ICE Raids Benefit Bosses by Creating Fear in Workers

ICE raid in Los Angeles. Photo: Allen J. Schaben/LAT via Getty Images

In 2000, an immigration official admitted that the authorities rarely detained undocumented workers “unless the employer turns a worker in, and employers usually do that only to break a union or prevent a strike or that kind of stuff.”

David L. Wilson, Truthout

August 23, 2019

On August 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carried out coordinated raids at seven agricultural processing plants in Mississippi, detaining 680 immigrant workers. Officials told The Washington Post that the operation was “the largest single-state workplace enforcement action in U.S. history.”

The massive operation generated terror in immigrant communities already traumatized by a massacre targeting people of Mexican origin in El Paso, Texas, days earlier, and much of the U.S.-born population was outraged by images of detained workers’ sobbing children.

As has happened after workplace raids in the past, news accounts noted that the employers remained free while their workers were led off to migrant jails in handcuffs.[…]

Read the full article:

https://truthout.org/articles/ice-raids-benefit-bosses-by-creating-fear-in-workers/

Understanding Trump’s Deportation Raids

[The Trump administration says mass deportation raids will start on June 23. This article from shortly after the 2016 elections seems relevant now. It explained that as a government with only minority support, Trump’s administration would need raids as a way to distract attention from its failures to fulfill the president’s populist promises.

In fact, the White House has carried out a number of mass raids in cities and has restarted the huge workplace raids from the George W. Bush era, although the 2016 article overstated the White House’s ability to carry these raids out. Partly this has been due to the administration’s own incompetence, but a more important factor has been popular resistance—which may have a major impact on this new round of raids. (The article also has a factual error: John Kelly was the third general to head up immigration services, not the second.)—TPOI editor.]

Trump’s Deportation Machine

By David L. Wilson, Jacobin

December 19, 2016

Like so much about the incoming administration, president-elect Donald Trump’s intentions for undocumented immigrants remain unclear. But he seems likely to go forward with a substantial program of “getting them out of our country.”[…]

Read the full article:

https://jacobinmag.com/2016/12/trump-undocumented-immigration-ice-sessions

Photo: nflravens / Flickr

How to Organize Against ICE Raids, and Why We Need to Do It

May 1, 2018 demo. Photo: Pioneer Valley Workers Center

Building a Rapid-Response Network to Defend Immigrant Workers

By Dan DiMaggio and Pioneer Valley Workers Center Staff, Labor Notes

August 16, 2018

As the Trump administration cracks down on undocumented immigrants, it’s urgent for worker centers and unions to organize to defend immigrant members.

In Western Massachusetts, the Pioneer Valley Workers Center has created a rapid-response network it calls “Sanctuary in the Streets” (SiS). The worker center, founded in 2014, organizes restaurant workers and farmworkers in the area. Worker committees set the network's priorities.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.labornotes.org/2018/08/building-rapid-response-network-defend-immigrant-workers

  

Immigration Raid in Nebraska Devastates Local Agriculture Industry and Families

By Melissa Cruz, Immigration Impact

August 13, 2018

A small town in Nebraska was rocked last week when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents raided multiple businesses, arresting 133 undocumented immigrant workers in an operation which has already created upheaval in the community and its local agriculture industry.

This raid is the latest amid a series of enforcement operations conducted by the Trump administration, including raids in Tennessee and Ohio. In addition to the workers, 17 employers were served arrest warrants last week for allegedly exploiting undocumented labor, among other crimes.[...]

Read the full article:

http://immigrationimpact.com/2018/08/13/immigration-raid-nebraska-agriculture-industry/

Following Up: CBP Abuse, “Immigrant Crime,” the Tennessee Raid

Protesters block street after acquittal. Photo: Mamta Popat / Arizona Daily Star

Border Patrol agent found not guilty of murder in Mexican teen's 2012 death

Almost six years after José Antonio Elena Rodríguez died in a cross-border shooting, activists condemn US jury’s ‘inconceivable’ finding

By Rory Carroll, The Guardian

April 24, 2018

José Antonio Elena Rodríguez was on Calle Internacional, four blocks from his home in Nogales, when 16 shots punctured the night. Ten bullets struck him: eight in the back, two in the head. He died where he fell.

The 16-year-old was not a victim of street crime. All the shots came from the United States, from the gun of a Border Patrol agent aiming through the fence which separates Arizona from Mexico.[...]

Read the full article:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/23/border-patrol-shooting-jose-antonio-elena-rodriguez-lonnie-swartz

Also see:

http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2012/12/killing-spree-on-border.html

http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2015/07/judge-family-of-mexican-teen-killed-by.html

http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2015/10/agent-indicted-in-2012-border-killing.html

How the Border Patrol Faked Statistics Showing a 73 Percent Rise in Assaults Against Agents

By Debbie Nathan, The Intercept

April 23, 2018

LAST NOVEMBER, REPORTS that a pair of U.S. Border Patrol agents had been attacked with rocks at a desolate spot in West Texas made news around the country. The agents were found injured and unconscious at the bottom of a culvert off Interstate 10. Agent Rogelio Martinez soon died from his injuries. Early reports in right-wing media outlets such as Breitbart suggested that the perpetrators were undocumented immigrants, and President Donald Trump quickly embraced the narrative to bolster his campaign for a border wall.

