No Place of Grace

Maywood’s Mayor faces a death threat, allegations of corruption and, now, a recall

By Matthew Fleischer

“You have to know the city of Maywood. It’s a little bit different from other cities.”
–Felipe Aguirre speaking to Tucker Carlson March 27, 2006

Felipe Aguirre made national headlines in 2006 when, as a city councilmember, he proclaimed Maywood a sanctuary city for the undocumented. Then came an attempt on his life, his election to the mayor’s office, allegations of corruption and, next Tuesday, a recall vote.

Welcome to Maywood.

The drama began in the winter of 2006, when Aguirre helped pass legislation that prevented police from conducting random DUI checkpoints within the city limits. Aguirre argued that the real purpose of the checkpoints had nothing to do with drunk drivers, and everything to do with rounding up undocumented immigrants, who make up almost a third of the town’s population. Removing the checkpoints made Maywood a defacto sanctuary city for the undocumented, who, provided they followed traffic regulations, were free to drive unlicensed without fear of police.

The move made Aguirre an overnight media sensation—a hero to the immigrant rights community and a galvanizing figure for Minuteman-types across America. Maywood found itself headline fodder for the nation’s major dailies, and Aguirre appeared on Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC show, CBS News and NPR.

The heat generated by Aguirre’s performance boosted him into the mayor’s office. Now, with Aguirre up for recall, Maywood’s sanctuary status may be in jeopardy.

Back in 2006, the debate surrounding Maywood was couched in the language of immigrant rights. But the national media missed the real story, which is this: Maywood may be among the most crooked towns in the country, a working-class city where state and federal authorities seem to have reached full employment, constantly investigating payoffs and systemic police corruption.

At the center of the controversy was Maywood Club Towing, a major campaign donor to Maywood city council races, as well as to the campaigns of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Maywood Towing had an exclusive towing contract with the city, and was the primary beneficiary of the city’s intensive checkpoint policy. Many in town felt those checkpoints were nothing more than a shady revenue-generating measure.

“The police were running DUI checkpoints during the daytime,” says longtime Maywood resident Gustavo Villa. “We were being taken advantage of.”

Last year, City Beat’s Jeffrey Anderson reported that Maywood police manning the DUI checkpoints were impounding cars for infractions as minor as driving with an out-of-state license. Those caught up in the checkpoint web sometimes had their cars impounded for up to 30 days, and were often forced to pay hundreds, even thousands, of dollars in fees to Maywood Club Towing. If they didn’t pay—and many couldn’t—their vehicle would be repossessed.

Anderson reported that the FBI was investigating Maywood Towing for offering kickbacks to both the Maywood City Council and to the Maywood Police Department. A subsequent investigation of the Maywood Police Department by California Attorney General Jerry Brown’s office is still in the works.

Last year, the Los Angeles Times found that nearly a third of the Maywood’s 37 police officers either had ethical violations on their records when they were hired, or had run into legal trouble since joining the force. In May, Maywood officer Ryan Allen West was arrested and charged with 12 felony counts of rape, burglary and sexual assault—all which allegedly occurred while he was in uniform. Another high-ranking officer allegedly sexually assaulted a transsexual man repeatedly over a period of seven years.

Aguirre’s push to end the checkpoints and his subsequent elimination of the Maywood P.D.’s crooked traffic division helped propel him to the mayor’s office.

It also earned him enemies.

Shortly after Aguirre led the council to bring down the checkpoints, Maywood’s deputy city clerk, Hector Duarte, launched a plot to have Aguirre assassinated. Duarte was arrested in early July 2006, on the day Aguirre was supposed to be executed. He eventually pleaded guilty on the death threat charges.

Despite the threats, and the opposition of the powerful Maywood Club Towing, Aguirre’s handpicked allies Ana Rizo and Veronica Guardado won city council seats in 2007, giving Aguirre a 3-2 majority in city government.

“I had a lot of hope that things would change when Aguirre came in,” says Gustavo Villa, who supports the recall effort. “But he abused his powers.”

Documents obtained by City Beat show that Aguirre’s immigration advocacy group Comite Pro Uno last year received upwards of $95,000 in city funds through Maywood’s Commercial Façade Program, a city beautification effort. But both Aguirre and his business partner Hector Alvarado live on the grounds of Comite Pro Uno. The Commercial Façade Program isn’t intended for residential use.

Then there’s this: The three city checks used to finance the refurbishing of the mayor’s business and residence were made out directly to Aguirre’s business partner Alvarado—not, as is usual in Maywood, to the contractor who πperformed the work.

Mayor Aguirre says City Beat’s documents are genuine, and that, indeed, nearly $95,000 in city funds went to refurbishing the exterior of Comite Pro Uno.

“I can understand how that could be viewed as a conflict of interest,” he says. “But it was all done above the board. I have nothing to hide.”

Aguirre says that before applying for the funds he consulted David Mango, Maywood director of building and planning, and then-City Attorney Francisco Leal. He says they told him that, as a business owner, Aguirre was entitled to participate in the program—provided he didn’t use his political influence to skew the application process in his favor.

