Thread: Tucson Day Labor story/Police aide and abet

This story appeared early this year showing the problem, followed by the updated story where everything is now hunky dory, but the police participate in the breaking of how many laws? Working without being taxed, allowing illegal aliens to move about freely without threat of deportation, allowing businesses to hire illegal aliens, illegals not carrying proper ID and who knows what else. As the article states, 19 were arrested in the "one day raid." If they had kept it up, they could have arrested hundreds, but NO...this would make illegal's wives stop reporting that their husbands beat them according to Tucson's police chief. Read the history and enjoy...

Monday, February 6, 2006
Police targeting day laborers
Local residents applaud the action. Critics call it 'a poor use of resources.'
CLAUDINE LoMONACO

Tucson Citizen

Cruz Manuel Quiñones waits in the chilly predawn air at the corner of 23rd Street and Ninth Avenue. Men like him and the couple of dozen men with him have been gathering there for decades, hoping to be hired for a day's work.

But they've been having a hard time lately.

Tucson police started cracking down in the area last month after neighbors complained about men littering, blocking sidewalks and spilling into the street.

A police cruiser parks alongside the men most mornings now, occasionally ticketing them or the contractors who pick them up for minor infractions such as blocking traffic.

Related material on the Web:

To see the full report on day laborers by the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at UCLA

The increased scrutiny comes on the heels of a U.S. Border Patrol raid conducted in the area in November at the request of Tucson police. The raid swept up 21 laborers, two of whom, like 30-year-old Quiñones, were in the country legally. Quiñones is a U.S. citizen.

The crackdown mirrors similar efforts in Phoenix and across the country. Day laborers are coming under greater scrutiny in the conflict over illegal immigration.

Tucson police Chief Richard Miranda says his officers are trying to keep neighborhoods safe and are not after illegal immigrants. In fact, he is opposed to making police officers enforce federal immigration laws.

But critics of the police activity at the day laborers' gathering spot say it's a poor use of resources and see a shift in the department's long-standing policy of leaving immigration enforcement to the federal government.

The laborers say it's scaring away contractors.

"Nobody's stopping with the police around," said Quiñones, who was born in Phoenix but lives with his wife and three children in Nogales, Son. He does landscaping for $12 an hour at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base for most of the year and comes here when there's no work there.

"I've never seen people causing problems," Quiñones said. "If people come here in the cold of the morning it's because they want to work. They want to take care of their families. If not, we'd still be in bed."

Long history in Tucson

In many parts of the country, day laborers are relatively new.

A recently released study of day laborers published by the University of California put their numbers at around 117,600.

The study found that 75 percent of them were in the country illegally, and day laborers have become the target of illegal immigration foes and Web sites, such as www.wehirealiens.com, which has listed the corner near Ninth Avenue and 23rd Street.

Laborers have been gathering there for decades, said the Rev. John Fife, retired minister of Southside Presbyterian Church, just down the block from the intersection.

During the 1960s and '70s, the state ran a center at 22nd Street and Ninth Avenue to recruit Latinos and Native Americans from the South Side to work the cotton farms of Marana.

Contractors and home owners also began coming to the area to find workers.

The center closed in the late '70s once cotton farms mechanized, but contractors kept going there to find workers who moved out onto the sidewalks along Ninth Avenue, Fife said.

"Major sectors of the economy in Tucson depend on day laborers," Fife said. "Construction, roofing, landscaping. Those guys supply the labor for it."

Robert Topalian periodically picks up workers here for landscaping on his rental property, which funds his full-time missionary work in Mexico, he said.

"This seems to be the best location for good workers," Topalian said, leaning out the window of his white truck. "Everybody I've seen has been orderly and polite. I haven't seen any problems."

Some neighbors disagree.

When Benny Allen moved to 23rd Street last year, men started whistling at his 13- and 15-year-old daughters on their way to school.
"I didn't like it," he said, so he called the police.

One woman said she has stopped sitting on her patio ever since she saw a man urinating in her front yard.

"In a residential place, this isn't something you want to see every day," Allen said.

Neighbors said they supported the laborers' right to look for work. They just didn't want it happening in front of their homes.

Critics

City Councilman Steve Leal, who represents the area, said the police response is out of proportion to the problem.

