Thread: Suspected illegal immigrants arrested in raid {update}

Suspected illegal immigrants arrested in raid
February 11th, 2009 @ 9:59am
by Jim Cross/KTAR

Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies are cracking down on suspected illegal immigrants at a south Phoenix business contracted to provide landscaping services for the county.

Sheriff's deputies, armed with a search warrant, searched the premises of H.M.I. Contracting, Handyman Maintenance Incorporated, near 19th Avenue and Lower Buckeye.

Men and women of all ages were taken away in cuffs by sheriffs deputies put into vans.

The Sheriff's Office did not say how many people were arrested. Sheriff Joe Arpaio scheduled a 2:30 p.m. news conference to discuss the operation.

Adrian Lopez has worked for the company for eight years. He said deputies moved in and told employees not to use cell phones before dozens of co-workers were taken away in cuffs. "Nothing happened before. This is the first time."

This company has a multi-million dollar contract approved by the Board of Supervisors to provide landscaping services to several county buildings.

The raid came two days after the supervisors huddled to discuss the sheriff's decision to put all illegal immigrant inmates in a special area at the Tent City Jail. One supervisor, Mary Rose Wilcox, has called for a U.S. Justice Department investigation of that action.

Immigrants rights activist Elias Bermudez said Wednesday's raid was "payback" for the supervisors' questioning the sheriff's jail segregation.

"It's payback. He uses his authority for reprisals. This is what he does with his power, his authority," said Bermudez.

He added, "To us, it is not only painful. It angers us. He's committing violence against us. Does he want us to commit violence against him, is that what he's asking for?

The Sheriff's Office said H.M.I. is employing as many as 67 illegal immigrants suspected of identity theft.

Officials said the business has a multi-million dollar contract with the county.

http://ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=1042657

Dozens questioned in MCSO immigration sweep at S. Phx. business

More Phoenix Local News

12:46 PM Mountain Standard Time on Wednesday, February 11, 2009

azfamily.com and 3TV Staff

azfamily.com
PHOTOS: Sweep scene
VIDEO: Raid at landscaping company
VIDEO: Illegals to be taken to Tent City
VIDEO: Raided company has contract with Board of Supervisors
VIDEO: Workers: MCSO came in with a vengeance

PHOENIX -- Maricopa County sheriff's deputies conducted an immigration sweep on a South Phoenix business early Wednesday morning, lining up and questioning dozens of workers.


Dozen of alleged illegal immigrants lined up
azfamily.com
VIDEO: Illegals to be taken to Tent City
VIDEO: Raided company has contract with Board of Supervisors
VIDEO: Workers: MCSO came in with a vengeance
VIDEO: Dozens lined up
VIDEO: Deputies on scene
VIDEO: First report from NewsChopper 3
It happened started at about 6 a.m. at HMI, Handyman Maintenance Incorporated, which is located at 19th Avenue and Lower Buckeye Road.

MCSO said it was serving a search warrant related to the employer sanctions law.

Deputies rounded up all of the employees who were on site as they were beginning their work days and divided them into three lines, questioning each to determine his or her immigration status.

Workers found to be U.S. citizens or in this country legally and released told 3TV that some deputies came in with guns drawn and threw people to the ground.

According to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, HMI has a multi-million dollar contract approved by the Board of Supervisors to provide landscaping services to several county buildings.

Investigators believe the company employs as many as 67 illegal aliens suspected of identity theft.

Those workers found to be undocumented workers will be taken to Tent City for further questioning.

Deputies were expected to remain on the scene for much of the morning. Due to the operation, 19th Avenue was restricted south from Interstate 17 to Lower Buckeye Road.

MCSO is not releases many details, but Sheriff Joe Arpaio has scheduled an afternoon news conference to talk about the case and this morning's raid.

Google map of the area http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/stor ... 9fa0.html#
Videos at link

He added, "To us, it is not only painful. It angers us. He's committing violence against us. Does he want us to commit violence against him, is that what he's asking for?

Is that a threat? No, he's enforcing the law and because you don't like it, you think it's unfair. Obey the law....easy.

Originally Posted by crazybird

He added, "To us, it is not only painful. It angers us. He's committing violence against us. Does he want us to commit violence against him, is that what he's asking for?