But the city attorney whose advice Aguirre sought has problems of his own. Back in 1999, the Los Angeles Times reported that Leal, working as a private attorney, threatened to launch a recall campaign against city council members in Lynnwood, Commerce and Bell Gardens if those cities didn’t retain his legal services. Last year Jesse Jauregui, Leal’s former law partner, told Jeffrey Anderson that Leal’s style was straight out of Tammany Hall, the infamously corrupt Democratic club that ran New York City politics from the birth of the nation through the 1950s.

Aguirre says he had to fire Leal a few months ago for allegedly demanding kickbacks from a local developer, Gabriel Guerrero, who was negotiating with Maywood’s Community Redevelopment Agency for several fat city redevelopment contracts. According to Aguirre, Leal is now among those leading the recall effort.

Neither Leal, nor Maywood Club Towing owner Tooradj Khosroabadi, also known as “Tony Bravo,” responded to calls for comment.

Aguirre admits that city checks should not have gone directly to his business partner Alvarado, but instead to either Comite Pro Uno or to V & M Iron Works, the Maywood contractor that refurbished the building.

“If I had it to do over again,” Aguirre says, “I wouldn’t have taken any of the money because I realize that this is fuel for my opponents.”

Aguirre says the recall effort stinks of Maywood Club Towing and that voting him out would be “turning back the clock to the days of the checkpoints.”

He may be right. But as is usually the case in Maywood, that’s only half the story.

Illegal immigrants get one-way trip home on ICE Air

Illegal immigrants get one-way trip home on ICE Air


By ERIC PALMER
The Kansas City Star


The MD-80 that took off Friday from Kansas City International Airport carried about 120 passengers. Some were headed for Mexico, others to Central and South America.

Once off the ground, food and beverages would be served.

The flight was one of up to 180 flights flown each month by Kansas City’s only locally based airline. While most are to Central and South America, others are to such exotic locales as Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Palestine.

Yet most Kansas Citians will never get a seat on one of the flights — nor would want to.

The little-known Flight Operations Unit was established by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2006 to handle the repatriation of the surging number of illegal immigrants caught up in tougher enforcement.

In fiscal 2008, which ended Sept. 30, the airline delivered more than 76,000 OTMs (other than Mexicans) back to their homes, a 51 percent jump from two years before. It also delivered abo ut 134,000 Mexicans, mostly to places like San Antonio or San Diego, before they were bused to20the border.

This year’s budget for all transportation and removal efforts is $281.4 million.

It is not unlike running Delta Air Lines, said Craig Charles, a 22-year veteran of the immigration service and a Shawnee Mission South High School graduate, who is now acting director of flight operations for what is known as ICE Air. It works to fill every seat on each plane to keep costs low, keep flights on time and treat its passengers well.

“We are all about cost-effectiveness and safety and getting these people back to their homeland as fast as we can,” Charles said in an interview Friday at the flight operations offices in the Briarcliff West development.

Most illegal immigrants have come in by land but all of them cannot be removed that way, said Pat Reilly, public affairs officer for ICE Air.

“Mexico is a sovereign nation and it doesn’t take people who are not entitled to be there either, so if they are other than Mexican, they have to be flown over Mexico,” Reilly said.

Speed means savings

ICE Air is an outgrowth of the Justice Prisoner and A lien Transportation System (JPATS), which moves federal prisoners as well as illegal immigrants. T hat system is headquartered in Kansas City, and Charles became the liaison from the immigration agency in 1996.

Initially, illegal aliens from countries other than Mexico were mostly moved on commercial aircraft.

With the formation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, ICE kept officers with JPATS to monitor movements of illegal immigrants. But by 2006, ICE was growing so fast that the JPATS system couldn’t keep up.

So ICE Air was formed.

ICE contracts with JPATS, which has four MD-80s, to handle domestic flights. It leases four 737s from private contractors to handle flights to Central and South America and the Caribbean. It also leases larger aircraft for less- frequent transcontinental flights to Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

All told, ICE Air flies to more than 190 countries.

Charles said his “customers” were the 24 ICE field offices that take custody of illegal immigrants and are responsible for their welfare until they are removed. That means housing, feeding and health care. Some are kept in ICE facilities, others in county jails through contract arrangements. So the faster ICE can fly them out, the less the cost is to taxpayers.

Rei lly said growth has been fed by beefed-up enforcement, particularly two programs:

One tries to identify every illegal immigrant booked into a county, state or federal jail. ICE arranges for their deportations while they serve jail time, and is waiting for them when they get out. They once were usually released when their time was served.

About a third of the “removals” last year came from this program.

The other enforcement effort involves 100 teams looking for the half-million illegal immigrants who have ignored legal orders to leave the country. The 38,000 arrests in fiscal 2008 that resulted from this initiative was twice the fiscal 2006 arrests.

Such efforts have forced the system to become more efficient. It has reduced the length of stay that illegal immigrants are in ICE custody from about 90 days to 30 days.

‘I wish to stay here’

It was a cloudless but cold and windy day Friday when a large tour bus, three vans and a Ford F-150 pulled into the driveway of Executive Beechcraft at KCI.

Of the 60 passengers, including one woman, only Horacio Hermoncillo, 22, agreed to discuss his journey. He sat in a van, handcuffed and shackled like the other deportees .