To people familiar with the harsh terrain and the habits of undocumented border crossers, however, the news made little sense. Why would immigrants seeking entry to the U.S. hang out in the middle of nowhere, miles from the border, waiting to randomly attack law enforcement officers?[…]

Read the full article:

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/23/border-patrol-agents-assaulted-cbp-fbi/

Criminal Conviction Rates in Texas in 2016

By Alex Nowrasteh, Cato Institute Blog

April 23, 2018

Cato published my recent Immigration Research and Policy Brief that relied on Texas state criminal data to compare the conviction rates of native-born Americans, legal immigrants, and illegal immigrants. That Texas state data was of such high quality that I was even able to compare conviction rates by the type of crime. The result was that in 2015 the criminal conviction and arrest rates for illegal immigrants were below that of native-born Americans for virtually all crimes including homicide, sexual assault, and larceny. This is just further evidence that illegal immigrants are less crime-prone than native-born Americans.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.cato.org/blog/criminal-conviction-rates-texas-2016

Deportations Under ICE’s Secure Communities Program

The top 10 offense categories where Secure Communities removals grew the fastest since President Trump assumed office were generally misdemeanors or petty offenses.

By Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC)

April 25, 2018

Immediately upon assuming office, President Trump issued an Executive Order terminating what was known as the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) and "reinstat[ing] the immigration [enforcement] program known as 'Secure Communities.'" This program is widely portrayed as the cornerstone of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts for stepped up deportations.

Recently released ICE removal-by-removal records from Secure Communities—current through October 2017—provide a portrait of deportations of immigrants from each state and county in the nation by the Trump Administration. This report examines first how the level of Secure Communities deportations has changed under the new administration, and then turns to what types of crimes are now being targeted through this program.[…]

Read the full report:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/509/

In Rural Tennessee, a Big ICE Raid Makes Some Conservative Voters Rethink Trump’s Immigration Agenda

By Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker

April 19, 2018

April 5th began in the usual way at the Southeastern Provision meat-processing plant, in Bean Station, Tennessee—some workers were breaking down carcasses on the production line, while others cleaned the floors—until, around 9 a.m., a helicopter began circling above the plant. Moments later, a fleet of cars pulled up outside. Agents from the I.R.S., Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice), and the Tennessee Highway Patrol emerged, and proceeded to arrest ninety-seven people, most of them originally from Mexico or Guatemala, for working without legal papers. It was the largest workplace roundup of immigrants in a decade.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/in-rural-tennessee-a-big-ice-raid-makes-some-conservative-voters-rethink-trumps-immigration-agenda

An ICE Raid Has Turned The Lives of Hundreds of Tennessee Kids Upside Down

By Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker

April 24, 2018

In the spring of 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested three hundred and eighty-nine workers, most of them Guatemalan, at a kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. The headines at the time focussed on the fate of those who’d been arrested, but the consequences of the raid went much further. For months afterward, parents and teachers in and around Postville reported that their children had trouble focussing at school. The kids studied less, and acted out more. Their performance in class generally declined. “Young kids are developmentally sensitive to stresses involving family separation, and large-scale raids are an extreme form of that stress,” Nicole Novak, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa, told me. Novak led a study that examined the birth certificates of children born in Iowa in the year after the raid: among the babies born to Hispanic mothers, there had been a spike in the number who were born abnormally small, a mark of maternal duress during pregnancy.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/an-icesmall-raid-has-turned-the-lives-of-hundreds-of-tennessee-kids-upside-down

Getting Real About John Kelly

General John Kelly. Photo: Susan Walsh/AP

At last mainstream reporters have started reporting about the real General John Kelly.

What finally did Trump’s chief of staff in was the revelation that he'd shielded former White House staff secretary Rob Porter despite credible allegations of domestic violence from Porter’s two ex-wives. This followed bizarre episodes like Kelly’s rewriting of U.S. history and his lies about an African-American Congress member. But his record during the half-year he headed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should have alerted observers to the man’s true character long before he moved to the White House.

Wasn’t it a problem that as DHS secretary he floated ideas for systematically separating child asylum seekers from their parents, and for deploying the National Guard in immigration raids? In March the administration suggested funding expanded immigration enforcement by gutting the Coast Guard, FEMA and the TSA, parts of the government that sometimes may actually help protect people. If Kelly objected to this bizarre plan, he didn’t say so. In April he suggested that Congress members who criticized his department’s immigration raids should change the immigration laws or else “shut up.” And why did reporters and editorial writers think the Trump team chose Kelly for the post? A general headed immigration operations in the 1950s, and the result was “Operation Wetback.” (See this, along with a correction.)