Is that a threat? No, he's enforcing the law and because you don't like it, you think it's unfair. Obey the law....easy.

Maybe Elias needs to be arrested for threatening a peace officer and inciting violence

http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoe ... d0211.html

206 comments

Sheriff's deputies suspect 60 employees of identity theft
by Maria Polletta - Feb. 11, 2009 11:32 AM
The Arizona Republic

Deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office carried out a search warrant for suspected illegal immigrants at a Phoenix business Wednesday morning.

Dozens of sheriff's deputies arrived shortly after 6 a.m. and began questioning employees at Handyman Maintenance Incorporated, located at 2646 S. 19th Ave. Over 60 employees were suspected of identity theft, according to a press release from the Sheriff's office.

Traffic on 19th Avenue was backed up for hours during the raid after officers cut the section of road next to the business to one lane. Sheriff's office vehicles were crammed into the closed-off lane as well as the business' lot.

Caution tape closed off the scene to already-cleared employees. Around 8:30 a.m., around 35 had been cleared and were talking in groups alongside the tape as they watched officials work. One woman stood crying by herself.

Martin Gutierrez, who has worked for Handyman Maintenance for about four years, said he'd arrived late to work that morning and missed the initial entry of deputies. However, he said many of his coworkers had been intimidated by officers. "They were yelling 'Be still, be still!' and pushing," he said in Spanish. "They treated many of them badly. I just don't think it's fair."

Gutierrez was cleared after showing officials documentation, but he said not everyone was so lucky. "Some of the people didn't have their passports or papers with them," he said. "I told them, 'you have to carry it all the time, it's the law.'"

Ascencion Cordova-Acosta, a Phoenix resident, said he was frustrated with officials' apparent disrespect of all employees regardless of legal status. "[Officials were] roughing up people who weren't doing anything but coming to work," he said, also speaking in Spanish. "I asked then, 'why are you doing this?' but they didn't pay attention." He described the scene as "ugly."

Elias Bermudez, chief executive of Immigrants Without Borders, an advocacy group that helps immigrants obtain citizenship or residency, said he thought the deputies' behavior was "totally uncalled for." "I understand that if there is even just one suspected illegal immigrant working here, they need to find him," he said, "but to threaten all employees? People who were born in this country were questioned."

The sheriff's office will be holding a press conference this afternoon to discuss the raid and outline its case against HMI, which has a contract with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to provide landscaping services to several county buildings.

"They were yelling 'Be still, be still!' and pushing," he said in Spanish. "They treated many of them badly. I just don't think it's fair."

Well, jerk, what do you expect the police to do: walk in and roam around while people run out the back door? I doubt if they conduct raids in that fashion in Mexico and Latin America. You are in the US, and you have to respect our actions. Period.

I've reached the point where when I read the 'Bleeding Heart' statements I have to laugh.

Phoenix maintenance service faces raid in ID theft case
Reported by: Corey Rangel
Email: crangel@abc15.com
Reported by: Katrina Wessman
Last Update: 1:59 pm

Slideshow A Phoenix business that allegedly employed 67 undocumented immigrants suspected of identity theft was raided by authorites early Wednesday.

According to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, dozens of deputies and volunteer posse members conducted the search warrant at Handyman Maintenance Incorporated near Lower Buckeye Road and 19th Avenue just before 6:30 a.m.

Several people, with their hands zip-tied, were loaded onto buses and then taken into custody.

Julio Mora got questioned by deputies while dropping off his father, who works at HMI.

"I was born and raised in Arizona. I haven't left Arizona. I don't know why these guys came to harass us when all we're here for is work," said Julio Mora.

Miguel Camacho got caught in the middle of the raid while trying to apply for a job.

"They made us wait in two lines and turn off our phones. They didn't let nobody talk," said Camacho.

Camacho said deputies were going down a list of employees and taking pictures of those detained.

HMI reportedly has a multi-million dollar contract approved by the Board of Supervisors to provide landscaping services to several county buildings.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio has a news conference scheduled at 2:30 p.m.

