[Marxism] Placating the GOP base or protecting the workplace?

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/07/27/ice_raid/print.html

Placating the GOP base or protecting the workplace?
Whether or not the Bush administration's stepped-up immigration raids  
are a political stunt to soothe angry Republican voters, they still  
carry a human price tag.

By Aimee Molloy

Jul. 27, 2007 | On the morning of March 6, 2007, swarms of armed  
federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE,  
gathered in the blistering cold outside the Michael Bianco Inc.  
leather goods factory in New Bedford, Mass. At about 8 a.m., as a  
helicopter circled overhead and police kept watch in Coast Guard  
boats in the nearby harbor, the agents rushed the building military- 
style, blocked the exits, and ordered the employees to turn off their  
sewing machines, where most were busy stitching backpacks and vests  
for the U.S. military. By evening, 361 workers -- mostly from  
Guatemala and El Salvador -- had been taken into custody after they  
were unable to prove they had legal status to work in the United  
States The factory owner and three managers were also arrested and  
charged in connection with hiring illegal aliens.

Over the last several months, as immigration reform has been debated  
on Capitol Hill, massive arrest and deportation operations like this  
have become a key component in the enforcement of existing laws. In  
the first five months of 2007, 3,226 undocumented workers were  
arrested on the job, compared with just 485 in all of 2002. Recent  
raids have included an operation that netted 62 sanitation workers at  
an Illinois pork plant, 21 employees of a Mexican restaurant chain in  
Arkansas, and 31 workers at a Dallas factory that repairs Fossil  
watches.

Government officials says that these operations are designed to  
pursue employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, and to  
"reverse the tolerance of illegal employment and illegal immigration  
to the United States." But a growing number of critics on both sides  
of the immigration issue argue otherwise. They view the raids --  
which have proven especially costly in terms of taxpayer dollars and  
human suffering -- as a political maneuver designed primarily to make  
the administration appear tough on enforcement, in hopes of  
mollifying Republicans opposed to Bush's recent immigration reform plan.

The bipartisan legislation favored by Bush, which eventually  
collapsed in the Senate in late June, included a path to citizenship  
for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants currently residing in  
the United States. This idea of granting what critics came to refer  
to as "amnesty" was opposed by many Republicans and was sharply, and  
unrelentingly, attacked by right-wing talk show radio hosts, who  
viewed it as a means of rewarding scofflaws. So many people opposed  
to the idea of amnesty sent e-mails to their representatives in  
Washington that the Senate's server was twice shut down, and the  
phone system was flooded beyond capacity. Capturing the grass-roots  
GOP concern, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., declared, "Rewarding illegal  
immigrants with amnesty without taking adequate steps to secure our  
borders is the wrong way to address this problem." It now appears  
doubtful that any comprehensive reform measure will be attempted  
prior to the 2008 elections.

It light of these sentiments, some critics argue, workplace raids  
became a convenient (and headline-capturing) means of appeasing  
critics within the Republican Party. "President Bush was at odds with  
his own people and had to appear as if he was doing something," says  
Joe Garcia, director of the Hispanic Strategy Center of the New  
Democratic Network. But, he points out, it's unrealistic to believe  
that such raids could ever begin to make a dent in fixing the  
problem. "What are they going to do? Bust into every workplace and  
eventually arrest 12 million people? [These raids] were, and are,  
pure and simple grandstanding and prove nothing except that this  
administration is a master of propaganda."

"A lot of people on our side are saying the same thing," says Roy  
Beck, director of NumbersUSA, an "immigrant reduction" organization  
opposed to granting citizenship to illegal immigrants, which  
processed more than 2 million faxes to Congress in opposition to the  
Senate bill. "We believe these very public and dramatic raids were  
designed to create a situation where we'd come to believe President  
Bush will carry out enforcement, so that we would support his amnesty  
plan. It obviously didn't work."

But whatever the political motivation behind the raids, few can deny  
that they are coming at a great cost to immigrant communities, in  
more ways than one. Rarely has an operation been conducted without  
serious problems and mistakes, due primarily to clumsy coordination  
among government agencies that some find reminiscent of the handling  
of Hurricane Katrina, with similar repercussions on the communities  
affected. The New Bedford raid -- where the federal government was  
storming the factory with one hand while writing checks to it with  
the other -- is a prime example. Although the raid captured headlines  
across the country, the administration has come under fire not only  
because of the way it handled the workers' detention but also because  
least two federal agencies had opportunities to deal with the problem  
of undocumented workers at Michael Bianco Inc. years earlier, and in  
a far less extreme manner.