With all this information against Kelly, media like the New York Times still managed to write that the man was “sensible.” Now that we know otherwise, the Times still isn’t quite admitting to a mistake. In an article noting that “Mr. Kelly has drawn a string of unwelcome headlines,” Times reporters Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman explain that “[w]hen he took the White House job last summer, [Kelly] was seen by many as a mature figure who could impose order on a chaotic building.”

Who were the “many” who saw Kelly this way? Not the immigrants who'd been swept up in his immigration raids.

The Postville Boss Gets Out of Jail. What About His Immigrant Workers?

Didn't Postville workers' families suffer too? Photo:  Stephen Mally/NY Times

On December 20 President Trump commuted the 27-year prison sentence of former kosher meatpacking magnate Sholom Rubashkin for bank fraud. Rubashkin had headed the Agriprocessors Inc. company, whose plant in Postville, Iowa, was the scene of a massive military-style workplace raid in May 2008. Federal agents arrested 389 immigrant workers, including 18 ranging in age from 13 to 17; most of the detained workers spent five months in prison on charges related to their immigration status and were then deported. The raid took place as the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) was trying to organize the plant.

Rubashkin had a number of prominent supporters, including more than 30 current members of Congress from both mainstream parties. His backers noted that Rubashkin’s sentence was exceptionally severe, raising suspicions that it was influenced by his ethnic background—he’s a member of the Jewish Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch group. They also stressed his close relationship with an autistic son. There are certainly reasons to question the length of Rubashkin’s sentence, but we have to wonder why so little is said about his mostly Latino former employees, who were subjected to multiple labor violations at the plant and then jailed and exiled for the supposed crime of working to support themselves and their families. And what about the suffering of their children? As for Rubashkin’s sympathizers in Congress, they can take the time to write letters supporting commutation of one man’s prison sentence but apparently can’t be bothered to pass legislation for nearly 700,000 current DACA recipients, who are now losing their protection from deportation at a rate of 122 each day.—TPOI editor

President Commutes Sentence of Iowa Meatpacking Executive

By Mitch Smith, New York Times

December 20, 2017

President Trump on Wednesday commuted the prison sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, whose Iowa meatpacking plant was the target of a huge immigration raid in 2008, and whose 27-year prison sentence angered many Orthodox Jews.

Mr. Rubashkin made national headlines nine years ago after federal agents arrived by helicopter at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, and detained nearly 400 undocumented immigrants, including several children, who were working there. Mr. Rubashkin was the company’s chief executive, and the plant had been the largest kosher meatpacking operation in the country. He was later convicted of bank fraud in federal court.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/us/president-trump-iowa-commutation.html

Republicans are misleading everyone — including themselves — about how long they have to fix DACA

How the DACA deadline actually works — and why Trump and Congress can’t just punt on it.

By Dara Lind, Vox

December 20, 2017

Congress is moving to clear off most of its urgent business before leaving for the holidays, with one exception: a bill that would address the 690,000 unauthorized immigrants protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

GOP leadership has refused to concede it was a priority. And Democrats — for whom a DACA fix once seemed important enough to withhold votes on key spending bills, potentially risking a government shutdown on Friday — appear to be backing down.

So if DACA doesn’t need to be taken care of now, when does Congress need to act on it?[...]

Read the full article:

https://www.vox.com/2017/12/20/16795300/daca-deadline-extend-trump

ICE arrests hundreds of immigrants in 'sanctuary cities'

Talia Inlender, a senior staff attorney at Public Counsel, which advocates for immigrants, criticized the focus on sanctuary cities. “It’s clearly a political move that is not actually geared toward public safety,” she said.

By Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times

September 17, 2017

Immigration officials on Thursday announced hundreds of arrests in an operation targeting communities where police and elected officials have refused to fully cooperate on enforcing federal immigration laws.

ICE said it arrested 167 people in and around Los Angeles, a region in which several cities and counties have been tagged by justice officials as being so-called sanctuaries — a loosely defined term used to describe local governments that restrict police from assisting immigration authorities identify and detain people suspected of being in the country illegally.

Arrests were also made in San Francisco and San Jose. Overall, ICE said it arrested nearly 500 people across the country over the last few days.[...]

Read the full article:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ice-raids-sanctuary-20170928-story.html

Photo: popularresistance.org

ICE in NYC Courtrooms: “Secret Police” Nab Alleged Gang Members in Brooklyn

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents continue to detain immigrants in New York City courthouses. Go here for an earlier report.—TPOI editor

ICE Agents Make Arrests at Brooklyn Courthouse

Democracy Now!

