Thread: NCLR testimony before Congress re. Immig. raids.

http://www.nclr.org/content/publications/detail/52035/

Summary
Janet MurguÃ*a testimony before the Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee to address the impact of immigration raids on the workplace, children, and families

Description


The Implications of Immigration Enforcement on America s Children Presented at: Hearing on ICE Workplace Raids: Their Impact on U.S. Children, Families, and Communities


Submitted to:
U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, Subcommittee on Workforce Protections


Submitted by:
Janet MurguÃ*a President and CEO National Council of La Raza




I. Introduction

Madam Chairwoman, subcommittee members, and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, thank you for this opportunity to testify before you today about the impact of immigration enforcement on America’s children.

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) – the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States – is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax-exempt organization established in 1968 to reduce poverty and discrimination and improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans. NCLR has a long history in the immigration debate; our work on this issue is focused on ensuring that we have an immigration system that functions in the best interest of the nation. Immigration to the United States should be orderly and legal, promote economic growth, sustain our families, and be implemented in a way consistent with our best values in the United States. As you know, the country is far from achieving that goal. My organization, our Affiliates, and our many coalition partners are dedicated to an effort to reform U.S. immigration laws in a way that promotes order, fairness, and above all legality. Until a major immigration reform is enacted, the country will continue to cope with challenges resulting from the presence of roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants in our workforce and in our communities.

I am particularly grateful that the committee is taking up one of these challenges, one that has reached crisis proportions in many communities around the country. There is substantial, growing evidence that the use of workplace raids as an immigration enforcement strategy is causing great harm to children, schools, child care centers, and communities well beyond the immigrant population. Madam Chairwoman, let me be clear: NCLR believes that the United States can and should enforce its immigration laws. As with any set of laws, the nation should enforce them wisely and well. This requires an examination of the costs and benefits of particular enforcement strategies to ensure that the priorities and tactics we choose do not undercut other important laws, values, and goals. The work of this committee is absolutely critical to inspiring a reasonable conversation on immigration enforcement, and I sincerely appreciate the committee’s attention to the impact of workplace raids on America’s children.


II. Consequences of Immigration Enforcement for Children

A. Report on Impact of Workplace Raids

There has been a significant increase in interior immigration enforcement operations by the Department of Homeland Security in the last year and a half. In 2007, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), more than 4,900 arrests were made in connection with worksite enforcement investigations, representing a 45-fold increase in criminal worksite arrests compared to fiscal year 2001.[1] This year, ICE has stepped up its enforcement actions by raiding individual homes as well as worksites; in April ICE conducted a five-state sweep of Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plants last month, and just last week it raided Agriprocessors, Inc., a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, a raid which ICE has called the largest in history.

The impact of immigrant enforcement raids on children is often disregarded and poorly understood. For these reasons, NCLR commissioned the Urban Institute to conduct a study of three communities where large-scale worksite raids occurred in 2007. We had a strong interest in moving beyond the anecdotal accounts reported by the media to documenting the challenges that children face as a result of immigration enforcement actions. NCLR believes that the impact on children and communities must be considered when making decisions about immigration enforcement – or any law enforcement – strategy. We believe strongly that such a debate should be based on facts and empirical evidence as much as possible, which is why we invested in a thorough report. I request that the report be included in the official record of this hearing.

NCLR released this report, Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children, in October 2007. The findings confirmed the inevitability of hardship to children resulting from an immigration raid. There are approximately five million children in the U.S. with an undocumented immigrant parent, the vast majority of whom are U.S. citizens and under the age of ten. The Urban Institute researchers found that, for every two immigrants detained as a result of worksite raids, approximately one child is left behind. Further, the study shed light on the fact that many children slipped through the cracks as a direct result of ICE’s enforcement protocols. For example, ICE did not provide detained immigrants with access to telephones. This meant that parents were unable to notify family members and coordinate alternative child care arrangements, forcing some children to stay with landlords or babysitters indefinitely or, worse still, home alone. ICE also failed to consider hardship to children when making custody determinations. Some children experienced the loss of both parents who had been placed in detention locally or in detention facilities out of state, which made it virtually impossible for these children to visit them.