Stay with ABC15.com for updates.
Comment from Somos America
Somos America, a coalition of immigrant rights organizations in Maricopa County, will hold a news conference today at 3:00 p.m. outside of the offices of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Wells Fargo Bank Building, corner of 1st Avenue and Washington Street, Phoenix. The event is to speak out against the unjustified use of excessive police force by masked deputies of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office during this morning’s raid against suspected undocumented workers at Handyman Maintenance, Inc. (HMI), a landscaping company on South 19th Avenue, near Lower Buckeye Road.

During the raid, deputies indiscriminately targeted anyone with brown skin, including U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens lawfully admitted to reside and work in the United States.

According to Hector Yturralde, Somos America President, “Deputies used vulgarity in addressing the Hispanic persons with whom they came into contact, they employed unjustified, brutal force against those they detained and four deputies viciously beat a man to the ground for demanding to know why his liberty was being deprived. These are inexcusable abuses of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees against excessive police force and the First Amendment’s right to address law enforcement officers without fear of reprisal.â€

Raided firm is contracted with county
Landscaping company does work at 84 locations, including sheriff facilities
by Yvonne Wingett and JJ Hensley - Feb. 13, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
The landscaping company busted this week by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on suspicion of hiring undocumented workers was trimming trees and mowing the lawns of the sheriff's own facilities, along with dozens of other county buildings.

On Wednesday, sheriff's deputies arrested 60 Handyman Maintenance Inc. employees suspected of being in the country illegally, including 40 who had warrants for ID theft and forgery.

County officials and the Board of Supervisors will decide whether to continue doing business with the company.
For seven years, the Phoenix company has contracted with the county to landscape 84 locations. The county has paid $2.7 million to the company since fiscal year 2005, the most recent available figures. As a vendor with a country contract, the Sheriff's Office had no say in who trimmed the trees at its facilities, Arpaio said.

The county's contract with HMI requires the company's employees to wear county-issued ID badges any time they're working on county property.

In interviews with sheriff's detectives on Wednesday, HMI employees and workers in the county's procurement department both said the two groups came to an unwritten agreement several years ago that the county would stop issuing HMI workers ID badges, said Brian Sands, the sheriff's chief of enforcement.

"I would characterize this on the part of the county as being reckless," Sands said.

Arpaio suggested that adhering to the badge policy would have made it easier for county workers to discover HMI had undocumented workers.

On Thursday, no county agency would take responsibility for issuing the badges: Protective services administrators and top county officials said Arpaio's own deputies issue the ID cards, while the Sheriff's Office said they came from other county agencies. Officials from those county agencies - materials management and facilities management - said they did not issue the cards, saying that was not the function of their agencies.

The work of HMIs employees touched on a wide variety of departments.

A review of contracts and payment history shows that the landscaping company for years has worked at Arpaio's jails, substations and training facilities. The documents also show that the Sheriff's Office shelled out $934.44 to the company to repair a broken water valve and install a sprinkler.

The company also did extensive work, worth more than $440,000 for county flood control, the county department of transportation and libraries.

The Sheriff's Office initiated the investigation in October after tips about the company hiring illegal workers came in from a couple of sources, including an HMI employee who was subsequently fired, Arpaio said. The agency had a deputy work undercover during the course of the investigation to develop information for the warrants served Wednesday.

Arpaio scoffed at the notion that Wednesday's workplace raid was to retaliate against the supervisors as part of the ongoing battle between the two agencies.

"I'm not really blaming the Board of Supervisors," Arpaio said.

"They're in charge of the government entities that are appointed and not elected. So it's more incumbent on them to follow procurement."

The county contracts with an estimated 3,000 vendors to buy pencils, cars, helicopter parts, computers, consulting services and other goods and services. Like all political subdivisions, the county requires all contractors to comply with federal and state laws - including immigration laws.

If Handyman Maintenance Inc. has failed to meet comply with those laws, the county can immediately cancel the contract, said Wes Baysinger, director of materials management, which oversees all but construction contracts for Maricopa County.

"We take this very seriously, and we are actively looking at it to determine what has happened," Baysinger said. "We, quite frankly, don't know that any of these alleged illegal aliens ever worked on county property. And I don't know that I can be responsible for a company that's using them someplace else."http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2009/02/13/20090213raidfolo0213.html

did anyone else pick up on how bias news 3 was in their reporting....nothing about these people are breaking the law and probably in possession of stolen ID. It is all the fault of the police