September 15, 2017

In New York City, plainclothes ICE agents arrested four undocumented immigrants at a Brooklyn

Photo: Cameron Mease/Brooklyn Defender Services

criminal court building Thursday morning, in an unusual move targeting a courthouse for immigration enforcement. An ICE spokesperson later confirmed the arrests, saying the four men were suspected of gang activity. ICE policy prevents officers from making arrests at sensitive locations like schools, hospitals and places of worship, without approval from supervisors. Courthouses are not included on the list, but the practice is unusual and has been criticized by prosecutors, police and defense attorneys.

This is Katherine Poor of the Legal Aid Society: "It makes people very scared when they hear things like this happening, because they are told by the court that they have to return for their court dates. That’s something that they are ordered to do, and if they don’t do it, a warrant can be issued for their arrest. On the other hand, if people hear that there is ICE coming into the courthouse, if there’s ICE coming outside of the courthouse, and they have fear for their own immigration situation, that puts people in a very, very difficult position."

New York is a sanctuary city.

Watch the day’s headlines:

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/9/15/headlines/ice_agents_make_arrests_at_brooklyn_courthouse

Secret Police

ICE agents dressed in plainclothes staked out a courthouse in Brooklyn and refused to identify themselves.

By Leon Neyfakh, Slate

September 15, 2017

Cameron Mease, a senior staff attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services, was walking in downtown Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday morning when he saw a group of six or seven men shove someone against a fence, put him in handcuffs, and drag him into an unmarked van. The men were dressed in jeans and T-shirts. Given their behavior and attire, a passerby would’ve had good reason to think he’d just witnessed a kidnapping.

But Mease had seen such scenes unfold before, and he was pretty sure he knew what he’d just seen. He believed these were plainclothes agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and that they’d come to the Brooklyn courthouse to take someone into custody who they knew would be there for a court date.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/09/plainclothes_ice_agents_in_brooklyn_refused_to_identify_themselves.html

Federal Immigration Officials Will Continue Nabbing Suspects at New York Courthouses to Subvert Sanctuary City Status

By Linley Sanders, Newsweek

September 15, 2017

Federal immigration officers in New York doubled-down on arresting undocumented immigrants as they make appearances at courthouses this week—a decision that the local district attorney says is an "outrageous" tactic that "sends a chilling effect" and "undermines public safety."

Defying New York's status as a "sanctuary city" for undocumented immigrants, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), officers aggressively snatched four men outside a criminal court building in Brooklyn on Thursday.

“This was the most visible they’ve ever been,” Scott Hechinger, an attorney with the Brooklyn Defender Service, which provides legal representation to individuals who cannot afford a lawyer, told Newsweek. “It’s the most brazen that we’ve seen them be.”[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.newsweek.com/new-york-immigration-courthouse-arrests-continue-sanctuary-city-665797

Labor Unions Are Stepping Up to Fight Deportations

Organized labor is finding creative ways to protect immigrant members and families vulnerable in the Trump era.

By Dave Jamieson, Huffington Post

September 12, 2018

Yahaira Burgos was fearing the worst when her husband, Juan Vivares, reported to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in lower Manhattan in March. Vivares, who fled Colombia and entered the U.S. illegally in 2011, had recently been given a deportation order. Rather than hide, he showed up at the ICE office with Burgos and his lawyer to continue to press his case for asylum. 

Vivares, 29, was detained for deportation. That’s when Burgos’ union sprang into action.

Prepared for Vivares’ detention, members of the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ gathered for a rally outside the ICE office that afternoon, demanding his release. Union leadership appealed to New York’s congressional delegation, enlisting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) to reach out to ICE leadership. The union president even disseminated the name and phone number for the ICE officer handling Vivares’ deportation and urged allies to call him directly.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/organized-labor-steps-up-to-fight-deportations_us_59b6df97e4b03e6197afea7c?43t6zpqiy4oadzpvi

The national organization Mijente is offering new “defend your rights” materials:

https://mijente.net/2017/09/10/prepare-raids-new-defend-rights-materials-available/

A new "know your rights" booklet from Mijente

Why do we still have employer sanctions?

The AFL-CIO was one of the main supporters of employer sanctions back in 1986. It only took 13 years for the labor federation to learn its lesson: in February 2000 it officially called for the elimination of the policy.

By David L. Wilson, MR Online

September 13, 2017

It’s now more than three decades since Congress created employer sanctions, a feature of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act that imposes fines on employers who hire undocumented workers. The measure’s proponents said the sanctions would slow unauthorized immigration by removing the “job magnet” thought to be drawing migrants to the United States. The House Education and Labor Committee wrote at the time that by reducing the number of undocumented workers the measure would limit “the depressing effect on working conditions caused by their employment.”

