships with longtime residents, including prominent members of the community.

A sign that immigration agents would draw resistance was noted a few weeks before the raid, when they visited the county prosecutor, Henry Morgan. The agents knew that someone had sold Social Security cards to Petit Jean workers, and they wanted Morgan to charge the workers with forgery, a step toward deportation.

Sworn to uphold the law, Morgan was an unlikely advocate for undocumented workers. But a few years earlier, he had met Oscar Hernandez, the son of one of the undocumented Petit Jean employees, and had seen a bit of the world through the workers' eyes.

Hernandez talked about how his mother had fled an abusive husband in Mexico with her four children and was determined to provide for them.

When the immigration agents paid their call, Morgan remembered Hernandez and his mother. ``So I'm thinking: You're going to take a woman who's been here 13 years, worked hard, paid taxes, raised a family -- and these kids don't even know what Mexico's like -- and you're going to send them back?" he recalled recently. ``Is that what we're doing? Is that homeland security?"

Morgan told the agents that he would think about their request, meaning no. Then he called Sheriff Tucker across town, who backed him up.

When the immigration agents raided the plant two weeks later, they did not warn Morgan, the sheriff, or other officials. Wesley and Debbie Kluck, Arkadelphia residents, said they had not thought much about the immigration debate before the raid.

They did not even know that they knew an illegal immigrant. They simply knew Juanita Hernandez.

Thirteen years ago, the couple's daughter was asked by her third-grade teacher to help a new girl in class, a recent arrival from Mexico. Because the girl's family had no phone or car, Debbie Kluck started driving to their apartment, in a dilapidated brick housing complex across town, to pick up her daughter's new friend for swimming or play dates. In time, Kluck befriended the girl's mother, Servanda ``Juanita" Hernandez, also the mother of Oscar Hernandez.

The Klucks invited the Hernandez family to their home for the holidays. They took some of the Hernandez children on vacations to San Francisco, Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga. Their daughter played on a softball team with two of the Hernandez girls.

Of the 119 detained workers, only Juanita Hernandez and six others were not deported. They were released without bail to await hearings before an immigration judge. The judge could grant Hernandez legal residency if she shows that, among other things, she has no criminal record, that she has children who are US citizens, and that they would suffer ``extremely unusual hardship" if she were deported.

Debbie Kluck hopes that after all the upheavals of the past year, Hernandez and her family can stay in Arkadelphia. She calls the family ``beautiful people" with high moral standards. ``If I could pick and choose who could be US citizens and who my tax dollars could support," she said, ``I would choose them."



© Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

I don't buy into this nonsense. Come to this country legally.


Illegals take away American jobs, take advantage of social services, schools that increase my taxes! My taxes keep going up! Cheap labor hurts all Americans. Corporations get richer and we pick up the social costs! The people that hire illegals are criminals, the illegals are criminal as well. Now they're are some organization who are trying to get illegals to vote. This is criminal and subversive. Voter ID in every state now and send the illegals back home to where they originated. Voter fraud just adds to the CRIMINAL behavior of illegals. They do not want to do anything legally!

They send all they're money to Mexico and elsewhere (20-30billion) a year! That money should be in our country. I don't buy the sob stories. Leave and come back the right way(LEGALLY).

The crackdown at Petit Jean raises questions about the effectiveness of immigration raids. According to two community leaders, about 60 percent of the deported Petit Jean workers have returned.

Sounds like ICE needs to make another visit to Arkadelphia. Maybe we need to forward this article to them.

When the immigration agents paid their call, Morgan remembered Hernandez and his mother. ``So I'm thinking: You're going to take a woman who's been here 13 years, worked hard, paid taxes, raised a family -- and these kids don't even know what Mexico's like -- and you're going to send them back?" he recalled recently. ``Is that what we're doing? Is that homeland security?"

YES!

This is nonsense, illegal aliens DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH in high numbers....so how can they "blend into the community"? unless this was the second generation and they started speaking english.

Id like to call down there and find out the real scoop. We are seeing alot of pro illegal propoganda lately.......

Illegal aliens tend to cluster together and create their own little communities they do not blend into communities as they do not and will not learn english. They tend to stay with their own and create black markets for documents and other ways to divert the laws. They are no contribution to any community, just look around and see all the wonderful benefits and contributions they have made to any community they have settled in, they are dung heaps now.

I don't doubt some of this is true.

Some churches are embracing these people and have been for many years. It is not just the Catholic Church. They give them untold amounts of food, clothing, household goods, etc.

One lady, who owned a diary, was crying to me (wrong person for sympathy), that her illegals had run off in the night, etc. The one thing that was interesting was the fact she said the churches and social services continuously brought them boxes and boxes of food, household goods, clothing, etc. She said when they left the house, they(the employer) had to carry out piles and piles of clothing and food. They were being brought so much, they just let it ruin.

Now these same churches will run over themselves to care for the poor illegals, but some poor American kids whose family falls on hard times, or whose father leaves, etc., can just wish for help.

Somehow they get a much more 'righteous' feeling helping illegals. It gives them an opportunity to feel so 'good' about helping those poor, miserable, ignorant people.

Sorry for the rant - and not indicting all chuches, but I have seen enough that it sickens me.

Yes, I think churches should help anyone in dire need, regardless of who or what they are. What many are doing, however, is aiding and abetting and ignoring the needs of the Americans in their communities.

Wonder what the quote of 'not selling alcohol beverages' has to do with it?

Wonder what the quote of 'not selling alcohol beverages' has to do with it?

Implying that this is a "conservative" community, thereby, making their arguement more forceful, since it's generally conservatives who are anti-illegal.

Implying that this is a "conservative" community, thereby, making their arguement more forceful, since it's generally conservatives who are anti-illegal.

You are probably right - although I just thinking of the connection made so often between illegals and drunk driving. Just joking.

Anyone notice where this article was published:

Raid on immigrants violates sense of community
In Arkansas town, a US crackdown finds resistance
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times | July 24, 2006

I'm not surprised to see such a slanted article come from the Los Angeles Times, even if it was a year ago.