Thread: WA: Shelton raid: 4 sites, 16 arrests

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Published June 02, 2007

Shelton raid: 4 sites, 16 arrests
Jeremy Pawloski


SHELTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided four Shelton locations Thursday morning, including three apartments in the 2000 block of Adams Street, taking 16 undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala into federal custody.

A local immigration-rights activist expressed concerns about the raid Friday. She said that one week earlier, on May 24, immigrants who lived at the apartment complex complained about mistreatment by management during a public meeting before the Washington Human Rights Commission in downtown Shelton.

Most of the people arrested Thursday lived in the complex.

Patricia Vazquez, a representative of Inmigrantes Unidos de Shelton, said she has no proof that the raid was related to the May 24 meeting, but she added that the proximity of the events “raises questions for us.â€

Published June 02, 2007

Low attendance at forum for Latinos fuels speculation about raid's effect
BY CHRISTIAN HILL


SHELTON — Organizers had expected about 75 Latino residents to turn out during a daylong forum about their legal rights in the United States.

Two of the three who did attend were told by others that they were crazy for doing so. The third said she only showed up because she recognized two lawyers on hand who had represented her in the past.

Anxiety is high in the area’s Latino community after agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took 16 undocumented immigrants into federal custody during a Thursday morning raid in Shelton.

Much of that fear is rooted in the fact that immigrant tenants of the apartment complex the agents raided had complained about their living conditions during a public meeting of the state Human Rights Commission the previous week in Shelton.

An ICE spokeswoman denied any link between the two events Friday, but immigrant-rights advocates said they couldn’t rule it out.

The organizer of Saturday’s forum, the Latina/o Bar Association of Washington, offered the same assurance, and the lawyers on hand pondered whether the raid’s timing was coincidental.

http://www.theolympian.com/377/story/123806.html

Two of the three who did attend

Wow! Hit them again ICE.