There were also accounts of ICE detaining nursing mothers, resulting in infants being forcibly weaned from breast milk. In a 2006 raid in New Bedford, Massachusetts, an eight-month-old infant was taken to the emergency room to be treated for dehydration after her mother was detained. The infant’s pediatrician appealed to ICE officials to release the child’s mother, citing medical reasons for which the child needed to continue breastfeeding. NCLR and our sister organizations in the Latino community wrote to the Department of Homeland Security after this incident to raise concerns; we received a response stating that the incident never occurred, despite extensive evidence, including video footage of the child and interviews with the emergency room physician who treated her.

In addition, the report found evidence of increased economic hardship, social stigma, fear, isolation, family separation, disruptions in schooling, and negative emotional and mental health consequences for children. Across the three communities examined in the report, teachers, caregivers, and mental health professionals consistently described children with symptoms of depression and other psychological disturbances such as sleep disturbance, loss of appetite, fearfulness, mood swings, and feelings of abandonment by their parent(s).

Beyond the negative consequences to children’s well-being resulting from worksite raids, the report provides evidence that our nation’s social institutions – such as school and child welfare agencies – that are tasked with protecting and nurturing children are playing the role of first responders in the aftermath of a raid. For example, school officials interviewed for our report discussed steps they undertook on the day of the raid to ensure the well-being of children, such as instructing bus drivers to release children only at homes where there was an adult present, asking teachers to stay late to help care for children, and coordinating mental health services. In the days following the raid, school personnel visited homes and attended community gatherings reminding parents that schools were a safe place for children and urging their return to school. A school leader in Grand Island, Nebraska made a poignant statement regarding how the raid served as a diversion from the school’s primary mission of ensuring that no child is left behind.

Today, nearly every time there is a significant immigration enforcement operation, NCLR receives reports from the community similar to those noted above. There is a similar pattern with each raid: school systems and child care centers must scramble to find relatives or caregivers for children whose parents have abruptly disappeared. These institutions, along with community organizations, must grapple for days or weeks with an emergency situation in which families struggle to find the location of detainees, who are often unable to access legal services. Even since the implementation of ICE guidelines in response to these many problems, there are always cases of children left behind and nearly always cases of nursing mothers separated from their infants for long periods. Moreover, school systems and child care centers report enormous long-term challenges in meeting the needs of children whose families have been forcibly and suddenly separated in this way.

B. Continuing Impact: Particular Concerns at Migrant Head Start Centers

There is also growing alarm in our community about ICE’s engagement in intimidation and enforcement tactics near our public schools and Head Start programs. For example, NCLR has several Affiliates who operate Head Start programs that serve the children of migrant farmworkers. Last spring, many of these programs began reporting the following incidents (see Attachment 1 – MSHS Enforcement Chart):

· ICE agents parking near migrant Head Start centers during drop-off and pickup times
· ICE agents and local law enforcement following school buses carrying children under the age of five, beginning as early as 4:00 a.m.; in some instances, ICE followed school buses for the entire route, as long as two hours
· ICE agents and local law enforcement following migrant Head Start staff to and from the center during lunch breaks

These actions on the part of ICE are having a chilling effect on the participation of migrant children in Head Start. Quite simply, the presence of ICE around Head Start centers is causing fearful parents to keep their children away from the program. In fact, the low rates of attendance registered by these programs has even garnered the attention of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Head Start, which monitors Head Start enrollment and sanctions programs for failing to meet their enrollment targets. During the reauthorization of the Head Start Act, NCLR worked closely with this committee to ensure that migrant children benefit from greater access to Head Start. We were proud of this committee’s bipartisan work to prioritize the expansion of migrant Head Start and its commitment to ensuring that migrant children exit the fields and enter classrooms where they can learn and grow. It is deplorable that the laudable goals of this committee have been virtually undone by the current immigration enforcement strategy of this Administration.

We are also aware of instances in which ICE has actually entered private homes and school buildings to remove children. For example, in October 2007, a Honduran immigrant mother, who was in her Ohio home breastfeeding her nine-month-old infant when ICE agents entered her home, was taken into custody while ICE agents went to her children’s school to remove her children.[2] In another account, an NCLR Affiliate, HELP-New Mexico, Inc., contacted NCLR in September 2007 to report that ICE agents and local police entered their preschool program, located inside the Sunrise Elementary School in Chaparral, New Mexico, to remove children whose parents had been detained in a local sweep of Hispanic businesses and homes.[3] One child, Virginia Ana Rodriguez, was released to her father, who was in the custody of four fully armed Otero County police officers at the time. The officers initially brought the father into the main office of Sunrise Elementary until the principal asked them to accompany her into the conference room so as not to alarm other students and staff. These same agents also entered the local middle and high schools to remove children of detained immigrants.