If that was the goal, employer sanctions have been a spectacular failure.[…]

Read the full article:

https://mronline.org/2017/09/13/why-do-we-still-have-employer-sanctions/

ICE Plans, Then Postpones, “Largest Operation" in Its History

On September 7 NBC News reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was planning to carry out “Operation Mega,” a nationwide series of raids in the middle of the month targeting 8,400 immigrants. Soon afterwards, ICE announced it was cancelling the raids in response to major hurricanes hitting the U.S.—although some speculate that the real reason was the fact that the plan had been leaked. Was this a cancellation or a postponement? Why was ICE planning the escalation? How do mass raids fit in with Trump’s claim that DACA recipients don’t need to worry? And are we ready to resist?—TPOI editor

Milwaukee Protest, February 2017. Photo: The Progressive

Homeland Security Cancels Massive Roundups of Undocumented Immigrants

By Julia Ainsley and Andrew Blankstein, NBC News

September 7, 2017

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security had planned nationwide raids to target 8,400 undocumented immigrants later this month, according to three law enforcement officials and an internal document that described the plan as "the largest operation of its kind in the history of ICE," an acronym for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But after NBC News reported the plans late Thursday, the agency issued a statement saying it had cancelled nationwide enforcement actions due to Hurricane Irma and the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-plans-mega-largest-immigration-raid-operation-its-kind-n799691

Austin Immigrant Advocates Demand ICE Release Details on Planned 'Mega Raid'

Reports leaked earlier the immigration enforcement agency plans to root out up to 10,000 undocumented residents; advocates wants specifics.

By Tony Cantu, Downtown Austin Patch

September 8, 2017

AUSTIN, TX — Immigrant advocates in Austin are demanding that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials disclose details of the agency's planned "mega-raid" designed to ensnare members of undocumented communities nationwide for deportation.

On Thursday, details emerged about the agency's "Operation Mega" initiative targeting up to 10,000 undocumented immigrants nationwide. Sources suggested the operation would intentionally target anyone in the country currently undocumented.

Now, Austin immigrant advocates are calling on ICE to release documents revealing the scope of the operation.[…]

Read the full article:

https://patch.com/texas/downtownaustin/austin-immigrant-advocates-demand-ice-release-details-planned-mega-raid

Trump Plans Massive Raids on Immigrant Communities Starting Mid-September

Horrific Plan to Target 6,000 - 10,000 for Mass Deportation is Part of Escalating Attacks on Immigrants

By Detention Watch Network

September 7, 2017

Washington, DC — Detention Watch Network (DWN), the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), National Immigration Law Center, United We Dream (UWD) and the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) condemn Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) plan to conduct a nationwide immigration enforcement operation from mid- to late-September. Multiple sources within and close to ICE have shared information with advocates about the operation, which ICE is calling “Operation Mega.”   In addition to apprehending targeted individuals prioritized in the president’s January 25 Executive Order, ICE agents will apprehend undocumented or otherwise removable individuals encountered during the operation, per ICE policy under the Trump administration. These raids are intended to be historic in size, targeting between 6,000 and 10,000 immigrants.

Operation Mega is part of a wholesale and escalating attack on all immigrants. In the wake of the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program on Tuesday, it is clear that this administration will not exercise restraint in enacting an anti-immigrant and white supremacist agenda. In fact, earlier this year, Trump’s top immigration agent declared that “no population is off the table.”[…]

Read the full statement:

http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/pressroom/releases/2017/trump-plans-massive-raids-immigrant-communities-starting-mid-september

L.A. Father Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez Released On Bond After Six Months In ICE Custody

By Julia Wick, LAist

August 30, 2017

Update [5:50 p.m.]: According to a family spokesperson, Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez was released from Adelanto Detention Center at approximately 5:20 p.m. and has been reunited with his family.

ICE arrested Avelica-Gonzales in February as his family watched.

After six months in the custody of federal immigration authorities, Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez was granted bond during a hearing on Wednesday morning and is expected to be released tonight. Avelica-Gonzalez, who is originally from Mexico, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while dropping his daughters off at school in February. A video of the arrest filmed by his sobbing, then-13-year-old daughter went viral, bringing widespread attention to his case.[…]

Read the full article:

http://laist.com/2017/08/30/romulo_avelica_gonzalez_bond.php

A Federal Judge Put Hundreds of Immigrants Behind Bars While Her Husband Invested in Private Prisons

Judge Linda Reade’s husband bought more prison stock five days before one of the nation’s biggest immigration raids.

By Samantha Michaels, Mother Jones

August 24, 2017

It was almost lunchtime inside the country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, on May 12, 2008. The meatpackers, mostly migrants from Guatemala and Mexico, wore earplugs to block out the noise of the machinery and couldn’t hear the two black helicopters hovering overhead or the hundreds of armed federal immigration agents closing in around them until the production line stopped. One worker tried to flee with his knives, stabbing himself in the leg when he was pushed to the ground. “They rounded us up toward the middle like a bunch of chickens,” a 42-year-old Guatemalan worker later recalled. “Those who were hiding were beaten and shackled.” 

