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Raid rumors strike fear
Despite denials, immigrants worry
By Christine MacDonald, Globe Correspondent | February 19, 2006

On subway platforms and in corner stores that cater to the city's Latin American immigrants, rumors spread earlier this month of raids by police and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The agents were said to be stopping immigrants at the Maverick Square MBTA station and on buses and detaining those without valid identification.

Police and immigration officials, however, say the alleged raids never took place. And no immigrants came forward to seek legal aid or other help, as usually happens after such sweeps.

''They are unfounded," Paula Grenier, spokeswoman for the immigration enforcement agency's New England office, said of the allegations.

''I'm not aware of any action in East Boston," said Grenier, adding that the agency's last big Boston-area raid took place last June, when agents arrested 187 immigrant fugitives.

Boston police also denied reports that officers were stopping people randomly, said Officer Michael McCarthy, a department spokesman.

''It's not something that we are actively doing," McCarthy said. ''It's rumor."

Those denials, however, did not stop the worry among immigrants in the country illegally. The stories, passed by word-of-mouth, prompted many to stay home from work and school, and off the streets, according to immigrant advocacy groups.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said he and his staff started receiving calls in early February.

''We've had people asked for identification out of the blue, without probable cause. But there is no evidence of roundups," Noorani said.

''We don't really know where it got started," said Elena Letona, executive director of Centro Presente, a Cambridge group. ''It was a very interesting case study in mass panic."

In response, Letona's and Noorani's groups joined other civil rights and immigrant groups to launch a series of ''know your rights" seminars in recent weeks, an effort aimed at educating illegal immigrants on how to respond if stopped by law enforcers.

Activists held events in Cambridge and Chelsea. An East Boston meeting was planned for last Sunday, but the blizzard prompted organizers to reschedule for next Sunday.

''We were concerned because even though there was no concrete case [of immigration enforcement or police raids], people were frightened," said Gloribell Mota, an East Boston activist and aide to Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo. ''People were canceling their appointments. Folks were not going to work because they were afraid they'd be stopped on the T."

Carlos Rosales, coordinator of the East Boston Latino Community Coalition, said workshops, cosponsored by the National Lawyers Guild, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, and several immigrant organizations, aim to educate immigrants about their legal rights to refuse to answer questions and to call a lawyer if detained.

There were more than 35.2 million immigrants -- legal and illegal -- living in the country in March 2005, the highest number ever recorded, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors tighter controls on immigration. About half of 7.9 million immigrants, who arrived after 2000, are in the country illegally, the center found.

While immigrants keep arriving, competition for jobs is fiercer now than in recent memory, noted Paulo Sardinha, executive director of the Brazilian Workers Center in East Boston.

''A lot of people suffer because there is not a lot of steady work right now," Sardinha said. ''You can see a lot of people don't have jobs."

Rising public pressure from groups like the Minute Men to crack down on illegal immigration also serves as a backdrop to this month's panic, according to the advocacy groups. One bill pending in Congress would make illegal immigration a felony.

But John Keeley, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, said policing of companies that employ illegal workers has been sorely lacking since the early 1990s.

The decline in federal oversight has fueled an expansion of industries ''addicted to illegal labor," he said, beyond farms and meat-packing industries to construction and service industries. ''Millions of illegal aliens arrive in the country principally because of the magnet of jobs," he said.

The next ''know your rights" session will be held at 1:15 p.m. next Sunday in the basement hall of Most Holy Redeemer Church at 65 London St. in East Boston.

Contact Christine MacDonald at cmacdonald@globe.com.