In the immediate weeks following this incident, school officials at the Gadsden School District documented that approximately 200 students were absent and a small number returned to school during the remainder of the school year. The HELP-New Mexico preschool program also registered lower rates of enrollment in the ensuing weeks, and has yet to fully reach enrollment targets consistent with previous school years. A preschool teacher reports the challenges they now face in enrolling children in the program because parents remain afraid of the possibility that ICE agents will return to the center. Clearly, our current approach to immigration enforcement is instilling fear among our children and families and undermining our important social policy goals for children, and the programs designed to meet these goals.


III. Limitations of ICE Policies for the Protection of Children

Many of the problems that are documented in the NCLR/Urban Institute report have also been the subject of media attention, litigation, and congressional inquiries. As a result of this pressure, during 2007, ICE developed and released three policy memoranda that consider children in the conduct of immigration enforcement actions. While these memoranda represent an improvement in ICE sensitivity to these important considerations, experience with immigration raids since the development of these policies suggests that they have significant limitations. The scope and the limitations of these guidelines are discussed as follows:

(1) Guidelines for Identifying Humanitarian Concerns Among Administrative Arrestees for Worksite Enforcement Actions, November 16, 2007. Following the New Bedford, Massachusetts raid in March 2007, Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry and Congressman William Delahunt worked with ICE to develop guidelines for quickly identifying persons arrested who are sole caregivers or who should be released from custody for other humanitarian reasons. The guidelines apply to larger worksite raids that result in the arrest and/or detention of more than 150 immigrants. The guidelines stipulate that ICE will:
· Develop a comprehensive plan for quickly identifying humanitarian issues among detainees.
· Coordinate with federal health and/or state and local social services, including allowing these entities to serve as intermediaries to help screen and assess humanitarian issues among detainees.
· Facilitate communication among detainees and their family members by providing access to telephones; ICE is also expected to coordinate with nongovernmental agencies (NGOs) and make information on detainees and ICE personnel available to these entities in real time, so that they can help to screen for humanitarian concerns.

(2) Memorandum Outlining Prosecutorial Discretion for Nursing Mothers, November 7, 2007. In response to mounting accounts of infants forcibly weaned from breast milk as a result of enforcement actions, ICE released guidelines highlighting the importance of discretion when making arrests and custody determinations of nursing mothers. These guidelines call for the following:
· Nursing mothers should be released on an Order of Recognizance or Order of Supervision, and the Alternative to Detention programs should be considered as an additional enforcement tool.
· In situations where ICE determines that nursing mothers should remain in custody, field personnel should consider placement in Berks or Hutto Family detention facilities.

(3) Memorandum Regarding Juveniles Encountered During Fugitive Operations, August 24, 2007. In March 2006, ICE agents raided a home in San Rafael, California and apprehended Kebin Reyes, a six-year-old U.S. citizen. ICE agents kept Kebin in detention for ten hours alongside his father, who repeatedly pleaded for access to a telephone to make alternative care arrangements for Kebin. The ACLU filed a lawsuit that led to the development of a memorandum concerning the treatment of minor children encountered during enforcement actions.[4] The memo stipulates the following:
· ICE should not take into custody a legal permanent resident or U.S. citizen minor child.
· ICE should coordinate the transfer of a minor child to the nearest child welfare authority or local law enforcement agency. If these options are not feasible, ICE should document the parent’s request for the transfer of the child to a third party.
· To the greatest extent possible, ICE should coordinate with child welfare authorities prior to an enforcement operation.

In general, ICE appears to have made attempts to adjust its enforcement policies to consider humanitarian issues, including hardship to children. There is even some evidence to suggest that ICE has adhered to its stated objective of promptly releasing nursing mothers. For example, recent large raids in Van Nuys, California and Postville, Iowa demonstrate that ICE has released nursing mothers with electronic monitoring devices. However, there is also anecdotal evidence that the release of these mothers can be significantly delayed and the conditions of their detention inappropriate. NCLR has learned that one nursing mother detained last week in Postville was not provided sufficient access to food over a nearly 24-hour period before she was released to care for her infant.