Postville after the 2008 workplace raid. Photo:  Stephen Mally/NY Times

Nearly 400 workers were arrested in the bust, which cost $5 million and was then the biggest workplace immigration raid in US history. They were driven to the National Cattle Congress, a fairground in Waterloo, where several federal judges would handle their cases over nine business days. Hearings were held in trailers and a dance hall. Cots were set up for the defendants in a nearby gymnasium. At the time, undocumented immigrants caught in raids like this were usually charged with civil violations and then deported. But most of these defendants, shackled and dragging chains behind them, were charged with criminal fraud for using falsified work documents or Social Security numbers. About 270 people were sentenced to five months in federal prison, in a process that one witness described as a “judicial assembly line.”]…]

Read the full article:
http://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2017/08/a-federal-judge-put-hundreds-of-immigrants-behind-bars-while-her-husband-invested-in-private-prisons/

ICE Carries Out Second-Largest Deportation Sweep of the Year

In four days at the end of July, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained 650 immigrants in the agency’s  largest series of raids since it made 680 arrests in February. Focused on the bizarre reality show in the White House, US media generally gave the latest sweep little coverage.

The ostensible purpose of the raids was bad enough: it was a continuation of the Obama administration’s sweeps last year targeting asylum seekers who had fled violence in Central America as minors or in family groups. But the great majority of the people actually detained weren’t in the targeted group; it appears that some 70 percent may just have been immigrants ICE agents encountered during the sweep. As usual, the government tried to bill the raids as an effort to rid the country of “criminal aliens,” but most of the people detained didn’t have criminal records. In typically misleading language, ICE justified its arrest of 38 minors by claiming that they “were at least 16 and had criminal histories and/or suspected gang ties” (emphasis added). (An ICE memo indicates that tattoos and hanging out in areas with gangs were enough to make a teen a suspected gang member.)

As Vox’s Dara Lind points out, this was the last major ICE operation before Gen. John Kelly left Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to become President Trump’s chief of staff. Commentators have been describing Kelly as a reasonable man who might bring the White House under control. Actually, what he did at DHS was the opposite of bringing people under control. He “unshackled” ICE agents who during the Obama administration had been pressured to limit detentions to groups like immigrants with criminal records. Now ICE agents seem to be free to pad out their arrest records by detaining any undocumented immigrants they happen to run into. It makes their jobs a lot easier.—TPOI editor

ICE announces results of Operation Border Guardian/Border Resolve

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Press Release

August 1, 2017

WASHINGTON – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) deportation officers apprehended 650 individuals during a four-day operation last week, Operation Border Guardian/Border Resolve, which targeted individuals who entered the country as unaccompanied alien children (UACs) and family units.

This operation was the second iteration of Operation Border Guardian/Border Resolve which first took place in January and February 2016 in response to the significant spike in families and UACs from Central America attempting to illegally cross the southern border.[...]

Read the full press release:

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-announces-results-operation-border-guardianborder-resolve

US deportation raids under Trump lead to huge rise in arrests of immigrants without criminal records

The rise comes even though immigration agencies in the US have a stated priority to target 'criminal aliens'

By Clark Mindock, The Independent

August 2, 2017

US immigration officers have arrested 650 people in communities across the US in the latest deportation sweep, but the vast majority of those picked up by law enforcement don’t have a criminal record — an apparent break from the organization’s stated priority to focus on “criminal aliens”.

In a crackdown that came close in size to a large-scale sweep earlier this year, Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 650 people over a four-day span last month, including 38 minors. Of that group, though, 520 had no criminal record, compared to just 170 people who had no criminal records and were arrested in the earlier crackdowns.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/us-deportation-raids-donald-trump-latest-huge-rise-arrests-undocumented-illegal-immigrants-a7874116.html

What John Kelly's final ICE raid tells us about Trump's new chief of staff

Seventy percent of immigrants ICE arrested weren’t the people ICE was supposedly targeting.

By Dara Lind, Vox

August 2, 2017

Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched a nationwide sweep — ostensibly designed to catch Central Americans who’d come to the US as family units — in late July. But according to the press release they sent out Tuesday, 70 percent of the immigrants they captured were merely collateral damage.

The statement said that of the 650 immigrants nationwide, fewer than 200 of those people were actually targeted in the operation: 73 members of family units, and 120 (former) unaccompanied children. The other 457 people — nearly three-quarters of those caught up in the sweeps — were simply “also apprehended” and arrested.

This is a stunning admission from the Trump administration. Even in the most generous accounting, that means more than half of the immigrants picked up in last week’s ICE raids hadn’t been targeted and didn’t have criminal records.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.vox.com/2017/8/2/16076742/ice-raid-immigration

Gutiérrez Warns Those With DACA or TPS to Prepare for the Worst

“This was a wake-up call that Trump, Sessions and Kelly are serious about mass deportation and are anxious to get started.  It is a call to action for people who oppose mass deportation and turning the documented into undocumented so that they can be deported.”

