Island workers charged in raid
By Veronica Gonzalez
and Angela Mack
veronica.gonzalez@starnewsonline.com



Bald Head Island | Twenty-nine immigrants left Southport by boat early Tuesday morning to build homes on this Brunswick County island. Before they arrived, the U.S. Coast Guard stopped four boats ranging in size from 24 to 34 feet loaded with the construction workers.

Immigration agents took custody of the workers, many of whom by Thursday were undergoing deportation proceedings.

Twenty-two immigrants were charged with illegal entry into the United States, a misdemeanor, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. That means they entered the country without permission.

The fate of the seven other immigrants was unknown.

Meanwhile, some Hispanic immigrants who heard about the arrests worked in fear Thursday. Some knew those arrested. Others simply heard about the arrests.

“We are a little bit frightened,” said Enrique Hernandez, a landscaper putting pine needles around the shrubs of a new development. “We don’t know who they were.”

Regardless, all of them were sympathetic to those arrested. “I am sad because I have been here 15 years, and I can’t fix my papers,” said one construction worker who lives in Wilmington. He didn’t want to be identified because he snuck into the country from Mexico.

Who are they?

The undocumented immigrants arrested Tuesday came from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

One was from Canada. Four were juveniles, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Another Mexican national was living in the country with an expired visa, ICE said.

The construction jobs on the island are the least sought after because they require traveling about 20 minutes by boat or ferry and the location is isolated, said Ivan Cortes, a contractor whose family builds a lot of the homes on the island. But the jobs pay well.

“Nobody works in Bald Head Island,” said Cortes, who was born in Puerto Rico.

The arrests underscore the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to catch people who hire undocumented immigrants.

This year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested nearly 142 percent more undocumented workers in workplace enforcement raids than last year. Last year, immigration agents arrested 1,116 undocumented workers. This year, it has arrested 2,700.

People who repeatedly hire undocumented workers can face up to a $10,000 fine for each worker. First-time offenders risk being charged with a misdemeanor and face a penalty of $250 to $2,500 for each worker.

Additionally, employers who once faced a fine are now at risk of having property seized by ICE agents, and they also might be charged with a felony if they continue to hire undocumented workers.

Those are just added tools immigration agents are using.

“This is the worst I’ve seen here yet,” said Cortes, who has lived in the United States for 27 years.

The island

Wooden frames rise from the ground on parts of the island, which was established as a village in 1985.

Nowadays, a little more than 200 full-time residents live on the island, a secluded haven of multi-million dollar homes nestled among trees and brush.

The island is accessible only by ferry, and transportation on the island is limited to bikes or golf carts.

Each year, 60 to 75 homes are built on the island, according to the village’s Building Inspections Department. Sale prices for homes now on the market there peak as high as $4 million.

One of the homebuilders, Luis Cortes Jr., an employee with Cortes Builders Inc. and Ivan Cortes’ brother, said he was driving the company’s boat to Bald Head Island about 7:15 a.m. Tuesday when the U.S. Coast Guard stopped it.

The company, which is owned by his father, employs between 10 and 18 workers and has done construction debris removal, fork-lifting services and other work on the island for more than 12 years.

He said about nine employees, mainly Puerto Ricans, were on the boat when he was stopped.

“They were stopping everybody that came over there,” Cortes said. “I just figured it was a regular routine check.”

They were told to hand over their IDs and asked what they were doing and where they were headed, Cortes said.

“None of our workers were arrested,” he said, adding that throughout the day, he heard rumors about other companies that might have been caught with undocumented workers. “I would love to hear the whole story. I’m just glad everything was good on our end.”

An employee who answered the phone for Cortes Brothers Construction, a separate entity from Cortes Builders Inc., confirmed that the company also works on Bald Head Island and said two of its workers were arrested Tuesday and will be deported.

The company was not listed on a list of 15 general contractors that village staff provided to the Star-News on Thursday.

How it happened

In the past week, U.S. Coast Guard officials noticed small boats traveling to the island overloaded with workers. They were being used by a private company, according to a news release from the justice department.

So the Coast Guard stopped four boats Tuesday between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. to make sure they were safe.

Since then, ICE has placed a lien on the four boats – a new tool they’re using to punish people who use undocumented labor, said Oak Island Coast Guard Station Petty Officer Kurt Yockel.

The Coast Guard detained four or five U.S. citizens who were operating the boats, but it’s unknown if they will be charged with a crime.

The U.S. Coast Guard has been boarding boats and checking the IDs of all onboard.

“We recognized the problem with the illegal immigrants in the area that we were stopping,” Yockel said.

When they realized many of them had no identification from the United States, they notified immigration agents.

“The cooperation was outstanding between the agencies,” Yockel said. “Within three days, we had the operation set up.”

Veronica Gonzalez: 343-2008

http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs ... 004/news01

I know from what I saw they missed 3 times what they got. But it's a start and our Coast Guard is in there trying.
CIO