Hermoncillo came to the U.S. on a visa four yea rs ago for the money, then never went home. He knew a bit about fixing cars and landed as a mechanic in Chicago for a “great” man who he said taught him a lot. It allowed him to send money to his family.

But on a recent vacation to St. Louis, he was stopped by police and his illegal status was revealed.

He said he hoped to open a mechanic’s shop when he returned home. But he had mixed feelings about his return to Mexico.

“I wish to stay here. The money is better, but I’m going to my country,” Hermoncillo said. “My mom and brothers will make a big party with a lot of beer.”

Once the MD-80 landed, the buses and vans pulled into a semicircle next to the plane, creating a staging area.

Canvas, plastic and paper bags containing underwear and belts, cell phones and other belongings were laid on the tarmac as a phalanx of men in blue U.S. marshal uniforms and sunglasses disembarked. They were unarmed. Weapons are not allowed on the tarmac, or in the cabin of the plane.

Then in twos and threes, the illegal immigrants were taken off the bus and out of the vans. Some were dressed warmly, but others had only shorts and T-shirts. Each was patted down, and cuffs and shackles were checked to make sure they were not biting=2 0into skin before boarding.

The domestic flights, manned by the U.S. Marshals Service, require that the passengers be handcuffed and shackled onboard.

With the illegal immigrants already on the plane, the flight would have more than 120 passengers. Like any airline, ICE Air tries to fill every available seat to tamp down costs.

“It costs the American taxpayer around $700 a seat,” Charles said. “If we sent everybody on commercial airlines, we just couldn’t afford it.”

To use its planes to best advantage, ICE Air employs a system of spokes and hubs, like most airlines. It flies people in from nearly 20 cities, including a weekly flight to Kansas City to pick up the illegal immigrants rounded up from Kansas and Missouri.

Flights end up in hubs such as Mesa, Ariz., and San Antonio. From those hubs, Mexican nationals are bused to the Mexican border and released. Those other than Mexicans are combined and flown to other cities from which regularly scheduled international ICE Air flights take them to their home countries.

On the international flights, which are handled by ICE employees, all nonviolent, noncriminal passengers have the chains removed.

Reill y noted that when most illegal immigrants get into the ICE system, they have served t heir time.

“They have paid their debt to society and now they are being removed on immigration issues,” she said.

Onboard meals might be a sandwich, a bottle of water and an apple. No oranges because they are sticky and messy. No milk because it can cause upset stomachs. After all, this is the first time that many of these passengers have ever been on a plane. There is a nurse on every flight.

Treating well those being removed pays dividends in getting cooperation from other countries in managing immigration issues. But Charles said there was no reason not to.

“We really want to make a good impression on these people,” he said. “Those of us who have been around this for 20 years, we have seen the plight of these people. We can’t get personal with this but again, there is no reason whatsoever that we can’t treat them with as much respect as is possible. No one holds a grudge against these people.”

Change Immigrants and Labor Can Believe In

Change Immigrants and Labor Can Believe In
By David Bacon
The Nation, web edition, November 26, 2008
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/bacon?rel=hp_picks

Since 2001 the Bush administration has deported more than a million people--including 349,041 individuals in the fiscal year ending just prior to the election. It has resurrected the discredited community sweeps and factory raids of earlier eras, and started sending waves of migrants to privately run jails for crimes like inventing a Social Security number to get a job. Every day in Tucson 70 young people, including many teenagers, are brought before a federal judge in heavy chains and sentenced to prison because they walked across the border.

It's no wonder that Latinos, Asians and other communities with large immigrant populations voted for Barack Obama by huge margins. People want and expect a change. Ending the administration's failed program of raids, jail time and deportations is at the top of the list. National demonstrations have called for a moratorium on raids since the summer, and one big reason why Los Angeles turned out so heavily for Obama was the anti-raid encampment and hunger strike in the Placita Olvera, which electrified the city.

But the raids program has been rejected by more than immigrants alone. The election took place as millions of people were losing their jobs and homes. Yet while Lou Dobbs and the talk show hysteria-mongers tried to scapegoat immigrants for this crisis ("What about illegal don't you understand?"), most voters did not drink the Kool-Aid. In fact, every poll shows that a big majority reject raids and want basic rights and fair treatment for everyone, immigrants included. The political coalition that put Obama into office--African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, women and union families, expects change.

The country needs not just an end to raids but a move away from the policies they've been intended to promote. From the beginning, the administration's enforcement program has been cynically designed to pressure Congress into re-establishing discredited guest worker schemes called "close to slavery" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, being reminiscent of the old bracero program. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called these raids "closing the back door and opening the front door."

At least Chertoff was honest about his intentions. His underlings at Homeland Security, like Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), tried to pretend that the imprisonment and deportation of abused workers was a form of labor standards enforcement. Meanwhile, actual protection for US wages, working conditions and union rights has been in free fall for eight years. Other Homeland Security officials mendaciously claimed immigrants were a threat to national security, as though imprisoning hungry teenagers or terrorized workers would help a fearful public to sleep at night.