Press Release, Office of Rep. Luis Gutiérrez

July 12, 2017

Washington, DC – On Wednesday, Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL) was among the Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) to meet with Secretary John Kelly of the Department of Homeland Security.  In the closed door meeting that lasted more than an hour, Sec. Kelly was questioned about the continuation of the DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals); ICE arrests targeting the parents and family of children seeking refuge; detention and deportation of those with no criminal record and/or stays of deportation; the renewal of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for numerous countries; and the deportation of U.S. veterans.

The following is a statement from Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez, a Member of the Judiciary Committee and Chair of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

I think we have to prepare for the worst and get ready to fight mass deportation.  We showed up at airports to fight the Muslim and Refugee Ban and now DREAMers and people who have lived here legally for decades with TPS are in imminent danger.

Secretary Kelly determines the future of TPS and basically told us he is not sure if he will extend it for hundreds of thousands of people. He also said that the future of DACA is up to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, America’s leading advocate against immigration, so Kelly was basically telling us DACA is facing a death sentence.  They actually want to take millions of people who are documented – with our own government – make them undocumented, and then go after them and their families.

So, I fear for anybody currently with DACA or TPS.[...]

Read the full press release:

https://gutierrez.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/guti-rrez-warns-those-daca-or-tps-prepare-worst

ICE in NYC Courtrooms: Agents Target Queens Human Trafficking Court

ICE continues its practice in New York of detaining immigrants when they make scheduled court appearances. In the latest case, ICE agents were spotted waiting near a  special court intended to help human trafficking victims; the agents were planning to detain a young Chinese woman charged with working without authorization as a masseuse. ICE claims the agents are just trying to help protect the public. “Tell me,” Lauren Evans writes at Jezebel, “which strikes you as a greater threat to public safety? A young woman potentially working as a masseuse, or ICE agents so drunk on power they arrested a 19-year-old on the day of his high school prom?”—TPOI editor.

Outcry After Immigration Agents Seen at Queens Human Trafficking Court

By Beth Fertig, WNYC News

June 16, 2017

Public defenders and the state's top judge were rattled Friday after federal immigration agents were present in a Queens criminal courtroom for human trafficking victims.

A WNYC reporter was in the building when Legal Aid lawyers huddled frantically in the hallway: Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had been spotted in the building. The lawyers approached one of the agents, and he acknowledged there were warrants for several people in the building.

The lawyers said they learned from the judge that ICE wanted a young Chinese woman in the Human Trafficking Intervention Courtroom. They said she'd been charged with working illegally as a masseuse, and was about to receive an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal after completing a program with a community group — a goal of human trafficking court.[...]

Read the full article:

http://www.wnyc.org/story/outcry-after-immigration-agents-come-trafficking-victim-queens-courthouse/

The Immigrant Defense Project has provided the following summary of ICE courtroom practices in New York as of June 2017:

• ICE is targeting multiple people in court in multiple court parts. When they face delays, or are unable to apprehend a person in one part, they are going to other court parts to pursue people.
• ICE is targeting visa overstays with no prior criminal history who are facing a wide range of charges including misdemeanors.
• The physical arrests seem to be occurring farther from the courtroom; some have been in the hallways, by the elevators, and just outside of the courthouse. ICE may be sitting in court parts and identifying people when they're called and then following them out of the courtroom.
• Court officers continue to play a role in assisting in some cases. We have reports of court officers blocking doors, delaying the calling of cases, and communicating with ICE agents.

It’s Official: ICE Head Says “Bad Hombres” Aren’t the Only Target

Acting ICE director Thomas Homan has now admitted that the government’s goal is to make all undocumented immigrants “uncomfortable.” The reality behind Homan’s statement is that even the Trump regime knows it can’t deport all 11 million of the unauthorized; the goal is to keep the 8 million with jobs terrorized so that they can be even more easily exploited. This in turn drives down wages for the immigrants’ citizen fellow workers—what employers mean when they talk about “making American great again.”—TPOI Editor

ICE Chief Says Undocumented Immigrants "Should Be Worried" and Looking Over Their Shoulder

Homan's response came after questions from New York Rep. Nita Lowey, who questioned the ICE director about the detention of 19-year-old Diego Ismael Puma Macancela who was detained hours before his senior prom and days before his high school graduation.

By Salvador Hernandez, BuzzFeed

June 13, 2017

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan told a congressional committee Tuesday all undocumented immigrants in the US "should be uncomfortable" and "looking over (their) shoulder" when it comes to who could be deported by the federal agency.

"In the country I grew up in, if you're violating the law you should be uncomfortable," Homan testified Tuesday before the Homeland Security subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. "He should be looking over his shoulder if he's in this country in violation of the law and ordered removed. He should be worried that he's going to be arrested."[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/salvadorhernandez/ice-chief-says-undocumented-immigrants-should-be-worried?utm_term=.qs6RWor7R#.rswynwaoy

ICE Director To All Undocumented Immigrants: ‘You Need To Be Worried’

Non-criminals won’t be spared from deportation, Thomas Homan said.

