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12-14-2006, 08:21 AM #1
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Raid leaves families fractured
http://test.denverpost.com/rockies/ci_4835267
Raid leaves families fractured
"Unblinking reality" dizzying for spouses, kids of detainees
By Bruce Finley
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated:12/14/2006 01:27:25 AM MST
Greeley - Isabel Ramirez wept as she clutched her 18-month-old daughter, Brenda, in the ramshackle trailer park where she lives.
Her husband, Juan, had been detained in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid on the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant where he worked, and she didn't know where he was.
"He was the only one working. He paid for everything, the bills, rent. I have three kids," 33-year- old Isabel Ramirez said.
As she spoke, her 7-year-old daughter, Laura, was at school, and her 3-year-old son, Juanito, kicking muddy snow by the trailer, was having a very bad day.
His father "is in jail," Juanito said. He threw a stick angrily down at the snow and turned and banged his head against the side of a broken trampoline.
As authorities began deporting workers rounded up in raids at meatpacking plants here and in five other states, this city, which for decades has run on illegal labor from Mexico, confronted an unexpected challenge: what to do about kids left behind.
The raids left more than 100 children with no parents present, church officials and community organizers said. Hundreds more struggled in newly broken families, asking questions such as "Where is my daddy?" and "Why does immigration exist?"
A niece and cousin whose deported husbands had phoned from Mexico tried to console Juanito Ramirez and his mother. One drove to a regional immigration jail east of Denver and begged for information, to no avail.
Isabel Ramirez acknowledged that her son and 18-month-old daughter are the only ones in her immediate family legally entitled to be in the U.S.
This was the hard side of the sudden pressure ICE agents brought to bear on Swift here and in Texas, Utah, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa.
The agents who conducted simultaneous raids Tuesday tried their best when interviewing detainees to determine whether they had children, said ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok. "We do everything in our power to avoid having children left home alone or at school," he said.
Still, "violating federal law can lead to tragic consequences, sometimes affecting a great many people. That's the unblinking reality," U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said in Denver.
Meanwhile, few if any relatives of detained workers turned to government social-services agencies for help - mistrusting any authorities.
Under new state and federal laws, "we can only provide assistance to citizens - citizens only - and qualified aliens who have been here for five years," said John Kruse, assistant payments administrator for Weld County Social Services.
Instead, friends and relatives
worked their cellphones busily trying to bypass government, keeping children whose parents weren't present in hiding, fearing that social-services agents would snatch them away.
Naturalized U.S. citizen David Silva, an oil-field worker who used to work at the meatpacking plant, said he was able to retrieve his wife, Marisela, from a federal immigration detention center in Denver late Tuesday by driving to the center and presenting her legal residency papers.
Now with wrists bruised from handcuffs, Marisela was taking the day off "trying to build up her confidence." She joined others from Mexico volunteering to take care of children whose parents were gone.
Inside the meatpacking plant, "there was a lady crying because she didn't have anybody else here," Silva said. "She asked my wife if she wanted to adopt her child. Then she was taken away."
Anglo citizens came forward offering to do the same around noon at Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church. "We are all affected deeply. But our most immediate concerns are for families that are suddenly separated and for children who have no understanding of what is happening in their lives," the Rev. Bernie Schmitz said.
Temporarily adopting children of detained or deported workers "is why we came here," said Kris Kessinger, 45, a city traffic worker whose wife is from Mexico.
Weld County school officials who saw attendance drop to 75 percent during Tuesday's raids, when Greeley residents flocked to the meatpacking factory, said classrooms were about 90 percent full Wednesday. But they had no way of knowing which children might be without their parents. "We've asked ICE to provide a list (of people arrested)," principal Paul Urioste said at Billie Martinez Elementary School. "ICE hasn't provided us with anything."
Separately, the United Way of Weld County set up a fund for affected families. The agency is accepting donations at P.O. Box 1944, Greeley, CO 80632, or donors can call 970-353-4300.
For Isabel Ramirez at her trailer, crying regularly gave her relief as she, with borrowed cellphone in hand, waited for word from her husband. Heading back to the family farm in central Mexico looked likely, she said.
She tried to persuade her troubled little boy to cry instead of banging his head.
"It's OK to cry," she told him.
"No. I'm embarrassed," the 3-year-old said.
"If you feel sad, you should cry."
"It hurts my heart," Juanito said, delicately pointing to his chest.
Staff writer Bruce Finley can be reached at 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com.
If here illegally (criminally) they have no right complaining. And we taxpayers should not be responsible for the bill. let Swift and Mexico pay the bill!
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12-14-2006, 08:28 AM #2
Oh for heavens sakes.
They know the law.
A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
Save America, Deport Congress! - Judy
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12-14-2006, 08:40 AM #3
Great Neptune, this article only makes me angrier and more determined.
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12-14-2006, 09:00 AM #4
The local papers are posting some obnoxious columns I'd quote here but their sites are malfunctioning right now - maybe in a couple of hours. One says, the workers aren't the thieves, they just bought ID so they could work and didn't buy it for pleasure purchases. Of course we might remark that the worker-wannabes knew they needed real SSNs to get past Swift's screening, so they invested in stolen numbers. They had to know that any economic activity they performed with someone else's number would cause the real citizen problems down the road.
Another said the ID theft issue was just a red herring because most of the reported arrests are administrative, not criminal. We might note that the processing of detainees is nowhere near done, and there may be deals struck in return for information about fake ID vendors. Besides ICE was fully within their rights to raid plants employing illegals whether there was any other violation or no. The workers had to know that this sort of thing could happen to them at any time, theoretically. So, where does this expectation that they should have been left in peace come from? Who has been telling them to just come here and don't worry?
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12-14-2006, 09:04 AM #5
They took the chance and are now paying for the consequences they knew may be a possibility. Why isn't this a big deal in the media when arrests of other people with children are made? I guess because they are American so it is okay for them. This is discrimination big time and since white people can't complain and be taken seriously, maybe we should turn to our visible minorities for help.
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12-14-2006, 09:14 AM #6
Violins...........If you can't pay, don't play!
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