"Historically, there have never really been a significant number of complaints," he said. "I think they have more important things to deal with."

He called the effort a "cat and mouse" strategy that will not solve the problem and has created unnecessary ill will.

Miranda said making police officers enforce immigration law - a move recently taken by a handful of police departments around the country - would stretch already thin resources and erode the Latino community's trust in the police.

Miranda has tried to reassure Latino residents that they can report a crime without worrying that the police will report them to the Border Patrol.

"We have a lot of people without the proper paperwork who have made Tucson their home," Miranda said, "and at that point, they are deserving, if they become a victim, of the same police protection and services as everyone else."

But the police crackdown and a Border Patrol raid, which was widely broadcast on Spanish-language TV, have made the Latino community more suspicious of Tucson police and more reluctant to go to the police even when it has information that can help solve a crime, said immigrant-rights lawyer and activist Isabel Garcia.

"People are afraid to call the police even if they are the victims," she said. "Deportation and banishment is a far greater penalty than living with the consequences of whatever crime they're trying to report."

Leal, Miranda and Garcia agreed that a day labor center would help solve the problem, while cleaning up the neighborhood for residents and helping protect laborers from abusive employers.

The Primavera Foundation, a Tucson nonprofit organization that provides services to the homeless and the poor, has a day labor program, but requires participants to prove they are legal residents.

Last year, Arizona passed a law that bans cities, towns and counties from building or maintaining a work center that facilitates the hiring of illegal immigrants.

Southside Presbyterian is discussing plans to build a center on one of its parking lots, and Leal said he was considering approaching Home Depot, which has built and funded day labor centers next to some stores in California.

Back on the corner of 23rd and Ninth, a white van slows down. Quiñones approaches, gives a thumbs up and hops in. He has work, at least for today.

Arizona state legislators are considering using squads of state police to catch illegal immigrants who slip past federal agents.

Day labor report

From "On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States," the first comprehensive study of day laborers, released in January by the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at UCLA:

• 117,600 day laborers are in the United States.

• 75 percent are in the United States illegally.

• 59 percent of workers are from Mexico.

• 28 percent are from Central America.

• 49 percent reported not being paid for their work at least once in the last two months.

• 44 percent were denied food, water or breaks while on the job.

• 20 percent reported a workplace injury, and half of those did not receive medical care.

• Median wage is $10 an hour.

• Workers earn $500 to $1,400 a month.

• 49 percent of employers are homeowners or renters.

• 43 percent of employers are contractors.

• Top five occupations are construction worker, gardener, painter, roofer and drywall installer.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/news/local ... daylabor/2

