Thread: ICE defends its actions during raid

ICE defends its actions during raid

By Aaron Nicodemus
Standard-Times staff writer
NEW BEDFORD — Federal immigration authorities are hitting back at their critics about the way the raid at Michael Bianco Inc. was handled.

"We had an open and frequent exchange of information to make sure that (the state Department of Social Services) were getting information on child-care issues," said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Marc Raimondi. "We're going above and beyond the role of a law-enforcement agency to address humanitarian concerns."

Mr. Raimondi said ICE met with state officials regarding the raid as early as August 2006, and met with Deval Patrick's administration in late December as well as Harry Spence, director of the DSS.

"ICE always coordinates with our partners involved in such an endeavor as this," Mr. Raimondi said. "We will always aim to predict the ramifications of an enforcement action and make the appropriate authorities aware of what to expect."

He said ICE officials made every effort to determine if those illegal immigrants arrested were the sole caregivers for children. Of the 361 people arrested at the scene March 6, 60 were released within 24 hours, he said. Since then, at the urging of DSS, ICE has released 20 Salvadorean immigrants being held in Massachusetts jails and 10 people of various nationalities being held in Texas.

Those results come in large part to DSS workers interviewing detainees at Fort Devens and then flying to Texas to interview more detainees who were determined to be the primary caregivers of local children.

Mr. Raimondi said some immigrants arrested at the factory were not telling the truth about their children, making it difficult to assess their situation after the raid.

"If you lie to a federal agent, it's tough to make a decision to release them for humanitarian reasons," he said. In addition to withholding information on children, some immigrants gave fake names to ICE agents, making it difficult for family members to track them.

"We have to base our decisions on the information we're given by the detainees," he said. "As things change, as new information becomes available, we're constantly going to re-evaluate our decisions. We make humanitarian decisions all the time."

One local immigration attorney said it makes sense to her that illegal immigrants would not tell the truth to ICE agents, and she said DSS social workers, for all the good they have done to secure the release of immigrants arrested in the Bianco raid, are not trusted either.

"First they are caught by ICE, and then DSS comes in and asks, 'How are your children?'" said Ondine Galvez Sniffin, an immigration attorney with Catholic Social Services. "As wonderful as DSS has been in this, people would be scared to talk to the DSS. Had they been allowed to speak to attorneys, they would have gotten a greater response." Ms. Sniffin said ICE has made it "extremely difficult" for her and other attorneys to access their clients in detention.

Critics of the ICE raid, particularly Gov. Deval Patrick and officials with DSS, say ICE has caused a "humanitarian crisis" by sending immigrants with young children to Fort Devens in Ayer, then to Texas, without adequately determining if they had children and if those children had proper care.

Kurt Schwartz, undersecretary for Law Enforcement in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety, said he made a request, on behalf of DSS, for ICE to share information on all of the detainees with DSS workers. He asked that information be sent electronically on each detainee to DSS' New Bedford office. ICE denied that request.

He then asked, on behalf of DSS again, that social workers be allowed to speak to detainees at the scene of the arrests. That request was denied as well.

"ICE said it would not allow non-law enforcement personnel in the arrest location or in the detention center at Fort Devens," he said. "Both requests were specifically denied before the raid."

What ICE did do was leave one ICE agent in the New Bedford office of DSS, to act as a liaison between DSS and ICE.

DSS spokeswoman Denise Monteiro said that agent did not share information with social workers.

"We wanted access to those families, and we were told repeatedly 'no.'"

Mr. Raimondi, the ICE spokesman, said it is against the policy of ICE to open up a crime scene.

"What we couldn't do was open up an active crime scene for social workers to come and interview people," he said.

Mayor Scott W. Lang, who met with two ICE agents on the Sunday before the raid, said he has no quarrel with immigration law, or with deporting illegal immigrants. But he said in this case the law could have been applied in a more rational, humane way.

"In our legal system, all the time, people convicted of a crime are released to go deal with their personal issues before sentencing," he said.

ICE had the chance to involve local people who know the situation of immigrants in New Bedford who could have gotten at the truth of their situations much sooner, he said. ICE chose not to do so, he said.

"I think (ICE) moved too quickly to interrupt the information chain," he said. "They disrupted the ability for people who know this community to communicate with (the detainees) so we could get an accurate picture of what they were leaving behind in New Bedford."

Instead, ICE did interviews themselves, only allowed DSS to speak with detainees nearly 48 hours after they were arrested, and then flew detainees to Texas without being interviewed by anyone but ICE agents.

"This whole situation could have been done with some common-sense implementation of the law," he said.

Mayor Lang said he took particular issue with comments made by President Bush, speaking in Guatemala that perhaps some good would come from the raid in New Bedford by getting Congress' attention on the need for immigration reform.

"This is a national issue that requires people in Washington to come up with solutions," he said. "But you've delivered all these problems to New Bedford. I think you could have gotten people's attention without putting them through this heartache."

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbc ... -1/OPINION

Wouldn't it be nice if all these busy bodies would keep their noses out of the enforcement of our written immigration laws.

People that run around squawking like this don't know how to chage a diaper or know where their own kids are.

Dixie

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