Thread: Congress Called on to Halt Immigration Raids

http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/144563/1/

Congress Called on to Halt Immigration Raids
Aaron Glantz
OneWorld US
Fri., Jan. 5, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 5 (OneWorld) - A coalition of more than 60 labor, social justice, and immigrants rights organizations issued a statement Thursday calling for an immediate halt to community and workplace raids aimed at detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants.

"As Congress begins its new session today we want to highlight that our immigration system is broken," said Gabriella Flora, an immigration organizer at the Denver office of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that helped organize the petition.

"Enforcement is not the solution, it just creates more problems," she added. "We have a real need for our legislators to step up to the plate and make sure that raids and attacks on working people don't happen in the future."

The statement comes less than a month after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided six Swift meatpacking facilities, detaining at gunpoint more than 1,200 workers. Criminal charges have since been brought against less than 5 percent of the workers.

The petition calls on the U.S. Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Inspector General of Homeland Security to immediately investigate allegations of civil rights violations and racial profiling of workers who were apprehended.

"People were separated by color and national origin, which isn't supposed to happen in this country," Darcy Tromanhauser of Nebraska Appleseed, a non-profit legal justice group, told OneWorld. "People who looked to [ICE officers] to be of Latino or Hispanic origin got sent to one side, while white people on the other side were not checked for their work documentation."

Tromanhauser also complained that immigrant workers rounded up in raids on plants in Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa were taken to a National Guard facility, Camp Dodge, from which attorneys were forbidden, allegedly for security reasons.

"Families were ripped apart," she added. "ICE said their protocol was to release people who were parents so they could go home to take care of their kids. But people who said they had children were bussed away to detention centers."

Alison Brown, a senior attorney at Justice for Our Neighbors in Omaha told OneWorld that single mothers were released and allowed to await deportation proceedings at home with their children, but undocumented workers from across the Midwest and Rocky Mountains have now been sent to a federal detention center in Georgia, where they await deportation far way from their spouses and children--many of whom are U.S. citizens.

"I think the movement of the people picked up is what took people most off guard," Brown said. "There was an inability to access them because they were physically moved so far away from their families and their attorneys."

The Swift meatpacking company is also suffering as a result of the raids. Company officials said Thursday the sweeps could cost the company up to $30 million.

The Greeley, Colorado-based company estimated it will lose $20 million in lower operating efficiency as new employees are retrained, plus up to $10 million to retain workers and offer hiring incentives to replace detained, deported, and intimidated workers.

The company reported a net loss of nearly $12 million for its latest fiscal quarter.

"These raids have negative consequences throughout communities, throughout businesses, and throughout towns," AFSC's Gabriella Flora told OneWorld. "Not only do they affect families but they also impact the businesses and the economy of the country as a whole."

"This is no solution," she added. "What we need to do is create a system so that people are working and contributing." An improved immigration system would help keep families together and give immigrants a chance to obtain legal citizenship over time, Flora said.

"The fact that we have people working without proper papers is a symptom of a horrifically broken immigration system."

The system may be flawed, but the law is there. Everyone knows. If these utopian peace-love-dove organizations had their way, we would have no punishment for criminals. Families torn apart? It will cost Swift millions? They have to train new employees? THAT IS CALLED "PUNISHMENT"!!! THAT IS WHAT THEY GET FOR BREAKING THE LAW!!!

Go sell crazy some place else; we're all stocked up here!!!

"Enforcement is not the solution, it just creates more problems," she added. "We have a real need for our legislators to step up to the plate and make sure that raids and attacks on working people don't happen in the future."

What a bunch of idiots! Its the lack of enforcement from the earlier amnesties that got us this problem in the first place!!!

DOING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS IS THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY!!!

The Swift raid was for show, in my opinion. I think they got exactly what they wanted...bad press and back lash from the special interest groups. It will help gain support of the bleeding hearts. The law is the law and they need to start following it.

i made calls to the nebraska appleseed and the denver office AFSC
and voice my opinion of the statements based in the article above

"Families were ripped apart,"

That happens when some enter this country illegally too, works both ways.

Yes, I also believe the raids were done for show. They knew the result would be a bunch of bleeding heart stories instead of emphasis put on the consequences of people who broke our laws.

So, now what we have is this:

1) Cities can't enforce immigration law because they're a Federal responsibility.

2) Ditto for the states.

3) Now, apparently even the Federal Government isn't allowed to enforce its own laws.

"Enforcement is not the solution, it just creates more problems,".

Right. I wonder what other laws we could apply that "logic" to? How about the income tax, for starters?

"Families were ripped apart,"

One other thing the MSM and the bleeding hearts seems to keep missing is that American families are being torn apart as well. Any American family with members serving our country who has lost a loved one due to jorge's fiasco has also been ripped apart!!!
Yet I don't see the media covering how the families of our troops are being torn apart.

As far as I can tell, this is just the reconquistas organizing and requesting us to not enforce our laws. They are pretty screwed with the Swift raids, because a good number of those workers stole ssn's too. They will find no sympathy for that, so let them keep drawing attention to the situation. Most Americans are affected by identity theft, and it's no small crime.