Published: 11.15.2006
Police, church restore neighborhood harmony
Collaboration a model for solving future conflicts
CLAUDINE LoMONACO
Tucson Citizen
Seventy-two-year-old Manuel Bernal no longer has to walk through clusters of day laborers when he leaves his house at the corner of Ninth Avenue and 23rd Street because the laborers are gone. They're down the street now, in the parking lot of a new day labor center, where they occasionally chat with police officers on bicycles about employers who stiff them.
It's a dramatic difference from just a year ago, when police were targeting the laborers and, on one occasion, backed up a U.S. Border Patrol raid on the site where men have gathered for decades hoping to find a day's work.
The change is a result of a coordinated effort by the Tucson Police Department, Southside Presbyterian Church and city leaders to resolve persistent tensions between local residents and day laborers who would often obstruct traffic in the neighborhood.
Residents are thrilled with the results.
"There's no problems now," said Benny Allen, who lives on 23rd Street and had complained to police. "Now there's no beer bottles, nothing. The workers are where they should be."
Police say they are now free to go after drug dealers and prostitutes, and even the workers say they are better off.
"We're more protected now," 25-year-old Rafael Ruelas said early one morning in the parking lot at Southside, 317 W. 23rd Street which runs the day labor program. "The people from the center (note the license plate numbers) of the employers so it's easier to get paid."
City Councilman Steve Leal, who facilitated dialogue between neighbors, the church and police, credits all parties with working together to solve a complex problem and points to the collaboration as a model for how the city can work with neighborhoods.
"It was a long-standing, bitter history that had soured and frustrated a lot of people," Leal said, "and everybody involved contributed to turn it into something that really works."
Tucson police began cracking down on the day laborers last year in response to neighborhood complaints. On Nov. 14, 2005, Tucson police helped coordinate a Border Patrol raid that netted 19 illegal immigrants. In the next months, police followed up by ticketing workers and employers for obstructing traffic. The crackdown increased tensions and fears that local police were getting more involved with immigration issues, but it did little to get the laborers off the sidewalks, front yards and streets where local residents said they were a nuisance.
Police Chief Richard Miranda recognized that the efforts weren't accomplishing much.
"There was a lot of negative press and distrust between the police and the community and the people who were using the day labor process here," he said, "and the last thing that I wanted was distrust between the community and the police department. So I asked for a chance, for an opportunity to fix it."
Over the summer, a special unit within the department, the Targeted Response Unit, identified an area around the church - from Interstate 10 to the railroad tracks east of South Second Avenue, and from 22nd Street to 25th Street - as a trouble spot.
"We got 577 calls from the area in six months," said Sgt. Ron Zimmerling, who leads the team. "That's a lot."
The unit, which used to be called the "Crime Prevention Unit," targets areas with high call rates. As with the two other areas the unit has focused on, Hedrick Acres and Amphi Neighborhood, the calls weren't about violent crimes such as murders or rapes but more about issues affecting the quality of life, such as drug dealing and prostitution, Zimmerling said.
A three-person team, including Zimmerling and officers Felix Angulo and Frank Carrizosa, began work in mid-August. They set out on bicycles and knocked on more than 300 doors to talk to residents and businesses about neighborhood problems. Residents reported seven drug houses and identified the day laborers around Southside and the Casa Maria Soup Kitchen as sources of tension.
The police also spoke to the day laborers, knowing they would have to gain their trust if they were to develop a long-term solution.
"We aren't here as INS," Zimmerling said, leaning into his bicycle and referring to the government agency formerly known as Immigration and Naturalization Services. "We're here to deal with neighborhood problems. We're here to improve the quality of life."
Tucson police do not routinely ask a person's immigration status. Miranda has expressed concern that enforcement of immigration laws by city police would prevent immigrants from reaching out to law enforcement.
The team took its findings to Southside and Casa Maria, where homeless clients would sometimes litter and loiter in the surrounding neighborhood, and asked for help.
At the same time, members of Southside Presbyterian Church, who had been working on starting a day labor center for the last three years, were finally ready to open a center at their parking lot along South 10th Avenue. After three years of fundraising and applying for permits, they built a bathroom and laundry facility to service the day laborers and supplement their shower program for the homeless, also at the church. They opened the center in mid-September, just as police came to them with their findings.
Over the next six weeks, the police team initiated a plan to implement changes. During the first two weeks, Southside agreed to ask the workers to come off the street and onto the parking lot. The following two weeks, the police would step in and ask workers to do the same. Not until the final two weeks would police give tickets for such violations as blocking traffic.
The plan worked so well that by the time police were ready to ticket, "there was nothing for us to do," Zimmerling said. "In all, we had to ticket just two workers."
For neighbors, the change has brought peace of mind.
Last year, during the police crackdown, day laborers would often take off running and jump over a long block wall that separates the church from a housing development and into resident Vicky Rambo's backyard.
Workers no longer jump the wall, she said, but the early- morning sounds from day laborers in the parking lot do. Council member Leal agreed to pay for a higher wall with discretionary funds from his office to block the sound.
The increased police presence has helped the church better protect its clients, said church elder Josefina Ahumada.
Drug dealers, addicts, and prostitutes used to mix in and prey upon the day laborers and homeless using the shower program, but the increased police presence has largely taken care of that problem.
"Eliminating those bad actors has made us feel like it is a safer place to be," Ahumada said, "and that's not something we as church folks could have done without the police."
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/32629.php

Will that bad news ever stop?

The news and articles on this site can be very uplifting, but rarely. It is usually something like this that just deepens the feeling of doom.

But it does seem like the worst of it comes from the southwest where they are some what de-sensitized to the issue since there has always been a high population of mexicans.

In the rest of the country it is just the last few years we have been inundated with them and therfore probably tend to still be in shock over it.