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Alien roundup provokes Huckabee scolding
BY SETH BLOMELEY

Posted on Thursday, August 4, 2005

Gov. Mike Huckabee on Wednesday called last week’s federal roundup of 119 illegal aliens in Clark County "terribly planned" and wondered if it was "done for headlines." "Very little thought was given to what would happen to the children, who are by the way American citizens," Huckabee said on his monthly radio show. "I hope the next time the feds will operate with a little more common sense."

After the radio show Huckabee told reporters he would have at least given the illegal aliens a few days to gather belongings and figure out living arrangements for their children.

A spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau in New Or- leans said later that the agency doesn’t know whether the 30 to 35 children left behind after the raid are American citizens. "Our goal was to arrest people who have broken the law," said the spokesman, Temple Black. "And, in fact, these people had actual U.S. citizens’ documents and U.S. citizens’ birth certificates and U.S. citizens’ Social Security cards. These are folks that were breaking the law and were here illegally, of course. Whether it would be appropriate to give people who were lawbreakers five or six days’ notice I would have to say, ‘ No. ’"

The July 26 raid took place at the Petit Jean Poultry Inc. deboning plant at Gum Springs, just south of Arkadelphia. Poultry plant officials said they had no way of knowing the workers were illegal, since the workers had provided identification and were hired through the state’s employment security division.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Fort Smith has said the raid grew out of an investigation into a multistate identity-brokerage ring in which U.S. citizens sold documents containing their identifying information to a person in Arizona, who mailed them to a woman in Arkadelphia for resale to illegal aliens in the Clark County area.

Black said, "We as an agency are doing our best to restore the integrity of the U.S. immigration system by trying to arrest those who violate immigration and employment laws. Just for the record, the governor has not contacted either our offices or the local offices or our headquarters to discuss this issue. And we’d be more than happy to meet with him to discuss the issue."

Huckabee spokesman Jim Harris later wouldn’t say whether the governor had called the federal immigration service to express his concerns or whether he planned to do so.

On his show on the Arkansas Radio Network, Huckabee said that "we have a team of people in Arkadelphia" trying to help the children left behind. He said that includes representatives of his office and of the state Department of Human Services. "There was a total lack of communication between federal authorities and local officials, particularly the sheriff," Huckabee said. "He has an absolute right to be informed of something like this."

Black said that federal officials informed the Arkansas State Police of the raid and asked that state police inform the sheriff. But Black said he didn’t know how soon before the raid state police were informed.

Huckabee said the person behind the document scheme should be prosecuted with the "most intense hand of the law" because that person is "making money on the backs of the poorest persons in our labor force."

He also complained that the federal officials should have given the state more time "to assume the responsibilities" for caring for the children. "I have a lot of sympathy for the kids," Huckabee said.

Speaking to reporters after the show, Huckabee said his staff has found it hard to gather information in Arkadelphia to help the children because people who could help fear deportation themselves. "It’s a big mess," he said. "People are scared to death that they are going to be rounded up."

Asked if he would have preferred the federal officials allow the illegal aliens to stay in Arkansas, Huckabee said there’s a difference between "an illegal person working at a job plucking chickens â€â€