Thread: {Sob} 'For us, the raid was like the end of the world'

'For us, the raid was like the end of the world'
By BECKY W. EVANS
Standard-Times staff writer
May 14, 2007 6:00 AM
NEW BEDFORD — It was a sad Mother's Day for Olivia Hilario, whose four sons — including one buried — are far away in Guatemala.

Ms. Hilario, who lives in this city with her teenage daughter, cannot afford to smuggle her sons into the United States, especially after losing her job following the March 6 federal immigration raid at Michael Bianco Inc., where she worked as a seamstress.

She thanks God that she was sick that day and did not go to work. But some of her close friends were not so lucky and are being detained in Texas and face deportation to Guatemala.



"We love each other like sisters," said Ms. Hilario, an illegal immigrant who spoke to a reporter through a Spanish interpreter. "If they get out of Texas, we will live together and pay rent and try to survive here."



If her friends are deported, Ms. Hilario and her daughter will likely return to Guatemala. Since the raid, she has been unable to find a job because local companies are now careful to hire employees with valid social security cards, she said.



Ms. Hilario was one of 60 women honored yesterday during a ceremony for mothers affected by the Bianco raid. Some of the women were detained for days or weeks before they were released to care for their children. Others have husbands who are being held at detention facilities in Texas, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.



Members of Organization Maya K'Iche, which organized the event at Brooklawn Park, presented the women with food baskets packed with rice, sugar, corn meal, beans and other staples.



The band United in Christ serenaded the women with "Mananitas," a traditional song played on birthdays and other special occasions in many Spanish-speaking countries.



"Many of the mothers are not here in New Bedford but we are singing with our hearts for them," band member Pedro Ventura said.



Adriana Lafaille, a program assistant with the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said most mothers with children living in the city have been released from detention facilities and await deportation hearings in Boston.

Of the more than 100 Bianco workers still being detained, some are mothers who left their children in their home countries when they came to the United States, Ms. Lafaille said.

She said two pregnant women are among the detainees.

Margarita Perez said she paid $5,000 in bond money to get her daughter-in-law, Susana, released from the Harlingen, Texas, detention facility in April. She spent an additional $600 to fly her back to New Bedford. Now the two women are waiting for the release of Margarita's son, Hector, from the El Paso, Texas facility.

Hector and Susana, who were married last year, both worked at the Michael Bianco plant.

Without their income, Ms. Perez, who works part-time at a New Bedford fish plant, said she can no longer send money back to Guatemala to care for a disabled relative.

If her son is deported, Ms. Perez said she will follow him home to Guatemala.

"I will leave too because everyone in this country is against us," she said.

The Mother's Day celebration, which attracted a large crowd of adults and children, coincided with the opening day of the Mayan soccer league, Liga Maya Soccer USA. Games are scheduled at Brooklawn Park on weekends throughout the summer.

The teams include players from Portugal, Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and other countries.

Ms. Hilario sang loudly in Spanish when the Guatemalan national anthem was played before the start of the soccer tournament.

She sobbed later while talking to a reporter about her struggle to find work since the Bianco raid.

"For us, the raid was like the end of the world," she said.

She said she came illegally to the United States to escape violence in Guatemala and find work to support her impoverished family.

"We don't want to take over this country," she said. "We are just looking for a job and the peace we can't find in our own country."

Contact Becky W. Evans at revans@s-t.com
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