Thread: ICE arrests 19 Cloudburst employees

ICE arrests 19 Cloudburst employees
Independent/Scott Kingsley


Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers
document a vehicle at Cloudbust Lawn and Sprinkler
during a raid that arrested 19 individuals.

By Harold Reutter
harold.reutter@theindependent.com

Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Thursday arrested 19 people who work for Cloudburst Lawn and Sprinkler.

ICE spokesman Tim Counts said all 19 people were arrested on "administrative immigrations violations." That means they are accused of being in the country illegally.

Counts said there were no criminal arrests.

He said the 19 people who were arrested were being processed in Grand Island and would be detained in the Phelps County Jail.

He said preliminary indications are that 11 of the people arrested are from Mexico, six are from El Salvador and two are from Guatemala.

He said some people may decide to waive their right to a hearing and agree to be deported.

"Others may say they've got a right to be in the country and want a hearing," Counts said.

He said the hearing would be in the administrative immigration court in Omaha. Although the court is in Omaha, the judge in Chicago may hear the case through a video teleconference.

Counts said the administrative immigration hearing would be in "several weeks or one or two months."

He said he has no way of predicting hearing dates because the administrative immigration court resides in a different part of the federal government and sets its own schedule.

"ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security and the administrative immigration court is part of the Department of Justice," Counts said.

He said the ICE arrests were part of an investigation, but he declined to say why Cloudburst Lawn and Sprinkler was chosen as the site for an immigration enforcement action.

The Independent was unable to contact the owner of Cloudburst on Thursday.

In December 2006, ICE conducted a raid at the Swift plant in Grand Island, arresting 261 people who it believed were in the country illegal. Only one of those arrests was criminal, with the remaining 260 arrests administrative violations.

ICE arrested four more Swift employees this past July.

http://www.theindependent.com/stories/0 ... ws07.shtml

Go Ice go

same stuff...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5117457.html

Sept. 7, 2007, 5:28PM
Neb. Immigration Raid Nets 19