Thread: Chicago: Day laborers sue city over arrests

Day laborers sue city over arrests
Workers harassed, arrested, suit says
By Antonio Olivo | Tribune staff reporter
8:23 PM CST, December 5, 2007

A group of day laborers filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against Chicago police alleging false arrests and harassment, the latest confrontation between the immigrant workers and city officials facing a growth in street-corner hiring.

The workers accused police of various schemes they argue were meant to chase them off the corners they and contractors have used for more than a decade in Albany Park, Back of the Yards and other areas.

In one instance, undercover police officers posing as contractors lured workers away from a public sidewalk in Back of the Yards and on to a Home Depot parking lot, asking them if they knew about drywall construction. When the laborers crowded around, they were arrested for criminal trespassing, the complaint says.

City officials declined to comment, saying they had not yet read the complaint.

"To arrest one just for looking for work is not right," Quintin Moran, a Honduran immigrant, contended during a news conference Wednesday in front of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

"It's not good because all the people who look for work on the corner are doing it to live, to survive, because lamentably we have no other way," he said.

Day laborers congregating on street corners has become a more common sight in Chicago as factory and full-time construction jobs that have long employed new immigrants disappear.

On a given day in Chicago there are some 800 day laborers—many of them undocumented immigrants—either searching for jobs or working temporarily in roofing, gardening or, in winter, shoveling snow, according to a 2006 national study.

The pay is typically below minimum wage, with the odds of getting hurt or cheated out of wages very high, said Jessica Aranda, executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago, a labor organization that helped prepare the lawsuit.

Aranda's group has clashed repeatedly with the city in recent years over day labor job sites that, officials say, have blocked pedestrian traffic.

In 2003, day laborers on the 5100 block of North Pulaski Road were allowed to take over an abandoned CTA bus turnaround across from Gompers Park. They were kicked out months later by the Chicago Park District, which bought the land for a proposed bicycle trail. The fenced-off lot sits empty, with weeds and trash.

In 2004, after weeks of wrangling with the city over space, Latino Union opened a small Workers' Center on Bryn Mawr Avenue as a safe exchange for higher-paying jobs.

Four years later, activity inside the heated center pales in comparison to the morning bustle on the corners, where desperate-faced men swarm around contractors' cars, knocking on windows for work.

"Remember me? I worked with you last time," one man asked a Tribune reporter on a recent cold morning, before realizing this wasn't about a job.

David Alamilla, 53, who has been on the corner at Belmont and Milwaukee Avenues since he lost his factory job in 2003, said attitudes toward day laborers have hardened along with resentment in the country against illegal immigration.

Nursing a back injury, the grandfather of two shrugged at allegations in the complaint.

In one, a police officer allegedly pressured an Albany Park factory owner to press criminal trespassing charges against a group of workers who gathered near his business. The workers were acquitted when the owner, a defendant in the lawsuit, admitted in court the charges were false, the complaint says.

In another incident cited in the complaint, a Chicago police officer allegedly pointed his gun at a group of startled workers and a contractor, telling the boss he wasn't allowed to hire from the street.

aolivo@tribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... 1723.story

"To arrest one just for looking for work is not right," Quintin Moran, a Honduran immigrant, contended during a news conference Wednesday in front of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

prostitutes use that same logic. illegal = illegal = illegal

get a fricken clue!

"To arrest one just for looking for work is not right," Quintin Moran, a Honduran immigrant, contended during a news conference Wednesday in front of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

It is right if you are breaking the law! I don't know about anyone else but 800 men waiting around for work is a riot waiting to happen!

It's not good because all the people who look for work on the corner are doing it to live, to survive, because lamentably we have no other way," he said.












Well, evidently they have found that "other way" of supporting themselves.....just file a lawsuit.







Day laborers congregating on street corners has become a more common sight in Chicago as factory and full-time construction jobs that have long employed new immigrants disappear.





That's right.....the jobs are disappearing. So now, there are untold numbers of illegals, who already believe that they are owed employment and everything else under the sun just by virtue of being in this country, who are becoming angry because the gravy train has reached the end of it's tracks.

Just what do politicians think is going to happen next?

And to think I recall the days when police told people to leave due to loitering laws.

illegals cant sue in the US they have no rights

but im sure some wacko judge will allow it anyway

A while back Florida had to remove an old law that anyone caught loitering would be "sold to the highest bidder." I find it ironic that, in a way, that's exactly what's happening.