No one whose eyes are open to the terrible human suffering caused by these draconian policies will be very sorry to see Chertoff go. But what policies will take their place, and who will enforce them? So far, the choice of Janet Napolitano is not encouraging. The Tucson "Operation Streamline" court convenes in her home state every day, and the situation of immigrants in Arizona is worse than almost anywhere else. Napolitano herself has publicly supported most of the worst ideas of the Bush administration, including guest worker programs with no amnesty for the currently undocumented, and brutal enforcement schemes like E-Verify and workplace raids.

But Obama does not have to be imprisoned by the failure of Napolitano to imagine a more progressive alternative. In fact, his new administration's need to respond to the economic crisis, and to strengthen the political coalition that won the election, can open new possibilities for a just and fair immigration policy.

Economic crisis does not have to pit working people against each other, or lead to the further demonization of immigrants. In fact, there is common ground between immigrants, communities of color, unions, churches, civil rights organizations, and working families. Legalization and immigrant rights can be tied to guaranteeing jobs for anyone who wants to work, and unions to raise wages and win better conditions for everyone in the workplace.

These are not revolutionary demands. In fact, they're what the Democratic Party used to stand for. Nor is the idea of combining them into a common program just pie-in-the-sky. For two sessions of Congress, the Black Caucus and leaders like Sheila Jackson Lee and Barbara Lee have proposed legislation to create jobs, at the same time offering rights and legal status to immigrants without papers. The AFL-CIO's campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act supports the surest means of ending the low-wage, second-class status of immigrant workers-- organizing unions. And repealing unfair trade agreements and ending structural adjustment policies would raise the standard of living and reduce the pressure for migration in Oaxaca or El Salvador, while making jobs more secure in working-class communities in the US.

Justice for immigrants does not have to be the third rail of US politics, as Rahm Emmanuel has called it. Instead, immigrant rights is the demand of one part of a broad coalition that seeks fundamental social change. Immigrants can't achieve justice on their own, but then no element of this coalition can win its demands in isolation. Only a common-ground strategy can actually achieve the changes people hoped for when they went to the polls. Stopping the raids is the first step in a process that will help to end the nightmare of the past few years, and at the same time can help the administration begin to address the larger issues of immigration reform, jobs and workplace rights.

Something is clearly wrong with immigration enforcement. Desperate workers get fired and deported, families get terrorized and divided, while the government protects employers and seeks to turn a family-based immigration system into a managed labor supply for business. Even before presenting a reform plan to Congress, the Obama administration has the power to change some of the worst elements of the Bush program by administrative and executive action. What Bush put in place by fiat can be changed by the same process. In its first 100 days, a new administration could take simple steps to protect human and workplace rights, instead of allowing the abuse to continue:

* Stop ICE from seeking serious federal criminal charges, with incarceration in privately run prisons, when a worker lacks papers or has a bad Social Security numbers.

* Stop raiding workplaces, especially where workers are trying to organize unions or enforce wage and hour laws. This would help all workers, not just immigrants.

* Halt community sweeps, checkpoints and roadblocks, where agents use warrants for one or two people to detain and deport dozens of others. End the government's campaign to repeal local sanctuary ordinances and drag local law enforcement into immigration raids.

* Double the paltry 742 federal inspectors responsible for all US wage and hour violations and focus on industries where immigrants are concentrated. The National Labor Relations Board could target employers who use immigration threats to violate union rights.

* Allow all workers to apply for a Social Security number and pay legally into a system that benefits everyone. Social Security numbers should be used for their true purpose--paying retirement and disability benefits--not to fire immigrants from their jobs and send them to prison.

* Re-establish worker protections, ended under Bush, connected with existing guest worker programs; force employers to hire domestically first and decertify any contractor guilty of labor violations.

* Restore human rights in border communities, stop construction of the border wall between the US and Mexico, and disband the Operation Streamline federal court, where scores of young border crossers are sent to prison in chains every day.

Democrats still have to decide what reforms to bring before Congress, and when. Some would delay action for a year or more. But the US Chamber of Commerce and dozens of trade groups have been pushing for years for big guestworker programs. They are more than willing to accept raids and enforcement as a price, and are already working to bring back the "comprehensive" bills that would give them what they want. Instead of arguing over "what's politically possible" in Congress, immigrant and labor rights activists need a movement for a progressive alternative.

That alternative has to strengthen human rights on both sides of the global divide. In countries like Mexico and the Philippines, the families of migrants are fighting for real development instead of poverty, forced migration and a remittance-based economy. Here in the US movements in immigrant communities have brought millions of people into the streets on May Day, and continue to fight the raids and deportations. We need proposals that address both the situation of immigrants here and the conditions in their countries that force them to migrate.

To move towards equality and rights in the US:

* A law to give permanent residence (green-card) visas to the undocumented, and clear up the backlog of people already waiting for them abroad. If visas were more easily available, people wouldn't have to cross the border without them. Employer sanctions that make it a crime for immigrants to hold a job should be repealed. Guestworker programs with a record of abuse should be ended, as they were in 1964.

To end the displacement at the root of most forced migration:

* A new approach to trade policy, including renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and rejection of potential new trade agreements with countries like Colombia. Protecting corporate access to markets and low wages leads to rising poverty and the displacement of communities. We need to concentrate on the welfare of people at the bottom rather than the top, help grassroots communities of farmers stay on their land, and boost wages and employment for urban workers. Instead of subsidizing war and displacement, US tax dollars could expand rural credit, education and health care abroad, easing the pressure behind migration.