By Elise Foley, Huffington Post

June 13, 2017

WASHINGTON ― The Trump administration will continue arresting undocumented immigrants who haven’t been convicted of crimes and won’t apologize for it, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday.

“If you’re in this country illegally and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should be uncomfortable,” Acting Director Thomas Homan told the House Appropriations Committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee. “You should look over your shoulder, and you need to be worried.”

Following up on Trump’s campaign promise to drive out more undocumented immigrants, ICE arrests rose significantly during the president’s first 100 days in office, compared with the same period the year before. About one-quarter of those arrested ― more than 10,800 people ― were non-criminals, meaning they did not have authorization to be in the U.S., but had not been convicted of a crime. (Being in the U.S. without legal status is a civil offense, although it is a crime to cross the border illegally.)[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ice-arrests-undocumented_us_594027c0e4b0e84514eebfbe

AFL-CIO Issues Toolkit on Workplace Raids

The AFL-CIO has produced a useful toolkit to help workers and union officials prepare for immigration raids at the workplace and for I-9 “silent raids.” As the authors point out, the two types of raid have a way of happening when a company’s workers are organizing; technically the government is committed to holding back in these cases, but the reality is often different. Note: the toolkit describes conventional, strictly legal approaches to resisting the raids, not more the militant responses we see with groups like the Tom Cat Bakery workers.--TPOI editor.

We Will Defend and Resist

AFL-CIO, May 9, 2017

 

Too often, workplace raids and audits are used as cover to suppress the rights of working people who speak up for safe, just and dignified working conditions. Below are many of the materials and tools we developed to prepare for, and resist, the unjust workplace raids and audits that undermine the rights of all workers.

CONTENTS

I. Introduction

II. Frequently Asked Questions About I-9 Audits

III. What Are the Steps in an I-9 Audit?

IV. What Happens if an I-9 Audit Occurs While Workers Are Exercising Their Rights?

V. Guidance on the I-9 Process for Organizers and Advocates

VI. Frequently Asked Questions About Workplace Raids

VII. Preparing for a Possible Workplace Raid

VIII. Guidance on Social Security Administration "No-Match" Letters

IX. Sample Union Contract Language on Immigration Protections

X. Appendices

XI. Special Thanks

Read selections from the toolkit online:

https://aflcio.org/reports/we-will-defend-and-resist

Order the full toolkit:

https://actionnetwork.org/forms/defend-and-resist-workplace-raid-and-action-toolkit

Fire and ICE: The Return of Workplace Immigration Raids

Undocumented workers face a new level of insecurity under the Trump administration.

By David Bacon, The American Prospect

April 27, 2017

Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. The American Prospect is co-publishing this piece.

At the end of February immigration agents descended on a handful of Japanese and Chinese restaurants in the suburbs of Jackson, Mississippi, and in nearby Meridian. Fifty-five immigrant cooks, dishwashers, servers and bussers were loaded into vans and taken to a detention center about 160 miles away in Jena, Louisiana.

Their arrests and subsequent treatment did more than provoke outrage among Jackson's immigrant rights activists. Labor advocates in California also took note of the incident, fearing that it marked the beginning of a new wave of immigrant raids and enforcement actions in workplaces. In response, California legislators have written a bill providing legal protections for workers, to keep the Mississippi experience from being duplicated in the Golden State.

Once the Mississippi restaurant workers had been arrested, they essentially fell off the radar screen for several days.[...]

Read the full article:

http://prospect.org/article/fire-and-ice-return-workplace-immigration-raids

Tom Cat Bakery workers. Photo: Erik McGregor/Sipa via AP Images

The Trump Era Tests the True Power of Sanctuary Cities

By Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker  

April 18, 2017
Ever since Donald Trump became President, mayors and city council members in “sanctuary cities”—places where local law-enforcement officials limit their coöperation with immigration agents—have promised to resist the federal government’s crackdown on immigrants. The new Administration has responded with threats (to cut sanctuary cities’ funding), reprisals (like launching more raids in specific jurisdictions), and accusations (that these cities are making the country less safe). City leaders have, in turn, criticized immigration raids, and raised money to pay for the legal bills of residents who’ve been arrested. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) answers to the federal government, not to local officeholders, and as it continues to expand the scope and reach of its activity, the limits of city power are becoming increasingly clear.

Consider New York City, whose leaders, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, are vocally pro-immigrant and anti-Trump. Lately, ice agents have been showing up at locations where the city is powerless to stop them: the courts. Since January, there have been seventeen reports of ice agents making arrests at courthouses in the city, compared to nineteen such reports made in the previous two years combined, according to the Immigrant Defense Project, a nonprofit legal-advocacy organization. In March, ice agents made an arrest at Kings County Family Court, something that advocates say had never happened before.[...]

Read the full article:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-trump-era-tests-the-true-power-of-sanctuary-cities