MBI was founded in 1985 by Francesco Insolia. Located in a  
nondescript four-story building along the water in this old whaling  
town, the factory manufactured leather goods for brand names like  
Timberland and Coach. But beginning in 2002, the Social Security  
Administration began to notice a problem. That year, the agency sent  
a letter to MBI alerting it that nearly 25 percent of the payroll  
records they filed included Social Security numbers that were  
fraudulent or invalid -- they belonged to people who were dead, for  
example, or to those who were too young to be employed. Similar  
letters were sent each consecutive year and by 2006, more than half  
of all the MBI Social Security numbers were found to be problematic.  
The only time the company responded was in 2005, when it resubmitted  
326 records. Of those, 142 were still found to be fake or fraudulent.

Not only did the Social Security Administration not share the  
information with other federal agencies, due to privacy laws, but no  
enforcement measures were taken either. Nor did the information stop  
the Department of Defense from awarding the company tens of millions  
of dollars in lucrative government contracts. Beginning in 2002 --  
about the time the SSA sent the first letter -- MBI was contracted to  
manufacture body armor and tactical gear for the U.S. military,  
totaling, through 2006, more than $92 million. To fill the contracts,  
the company's workforce grew to six times what was in 2001: from 85  
people to more than 500 in 2007. To train and hire additional  
employees, the company owner won approval for $111,150 in state grants.

What's more, to manage quality control of the DoD contracts, a  
Pentagon official visited the factory as often as four times a week  
and even had an office on-site. "We'd see him all the time," said  
Juan Tum, a Guatemalan who, along with his wife and brother, was  
arrested and detained during the raid. "He'd come and tell us we  
shouldn't complain about the work because it was better than being in  
Iraq." Pentagon representatives were a regular presence in the  
factory during a long period when the majority of workers were  
illegal and the factory itself was like a sweatshop. After the raid,  
ICE officials described the "severe workplace conditions" at MBI and  
the "mistreatment" of workers: from being fined for spending more  
than two minutes in the restrooms, which were found to be unsanitary,  
to talking while working.

The Defense Department and the Social Security Administration also  
failed to notice that the owners of MBI had created a phantom company  
called Front Line Defense, which they used to avoid paying their  
employees -- many of whom, like Tum and his wife, worked 78 hours a  
week -- overtime wages. Workers would receive one check from Front  
Line and one from MBI, meaning they technically never worked overtime  
for either firm.

ICE, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, finally became  
aware of the problem in May 2006, when an MBI employee turned  
informant and placed a call to the agency. Four months later, an  
undercover ICE agent was hired to work at the factory. When she told  
the owner and several managers that she was from Mexico and didn't  
have legal working papers, she was directed to a local record store,  
where she purchased fake documents for $120. Still, in August 2006,  
one month after the official ICE investigation began, the Army  
awarded MBI another contract, this time for a whopping $138 million.

Given the opportunities to deal with the problem earlier, the costs  
to conduct this raid seem unnecessary and exorbitant to some. "It  
doesn't matter where you stand on the issue of immigration," says Ali  
Noorani, whose agency, the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee  
Advocacy Coalition, was involved in efforts to assist people detained  
at MBI. "Everyone should be concerned with the amount of tax dollars  
being spent conducting these raids."

Nobody at ICE would disclose the costs required to fund any of their  
workplace raids, but the New Bedford raid was typical. Approximately  
600 agents took part in the operation, which was 11 months in the  
planning, and after the arrests, the detained workers were bused  
nearly 100 miles away to Fort Devens, Mass., a military base where  
ICE set up a short-term detention facility. Over the next few days,  
more than half of the detainees were flown via government aircraft to  
one of two detention centers in Texas, where removal proceedings  
began. When it was determined that 33 detainees were sole or primary  
caregivers to children, they were then flown back to Massachusetts,  
all at the government's expense. "In exchange for this, U.S.  
taxpayers were given the peace of mind that about 300 tailors are  
behind bars and may be forced out of the country," says Noorani. In  
fact, to date, just 42 people detained in New Bedford have been  
deported.

And despite the significant resources committed to these efforts,  
people question whether ICE is capable of handling mass arrests and  
deportations in a safe and humanitarian manner. Tum and others  
interviewed by Salon describe the scene at MBI that day as one of  
horror and confusion. "When the agents entered, people started  
screaming, and I thought there was a fire," he said recently. "The  
secretary announced over the P.A. system that nobody was to move ...  
but I saw people running toward the back exit, and it was like a  
stampede. Some fell and people got hurt." Those unable to prove legal  
status were shackled and kept inside the factory for nine hours,  
during which time they were given no food and, because the factory  
was considered a crime scene, no way to contact their family.

Amid the commotion, some of the workers were unable -- or perhaps  
unwilling -- to let ICE agents know that they had children at home,  
and local activists and attorneys report that nearly 100 children  
were left stranded with baby sitters or in schools and daycare  
centers after one or both of their parents were detained. Community  
groups and relatives scrambled to locate children, and a local church  
put out a call for donations of diapers and food. That evening, a  
breast-feeding infant whose mother had been detained ended up in the  
E.R. with pneumonia and possible dehydration.