A new administration that has raised such high expectations should look for new ideas in the areas of immigration reform and trade policy, not recycle the bad ones of the last few years. The constituency that won the election will support a change in direction, and in fact is demanding it. The Obama administration owes its victory to that constituency, and its promises of change that brought it to the polls. Now it needs to deliver.

-- __________________________________

David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org

ICE raids take 16 Flagstaff residents

ICE raids take 16 Flagstaff residents

November 26th, 2008 by Sarah Pickering


Protesters gather Thursday evening at the corner of E Butler and E Sawmill rd to protest the deportation of illegal immigrants and to support immigration rights. The protesters held signs and chanted in front of a news camera to show their support. - Jim Truncali/ The Lumberjack

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrived in Flagstaff on Wednesday, Nov. 19 to arrest undocumented citizens with criminal records, sparking an impromptu protest by various immigrant rights and activist groups.

On Nov. 20, the Repeal Coalition, a group dedicated to the repeal of all anti-immigration legislation in Arizona, organized various efforts to warn the community that members of ICE would be conducting raids in target neighborhoods. ICE is a governmental agency responsible for identifying and investigating illegal activity with regards to the United States border.

The Repeal Coalition gathered a group of approxminately two dozen people at Killip Elementary School in Sunnyside to escort children to their homes
. In the evening, the group, including members from CopWatch, ASWI, NAU Peace and Justice, MEChA and Save the Peaks protested numbers of arrests already made by ICE.

Approximately 70 people stood near the county jail on Butler Avenue chanting, “ICE is on thin ice” and “No more body snatching.”

Joel Olson, a member of the Repeal Coalition and assistant professor
in the NAU Department of Political Science, said ICE’s raids are a violation of civil rights.

“They’ve raided homes, they’ve arrested six people and they’ve got warrants for 40 people total,” Olson said. “We’re opposed to body snatching and all the laws that are preventing citizens and non-citizens alike from being able to live and love and work wherever they please.”



George Villas leads a group of Anti Immigration protesters in a chant Thursday Evening on the corner of E Butler and E Sawmill rd. Protesters were calling for an end to deportation and Immigration rights. - Jim Truncali/ The Lumberjack

Maren Lester, a freshman undeclared major, disagreed with alleged tactics to raid elementary schools, but agreed with neighborhood raids.

“If (undocumented citizens) haven’t pursued legal ways to get into the country, then they have no right to be here,” Lester said.

According to ICE’s Web site, the agency pr
otects the nation’s homeland security.

“(ICE) upholds public safety by targeting criminal networks and terrorist organizations that seek to


exploit vulnerabilities in our immigration system, in our financial networks, along20our border, at federal facilities and elsewhere in order to do harm to the United States,” the mission statement reads.

When contacted for a comment, ICE did not respond.

Olson said he felt the most important part of the protest was getting the word out about the problems with ICE and other anti-immigration legislation.

“Our overall goal is the repeal of all anti-immigration laws in the state of Arizona,” Olson said, referring to the Repeal Coalition’s mission. “Arizona is ground zero for immigration reform. If we change the laws in Arizona, we change them nationwide.”

“All day we’ve been doing patrols around the neighborhood, making sure ICE is informing the undocumented citizens of their rights,” said George Villas, a protester.

Erin Entringer, a freshman choral education major, said she agreed with ICE’s practices from an economic standpoint.

“I understand that people are coming here to make a better life for themselves,” Entringer said. “I think those people should go through the legal process to become citizens, rather than free-loading off of =0
D
our tax money.”

ICE obtained 40 warrants for undocumented citizens, arresting 16 who were previously ordered to leave the country.

“ICE is taking people that they don’t have=2 0warrants for,” said Eva Amaral, a member of the Repeal Coalition. “That’s what’s happening in Maricopa County and we don’t want it here.”

Amaral said she wants the city of Flagstaff to join in the resistance against ICE, and said a community effort is crucial to maintaining civil rights.

“Lives are being destroyed,” Amaral said. “We’re not going to let a government agency tell us that we aren’t people.”

Tactics questioned in immigrant raids

Tactics questioned in immigrant raids

Doors were kicked in, guns brandished

By ELISABETH HULETTE, Staff Writer

Published July 09, 2008

A week ago, David Espana walked out of the shower and found his living room full of police officers.

They broke a bathroom mirror - shards are still caught in the rug - and took him to Baltimore in handcuffs.

He was scared. He wasn't alone.

Doors were smashed in, glass was shattered and guns were thrust in the faces of whole families last Monday when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents backed by county police officers raided at least 15 Annapolis-area homes, arresting 46 undocumented immigrants. The homes belonged to employees of Annapolis Painting Services, which has been under investigation for 18 months for hiring illegal immigrants.

A week later, many of the homes remain as broken as the families.

ICE, which sent 75 agents on the raids, justifies the tactics used in the raids. Breaking down doors, carrying guns and using handcuffs is necessary to protect police and the community, said Scot R. Rittenberg, an assistant special agent for ICE.

