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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."



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