Harry Spence, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of  
Social Services at the time, testified at a state hearing that those  
problems could have been avoided if federal authorities had better  
coordinated the raid with state officials. His agency did not learn  
about the location of the raid until the morning it occurred, and  
state child welfare workers were initially denied immediate access to  
Fort Devens. When they were allowed into the military facility the  
following evening with a list of people they had identified as having  
childcare issues, they discovered that more than half of the  
detainees had already been flown to Texas. "Children were placed in  
significant jeopardy as a result of the decision not to allow us  
access," Spence testified. "All we were asking was that the law be  
enforced in a way that ensured the safety of the children."

The workers and their attorneys say that in Texas many people were  
denied due process -- to which even illegal immigrants have the right  
under the U.S. Constitution. Lawyers who flew to Texas to interview  
detainees found that 54 people who had signed a waiver saying they  
would not appeal their deportation did not understand what they had  
signed. Some believed it was a request to speak to an attorney. One  
man who had won an order from a federal court temporarily blocking  
his deportation was deported anyway. An ICE official later said it  
was a case of mistaken identify.

Afterwards, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick described the situation  
in New Bedford as a "humanitarian crisis" and U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy  
compared the devastation to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"I believe that [ICE] conducts these raids in a way that people are  
purposefully unable to exercise their rights," says Laura Rotolo, an  
attorney with the ACLU of Massachusetts who interviewed some  
detainees at Fort Devens. "They transfer people across the country  
before they can speak to anybody, and then when they are given a bond  
hearing in Texas, asking to be released before trial, they must prove  
they are not a flight risk and that they have ties to the community.  
Of course they have no ties to the community in Texas."

DHS officials, however, argue that the criticism of the raid is  
unwarranted and emphasize that 36 people were released from the  
factory, and 24 from Fort Devens, after agents determined them to  
have credible family issues. "I strongly reject the argument that we  
did not make extraordinary efforts on the humanitarian side," says  
ICE spokesman Marc Raimondi, who declined to provide other ICE  
officials for interviews. "We take great care in conducting  
enforcement operations with dignity and respect for those detained."  
The only way any child would have been left without reasonable adult  
supervision, he says, while refuting claims that any instances of  
that occurred in New Bedford, was if a detainee had lied to agents  
during questioning and denied having children at home.

He also says that his agency worked closely with the Department of  
Social Services and other state officials prior to the raid, and  
accuses the DSS of engaging in revisionist history. Plus, he adds,  
ICE is not concerned about the costs of such raids, though he would  
not disclose them. "This is about stopping employers from helping to  
break the laws and holding accountable those that do."

But the owner, Francesco Insolia, never spent a night in jail, and  
the factory was back in operation the following day. In the weeks  
that followed, more than 200 workers remained in detention, yet  
Insolia returned to work and was granted permission to travel to  
Puerto Rico and Panama. Insolia, who did not return calls from Salon,  
faces $45,000 in fines for workplace safety violations and a federal  
charge of conspiring to hire illegal aliens, but he continues to draw  
profits from his military contracts.

While some elements of Bush's immigration reform plan will come  
before Congress as individual bills or amendments to other measures,  
the consensus in Washington is that Congress will probably not  
consider anything as comprehensive prior to the 2008 election. A  
question on some people's minds, therefore, is whether the raids will  
persist. "It'll be interesting to see what happens," says Roy Beck of  
NumbersUSA. "If the president decides to give up on his efforts to  
pass amnesty, will the raids continue?"

According to immigration officials, the answer is yes. In 2005,  
President Bush signed a bill doubling the resources for such  
measures, and the 2007 fiscal year budget includes funding for more  
than 20,000 additional prison beds to hold undocumented workers  
awaiting deportation. "We're going to continue to be tough," says  
Raimondi. "Worksite enforcement measures are here to stay."

Kennedy, a key proponent of Bush's immigration reform plan, points to  
the increased number of raids as another example of why Congress  
needs to continue to rethink our nation's policy. "The raids in New  
Bedford and elsewhere are merely a stopgap solution that unfairly  
penalizes vulnerable workers in an already flawed system," Kennedy  
said in a statement. "There are 12 million undocumented immigrants in  
the United States. Arresting 300 of them may generate some headlines  
for DHS, but such raids do not begin to solve the immigration issue."

For people like Juan Tum, the recent collapse of the immigration  
reform bill was a crushing, and highly personal, defeat. He and 145  
others detained at MBI have been released on bail, awaiting their  
immigration court dates as 137 others -- including Tum's wife --  
remain in federal detention centers. But the possibility they will  
avoid deportation is increasingly dim.

"The thing that everyone is waiting for is immigration reform," Tum  
says. "We came here to escape poverty, to allow our children to study  
and become educated ... We are not hiding. We are not trying to not  
pay our taxes. We are willing to do whatever it takes to comply with  
the law if we are given the opportunity to do that."

-- By Aimee Molloy

  
   

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