"We never know what's behind that door," he said. "Often (in immigrant raids) we've opened the door and found guns pointed at us. We never know if it's MS-13 gang members or just illegal immigrants."

County police, who sent 50 officers to the raids, wouldn't comment on the tactics used. "We were just the support role," said Lt. Thomas Kohlmann.

County Executive John R. Leopold said cracking down on undocumented immigrants is necessary to keep the employers who hire them - like Annapolis Painting Services - from un-dercutting legitimate businesses. He would not comment on the methods used in the raids.

Audra Harrison, a spokesman for his office, said: "The county executive is not an expert on these sorts of investigations, and therefore he leaves it to the experts to determine the tactics."

But the people whose doors were forced open - and their families - think differently. Their only crime is working without papers, yet they were served with violence, they say.

Take Eduardo Delgado. His front door was smashed down by police before he was taken into custody.

"They are no criminals," said Nico Ramos, Mr. Delgado's cousin. "They are hard-working people."

Eric Daniels watched one raid on his way into work.

Across the street from his family's business, The Palate Pleasers catering company, police climbed out of at least three marked and unmarked police cars and suited up in bulletproof vests.

"They're not dangerous," he said. "They're the opposite of dangerous. They're not intending to be sneaky, they just want to work."

Marlin Velasquez, a legal immigrant who works in the kitchen at The Palate Pleasers, said she's been hearing about the raids from friends. In one house, she said, police slashed mattresses looking for documents; in another they cuffed a man's hands and feet.

Ingrid Munoz, an American citizen married to a legal resident who worked for Annapolis Painting Services, said she woke up when agents pounded on her door. They wouldn't let her or her husband get dressed, so she answered their questions wearing a tank top, her underwear and a towel.

ICE didn't even have a warrant to search her home.

Mr. Rittenberg said ICE did a "knock-and-talk search" on two or three houses. That's when agents approach a house they believe, based on investigation, is hiding immigrants, and ask for permission to search.

"You feel safe in your home, you never think that's going to happen to you," Ms. Munoz said. "I've never been in trouble."

The white wooden door frame on Jaclyn Munoz's house off Forest Drive was splintered when agents broke into her home. She's not even an illegal immigrant, she said.

Shannon Brown, an American citizen, said when her boyfriend opened their door, the house was surrounded by at least 20 agents. One pointed a gun at him, yelling in Spanish.

"He doesn't even speak Spanish," she said.

They searched the apartment while she got her two daughters, ages 4 and 7, out. She didn't want them to see the raid.

"They had one man handcuffed to a chair. He was shaking like a leaf," she said of one man who worked with her boyfriend at Annapolis Painting Services.

Ms. Brown spent the day after the raids fixing one family's house, where the doors all had been beaten down. That family's in a quandary, she said. The father was taken in the raids, but the mother is a citizen. The mother went to Mexico so she can meet up with him after he's deported.

"I can't imagine trying to raise a family there," Ms. Brown said. "They don't speak Spanish. They're Americans."

One woman, an immigrant who declined to give her name, said police broke through a glass door and hit her boyfriend in the chest with the handle of a gun. She doesn't know where he was taken.

Mr. Rittenburg said no one was hit like that.

Mario Quiroz-Servellon, a spokesman for CASA de Maryland, an immigrant advocacy organization, said treating undocumented immigrants like criminals, particularly in front of their children, will hurt police and the community in the long run.

"Immigration is a civil offense, not a criminal offense," he said. "So when they act like this, what they're doing is scaring people and breaking the trust that people have in law enforcement."

For the families of people taken in raids, it always happens the same way, said David Perechocky of the Capital Area Immigrants' Rights Coalition. A child doesn't get picked up from school, someone disappears, and no one knows why. Family members begin to panic. They get very little information, and what they do hear is in English, so they don't understand.

"It's a lot of confusion, and it's a scary situation," Mr. Perechocky said.

Liz Alex of CASA de Maryland, has been helping the families. At first, calls came from people trying to find the immigrants who were taken, she said.

"Now we're getting the second wave, of families who are homeless or have lost their breadwinner," she said.

Rev. John Lavin of St. Mary's Parish in Annapolis has seen firsthand the poverty that immigrants from El Salvador faced before they came to America. Seventeen people lived in one house he visited; one woman earned just $6 a day.

"The reason they come here and do these kinds of jobs is that they come from poverty," he said. "They're here trying to help their families. They are family people."

Jonathan Greene, an attorney and a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says the nation's immigration system is broken. America needs immigrant workers just as much as they need to work here. But not nearly enough visas are available - just 5,000 permanent visas are given out each year for low-skilled "essential" workers when there's enough demand for a million.

Congress could change the laws and issue more visas, creating an easier path to legal immigration and taking pressure off the border with Mexico, but hasn't yet, he said.

"If you do that, then the people who are protecting the border can focus on real threats to America - drugs, gangs and real terrorists - instead of chasing people who risk dying across the desert to simply work," he said.

'There's something bad in this town'

By JON TEVLIN, Star Tribune

June 28, 2008

POSTVILLE, IOWA

There is a small-town stillness here, neat houses and kids riding bicycles down quiet, leafy streets. But in the Guatemalan bakery, in church pews, at the meatpacking plant and the kosher deli, the strained voices almost always dwell on the raid that changed everything.

