News » June 16, 2008

ICE Cold to Kids

By Kay Steiger

On Monday night, a Homeland Security bus leaves Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa, with immigation detainees.

At 10 a.m. on May 12, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended on a meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa, about 200 miles northwest of Des Moines. ICE agents arrested 389 workers who it determined were undocumented — 304 of whom were indicted on various charges, mostly related to their immigrant status. The list of arrested did not include the owners or managers at the meat processing plant.

After Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform in 2006, ICE adopted what is referred to as an “enforcement-only” approach to immigration. The incident in Postville is one example.

ICE arrests have increased 45-fold since 2001, according to the National Council of La Raza, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit. In 2007, nearly 5,000 workplace immigration arrests occured nationwide.

The children of those arrested — many of whom are U.S. citizens — suffer consequences. The raid in Iowa “created panic in the school,” said Janet Murgu’a, president of the National Council of La Raza, during a May 20 hearing before the House subcommittee on workforce protections. She said it forced St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in Postville to mobilize and feed 450 migrants the first night of the raid, and to shelter 150 children who spent the night on mats and in pews.

The number of children with undocumented parents is unknown, but a March 2005 report by the Pew Hispanic Center found that 4.9 million children are in families with at least one undocumented parent. Of those, 3.1 million — or 63 percent — are U.S. citizens.

Last November, ICE adopted humanitarian guidelines after Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and others pushed for their implementation. The discretionary guidelines require agents to investigate whether humanitarian concerns exist among those arrested — including “those with serious medical conditions … pregnant women, nursing mothers, parents who are the sole caretakers of minor children or disabled or seriously ill relatives, and parents who are needed to support their spouses in caring for sick or special needs children or relatives.”

Agents are also asked to coordinate with other institutions, such as foster care systems and the Department of Heath and Human Services.

“What we’d like to see is those regulations enforced on a consistent basis — strictly enforced and not applied in a discretionary way,” Murgu’a testified.

Kathryn Gibney is principal of an overwhelmingly (96 percent) Latino elementary school in San Pedro, Calif., a community that experienced a raid in March 2007. She told lawmakers that members of her community have witnessed white ICE vans stationed near school grounds in Oakland and Berkeley to ensnare parents.

Gibney said the effect on her school has been “ongoing relentless terror.”

“The impact of these raids has been devastating,” she said. “Absentee rates have soared. Test scores have dropped. Students who do make it to school remain distracted, as they worry about whether their families will be at home when they return.”

The San Pedro raid last year occurred in the predawn hours before a state-mandated exam. About 40 students were absent that day — seven times greater than the school’s normal absence rate.

According to Gibney, in San Rafael, Calif., on May 8, ICE agents stopped a second-grade girl who was on her way to school with her father. The agents couldn’t communicate with the father in his native language, so the girl served as translator. The agents eventually arrested her father.

ICE insists it acts humanely when rounding up illegal aliens. Acting Deputy Assistant Director of ICE James Sperro told Congress that agents involved in the Postville incident questioned detainees “no less than three times about humanitarian issues, such as child custody concerns.” He said agents eventually released 62 of those arrested, but added that those released are still likely to be charged.

As Gibney told the committee: “There must be a way to execute a federal mandate in a more humane manner.”

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• Reader Comments

  The list of arrested did not include the owners or managers at the meat processing plant.

  Arresting those who employ illegal aliens is the only sensible thing to do.

  Arrest the business owners. Forget about tracking down the aliens — no jobs, end of the problem. If the fines are not enough to end it, let the employers do jail time.

  Posted by whattheheck on Jun 16, 2008 at 8:09 PM

  If we’re talking about the “problem,” let’s talk about the predatory economic policies implemented by the U.S. in the countries from which these immigrants come from.  History reveals many countries that took measures to improve their economic situation, only to be met with violent, US-backed coups when those policies were found to not be in the best interests of US corporations.  In the ensuing civil wars and economic strife that plagued most of Latin America throughout the 70’s and 80’s, many families fled to the country that was largely responsible for the misappropriation of resources in their country (namely, the US). 
  In response to our devastating foreign policy in the 70’s and 80’s, we enacted NAFTA and CAFTA, which have only exacerbated their economic plight of Latin American nations by flooding the economies with low-paying jobs and cheap US products which produced an outflow of capital from the local economy. 
  Rather than employing ICE agents (gotta love the terror-inducing acronyms of our government) to purge our country of hard-working men and women, we should be trying to help the sending countries retain their labor force by helping with land-reform measures that give the land back to the people who live there, and by policing our ever-greedy corporations who gladly flood foreign markets with cheap products in order to stamp out any local competition. 
  Stories like this one in Iowa are shameful, and not generally representative of most Americans.  I say we begin to pay credence to the real “silent majority:” those people who think its wrong to traumatize children, terrorize families, and vilify decent human beings.

  Posted by diciteco on Jun 16, 2008 at 11:14 PM

  NAFTA and CAFTA are purely economic con games devised to peddle the idea that globalization (economic imperialism) is good for us all. With the exception of Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan US politicians billed it as a win-win situation which would bring foreign masses up from poverty and “We will only lose the low-end, low-paing jobs here.”  Gore said it was inevitable, Clinton pushed it through congress after G.H.W. Bush set up the ball for a spike.

  The result was obvious to anyone with an once of imagination…

  • Major US manufacturing job losses — These made a move to the middle class possible for millions of our less educated, but skilled workers.
  • Imports of nearly everything under the guise of “lower consumer prices” —Now as the dollar falls the prices rise and we have no domestic alternative products.
  • With the US economy 70% dependent on consumer buying most spending goes to foreign economies.

  The help to the masses in emerging economies is virtually zero in Mexico where US corporations pay a pittance to workers who live in pitiful conditions. In China many live better, but in terrible environmental conditions (a good way to solve the population problem). China’s super managed society let’s us see what they want just as they (with the help of US tech companies like Microsoft) manage what their people see and read from outside.

  The idea that WE know what’s best for the whole world is the height of arrogance. We do nothing about our own major issues — health care, job quality, food safety, border security, energy independence — we have nothing to offer the world when it comes to designing a universal quality of life.

  Our congress is currently jawboning about possible “commodity speculation,” and “windfall oil profits.”  Of course there i speculation — that’s what capitalism is all about. In itself it is neither good nor bad. At the same time those who created the subprime fraud are being aided and abetted by the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. It’s all a game of the pea under the walnut shells.

  We’ve had thirty years to “cure”” our oil dependency, but too many are making too much money by simply diverting attention and keeping it going.

  First NAFTA, then CAFTA and now the SHAFTA!

  Posted by whattheheck on Jun 18, 2008 at 12:37 PM

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