Gov’t arrests thousands of immigrants

After rising up strong in defense of its rights last spring, the immigrant section of the working class is now under strong government attack.

The Department of Homeland Secu rity’s Immigration and Customs Enforce ment (ICE) agency says it is picking up 1,000 immigrants per week for deportation. Across the U.S., immigrants are living in fear that a knock at the door can mean imminent arrest and deportation.

Those who return to the U.S. after having been deported face a felony conviction punishable by up to 20 years in prison. ICE calls them “absconders.” Some 40 ICE teams across the country are focusing on what one official estimated are 600,000 “absconders” presently in the United States. (Vail Daily News, Sept. 14)

Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff has ended the policy that released detained undocumented immigrants after setting a court date. The insulting name given that policy—“catch and release”—likened the arrests of these workers to sport fishing. But now the policy is even worse. Chertoff has ordered that anyone caught crossing the border be immediately arrested and deported.

Over the Labor Day weekend, agents converged on immigrant workers’ homes in Stillmore, Ga., with guns and bulletproof vests. Since Sept. 1, ICE has arrested 120 Mexican immigrants in Stillmore. During one of the raids, Rosa Lopez, the mother of a two-year-old, left her son with neighbor and friend Julie Rodas. With tears running down her cheeks, she asked Rodas to “please take care of my son because I have no money, no way of paying rent.” (“Immigration raid makes a ghost town,” Associated Press, Sept. 16)

Reaction to the raids in Stillmore has been angry. David Robinson, the owner of a trailer park where the Mexican immigrants lived, said, “These people might not have American rights, but they’ve damn sure got human rights. There ain’t no reason to treat them like animals.” He hung a U.S. flag upside down in protest.

“This reminds me of what I read about Nazi Germany, the Gestapo coming in and yanking people up,” said Stillmore mayor Marilyn Slater.

At a construction company in Alpha retta, Ga., 30 immigrants were arrested right at their workplace. (Gainesville Times, Sept. 15) ICE officials brag that Atlanta-based field agents incarcerated or deported 4,216 immigrants in 2005.

But Georgia is not the only place where ICE raids have meant to terrorize the local population. In Bradenton, Fla., during a raid on a nightclub, ICE agents arrested 27 immigrants. (Bradenton Herald, Sept. 16).

In Tallahassee, ICE arrested 55 workers at General Building Maintenance, Inc., a janitorial services company contracted by the state of Florida. It deported 21 of them. (Tallahassee Democrat, Sept. 16) Six others were arrested at another work site.

In Miami-Dade County, ICE officials arrested 15 Mexican and Guatemalan men working in construction. (Miami Herald, Sept. 17)

In West Michigan, 55 undocumented immigrants were deported as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s racist “Return to Sender” operation, which has arres ted 2,179 people in Ohio and Michi gan since June. (Grand Rapids Press, Sept. 16)

In the Western Slope region of the Colorado Rockies, ICE reported it had arrested 34 immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras. “Taking fugitive aliens off our streets is a top ICE priority,” said Douglas Maurer, head of ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations in Denver. (Rocky Mountain News, Sept. 13)

In California, ICE arrested 107 undocumented people in Santa Cruz, Watson ville and Hollister. But some 50 community members then participated in a public denunciation of the sweeps at Resur rection Catholic Community in Aptos, and the community scheduled a meeting to denounce the crackdown. (Santa Cruz Sentinel, Sept. 17)

In August, in the five-state area that includes Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee, ICE deported 875 undocumented immigrants. (Louisi ana Weekly, Sept. 18)

These Gestapo-type raids undermine the rights of all workers. In some communities, resistance has already started.

On Long Island , N.Y., for example, ICE targeted the villages of Brentwood, Hempstead and Freeport, picking up 35 workers, most of whom were merely passing by during ICE raids. The newly formed Long Island Coalition for Immigrant Rights is organizing a rally and protest in Freeport for Sept. 25, urging the Village Board to make Freeport a sanctuary for immigrants.

Immigrant Solidarity Network activist Ceci Wheeler in Pittsburgh organized mass actions against the anti-immigrant mayor of Hazelton, Pa. Urging nation-wide vigils and rallies against the ICE raids, she said, “The bad news is the detentions [and] deportations. The good news is that our movement is large and we can communicate faster than a decade ago.”