The stillness is not serenity. It's shock.

Scores of heavily armed federal agents last month stormed into Agriprocessors, which produces up to 70 percent of all kosher meat in America. The feds seized almost 400 of the plant's 900 workers in the largest single roundup of illegal immigrants to date, charging about 300 of them with identity theft and using stolen Social Security cards.

Some of those workers have since sued the company, alleging abuse, fraud and sexual coercion. Postville, which once sold T-shirts boasting of the peaceful coexistence of its many cultures, has been left "absolutely shattered," said the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk of the town's St. Bridget's Catholic Church.

The impact of the raid is spreading from northern Iowa to the Twin Cities, New York and beyond, provoking debate among American Jews about whether it's time to reassess how kosher food is produced.

"Our reputation is at stake," said Rabbi Morris Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights. "It was embarrassing for us to hear what was being done in order to process kosher food."

To grasp the wide impact of the raids, consider these snapshots:

• Mexican and Guatemalan women whose husbands are scattered in jails across the country, lined up for hymns and hot dish at St. Bridget's, the hems of their frilly native dresses sometimes swaying to reveal the ankle bracelets they must wear to monitor their movements.

• A group of Jewish leaders meeting recently in St. Louis Park to raise money for the Agriprocessors' workers, and vowing to change the way the people who produce kosher foods are treated.

• Rabbi Shalom Gurkov, a Hasidic Jew like the owners of Agriprocessors, standing on the main street in Postville in his long beard and solemn dress, vigorously disputing the accusations of crimes, inhumane treatment and sexual harassment that have been made by former workers.

• New replacement worker Josephina Ortiz, near tears, telling strangers that she came from California based on promises by Agriprocessors of free rent, food and a good job. Instead, she claims, she found a filthy, expensive apartment and mandatory 14-hour days.

"Please God, somebody help us," said Ortiz, who is in the United States legally. "There's something bad in this town. I don't know how this can happen in the United States of America."

A foundering town

When Aaron Rubashkin opened Agriprocessors in 1987, Postville was foundering.

The Rubashkin family, widely credited with inventing the modern kosher processing plant, decided to cut costs by "bringing the butcher to the livestock," and moved from New York to Iowa. Agriprocessors became one of northern Iowa's largest employers.

Abe Bistritzky, a friend of the Rubashkin family, agreed to talk to the Star Tribune on behalf of the company, which has declined to comment since the raids. He said the illegal workers used fake documents and the company followed the law in verifying paperwork. Most of the workers were happy to have the jobs and were paid and treated fairly, he added.

The Rubashkins "took a town that had balls of hay rolling in it and they built up a community of approximately 120 Jewish families," Bistritzky said. "They built a yeshiva, a Jewish school for kids," gave money to the city, to charity and recently sent food to flood victims.

"The Rubashkin family is charitable. They're not prejudiced; they'll hire any kind of person, anyone who will walk through the door," Bistritzky said. "What happened was when [Jews] came to town, they looked at us like we're Martians. ... They didn't understand the black coats, the white shirts, the beards, the black hats, and they needed to learn about us."

The sight of Hasidic Jews wandering the streets of a small town Iowa initially seemed quaint. But the insular nature of their Lubavitch sect created distrust in the community, exacerbated when the Rubashkins started importing workers of many nationalities, especially Hispanics, as their plant expanded.

In 2000, Stephen Bloom wrote a book, "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America," detailing the community's conflicts and compromises since the arrival of Agriprocessors. He clearly indicated many of its workers were illegal. Ouderkirk now calls the book "prophetic."

In recent years, there were problems with Agriprocessors in Iowa and elsewhere: pollution violations, fights with labor unions trying to organize, OSHA violations and charges of animal abuse by PETA. This year, the Iowa Division of Labor Services fined the company $182,000 for 39 health violations.

The federal raid this spring came about based on information from an informant inside the plant who reported witnessing plant managers hire and help workers with fake identity papers. Up to 76 percent of workers did not have correct Social Security numbers, according to the search warrant. The informant also reported seeing managers abuse workers, including hitting one with a meat hook. One manager also ran a scam in which illegal workers were coerced into buying cars from him, the warrant said.

Some female employees also have alleged they were sexually coerced by managers, according to St. Bridget's Sister Mary McCauley.

Federal officials have declined to comment on the case beyond the details disclosed in their warrant.

Empty-handed and exasperated

St. Bridget's is command central for the battle with Agriprocessors. Guatemalan children scramble on the porch as their mothers line up to get advice, or money, from Ouderkirk and McCauley.

One recent morning, Ouderkirk slipped on his St. Paul medal "for protection" and drove to the plant to get money he said is still owed to arrested workers. He waited for 40 minutes, then left, empty-handed and exasperated.

"Workers openly say they were advised by the plant on how to get false documents," he said. "Now if the government does not take action on that and charge the owners, then this was strictly a raid to threaten and terrorize people."

The situation at Agriprocessors reveals "a lack of respect of human dignity of people other than you," Ouderkirk said. "Politicians who should have been leading the way did nothing."

Bistritzky dismisses most of the worst accusations as fabrications.