However, the positive impact of ICE’s guidance memoranda is severely limited with respect to providing any real assurances that children will be comprehensively and systematically protected in immigration enforcement activities. For example:

· The policy guidelines noted above are nonbinding, as they are not regulations and are not codified.
· There is no mechanism for holding ICE accountable for compliance with its own stated policies.
· The humanitarian guidelines for worksite raids only apply to larger raids of more than 150 people. Thus, it is unclear whether or not ICE will attempt to apply these guidelines in raids yielding less than 150 detainees.
· The guidelines noted above fail to address the undue burden placed on schools, early childhood centers, child welfare agencies, churches, and community-based organizations that are left to play the role of first responder in the aftermath of a raid.
· The guidelines fall short of accounting for all of the situations and scenarios in which children could potentially be harmed in an enforcement action. Simply put, the guidelines do not stipulate that all children, regardless of any type of enforcement action of any size, will have their best interests taken into account.

Unfortunately, there is substantial evidence that ICE does not consistently follow its own guidelines. For example, Immigration and Naturalization Services (ICE’s predecessor) policy guidance dating back to 1993 strongly discourages immigration enforcement actions near schools.[5] The policy states that agents are to “attempt to avoid apprehension of and to tightly control investigative operations on the premises of schools, places of workshop, funerals, or other religious ceremonies.â€

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) – the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States – is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax-exempt organization established in 1968 to reduce poverty and discrimination and improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans.

Remove all federal and state funding to this discrimatory-front for foreign governments and it's tax-exempt status.

· ICE agents and local law enforcement following school buses carrying children under the age of five, beginning as early as 4:00 a.m.; in some instances, ICE followed school buses for the entire route, as long as two hours

Who sends kids under the age of five to school at 4:00 AM?

III. Limitations of ICE Policies for the Protection of Children

Give temporary custody of the children to their consulate where all their human rights and dignity will be maintained.

Originally Posted by MyAmerica

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) – the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States – is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax-exempt organization established in 1968 to reduce poverty and discrimination and improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans.

Remove all federal and state funding to this discrimatory-front for foreign governments and it's tax-exempt status.

[quote:2drqxb5a]· ICE agents and local law enforcement following school buses carrying children under the age of five, beginning as early as 4:00 a.m.; in some instances, ICE followed school buses for the entire route, as long as two hours

Who sends kids under the age of five to school at 4:00 AM?

III. Limitations of ICE Policies for the Protection of Children

Give temporary custody of the children to their consulate where all their human rights and dignity will be maintained.[/quote:2drqxb5a]


1. Agree.

2. Beleive it or not, here in CA somehow state and federal money is spent on school and transportation for "preschoolers" going to public elementary school sites. Most, but not all have already been categorized as "special needs". We are talking kids as young as three...and of course many are kids of illegals and those here on visas.

3. Agree. How hard is that? They don't have the capacity...well...gee...as we've been trying to say all along, neither do we and nor we we want to pay for capacity.


=

I'm sure that some of these accusations by Janet Planet are exagerated, or just plain lies. She will lie and cheat to get what she wants, just like the rest of them. This is the old scope of the organization:

..organization established in 1968 to reduce poverty and discrimination and improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans.

The new scope is:

Everything for the race..everything else-nothing

Janet and the rest of the racist idiot members of the NCLR are hiding behind this false banner. ALL funding needs to stop ASAP.

Yes, she is a liar!
I saw her on Lou Dobbs and what a wild debate that was! That will never admit it when she's wrong. When she tried to tell "us" that illegal immigrants pay 60,000,000.00 (that's millions!) in taxes each year I thought Lou would faint. Over and over he challenged her to prove what she said but she started spouting off incoherently and successfully changed the subject.

NCLR should not be tax-exempt with all the millions they receive in federal funding!

funny, all those mexicans have to do to not live in fear is go back to mexico where they came from. just b/c they squirted out a kid while barging here illegally does not mean the kid can't go back to mexico with them and avoid all this staged "heartbreak" and "sob stories."

breaking up families my ass. the mexican illegal alien parents are the only ones repsonsible for their actions and how those poor choices affect their children.

how dare they blame us?

how dare we allow it?

When they illegally entered our country they broke up their families. Who are remittances sent to in home countries--FAMILY MEMBERS! Deportation actually reunites families.