"I can't vouch for what happened over 18 years," Bistritzky said. "But maybe [the Rubashkins] should have put a little bit more emphasis to reacting maybe to the town. Maybe they had a lack of communication with people."

A delegation of rabbis

Rabbi Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation knew about Agriprocessors' problems a long time before the raid. He knew the most recent CEO, Sholom Rubashkin, who for a time lived in St. Paul's Highland Park before moving to Postville. After reading an article critical of the company, Allen led a delegation of Twin Cities rabbis to Postville in 2006.

Workers told story after story of long hours, unsafe conditions and wages as low as $5 an hour. They told him many of the same things now in court documents.

"They appeared to me to do everything possible to maximize the bottom line at the expense of human dignity," Allen said of the plant owners.

The Minnesota rabbis tried to work with the Rubashkins. "I think if they had followed our advice, this may never have happened," he said.

Allen is now leading a national movement to create a certification program called Hekhsher Tzedek, much like fair trade agreements, which would ensure not only that kosher meat is prepared properly, but also that workers are treated fairly.

Some Jewish groups have called for a boycott on Agriprocessors, and many more nationally are debating it. While the raid has caused shortages of kosher meat in some places, the Twin Cities have not yet been affected.

Meanwhile, members of the Twin Cities Jewish community, through synagogues and Jewish Community Action, have raised money for families in Postville affected by the raid, and some families have gone to Iowa to offer their direct help. Many plan to attend a march in Iowa in late July.

"We want the people there to know we care, and that we as Jews have not left them," Allen said.

Empty playgrounds

Postville's playgrounds and parks are empty since the raid, and there are fears that as many as 18 teachers may be dismissed because so many of the students have gone back to Mexico or Guatemala.

Sabor Latina, once the town's most popular restaurant, is only open part-time. The busiest address in town is often the food shelf, where demand has tripled in the past month. Those lined up for beans and bread include Hispanic mothers, many awaiting deportation, and their children, most of whom are American citizens.

Four of them, Guatemalan women, live in one house with their nine children. A 16-year-old named William, who said he worked 10-hour overnight shifts at the plant, is the only one left in a house a few blocks away. He shrugged when asked what he would do next.

Then there are Agriprocessors' new hires, whites and African-Americans, who arrived on the bus. They said they'd been promised a $100 advance, but few of them got it. So their first stop was the food shelf.

Diane Morris, who was living in a Texas homeless shelter, said the company promised a free furnished apartment for a month. Instead, she was put in a four-bedroom house with 10 men, she said. "Everywhere I've been I've been sexually approached," she said.

She claims she was fired after two days when she went to the company clinic for medications for a mental illness.

Bistritzky said it's possible recruiters in Texas made false promises, but that has stopped.

Some new hires have already caused enough trouble at bars that city officials and police have met with the company to demand better screening.

Bistritzky said the company also has hired an employment agency to do background checks on prospective employees, hired a former U.S. Attorney as compliance officer, and is searching for a new leadership team.

What would he tell Minnesota Jews concerned about the plant?

"I would say to them it's all totally unfounded, for me as an outsider talking on my own behalf,'' Bistritzky said. "I've been here for a month; I haven't seen any abuse, or any of the accusations that have been made."

Company officials held a phone conference last week to give their side of the story to an invited group in New York.

Meanwhile, rabbis in the Twin Cities are soliciting donations to help the Rubashkins' employees.

"We're really trying to form a grassroots effort to cause change," said Vic Rosenthal, executive director of JCA. "There is a huge need in Postville."

Jeff Abbas, who runs the local radio station, says he has seen some positive changes since the raids.

"I'd say the relationship between Hispanics and people who grew up around here has gotten stronger because of this," he said. "The people who have grown up around here suddenly realized [the workers] were real people, too."

The town even put up red ribbons on lampposts in support of plant workers.

While he abhors the tactics of immigration officials, Ouderkirk says some good may come of their raid.

"They brought out the cracks in the dam and the folly of our immigration policy," he said.

Jon Tevlin • 612-673-1702

© 2008 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

ICE raids net 44 immigration violators in Central Nebraska

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By Robert Pore

The Grand Island Independent

Posted Jun 25, 2008 @ 10:40 PM

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GRAND ISLAND —

Grand Island was one of eight Central Nebraska communities where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Fugitive Operations Team agents arrested 44 fugitive immigrants and immigration violators during a five-day initiative that ended Tuesday night.

According to ICE officials, during the five-day operation, which ended June 24, ICE Fugitive Operations Team members arrested immigration violators in Lexington (25 arrests), Grand Island (12 arrests) and Broken Bow (2 arrests). There also was one arrest in each of the following cities: Cozad, Gibbon, Hastings, Kearney and North Platte.

Twenty-eight of those arrested were fugitives, meaning they had defied an immigration judge's final order to leave the country and were targets of the operation.

The remaining 16 were immigration violators encountered by ICE officers during their targeted arrests.

Of the 44 apprehended, 10 have previous criminal convictions in addition to their administrative immigration violations.

Officials said arrests were made at homes and businesses in the days leading up to Tuesday.

Those arrested are from Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador.

"It's important for us to send a strong message to anyone who ignores deportation orders handed down by federal immigration judges," said Scott Baniecke, field office director of the ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations in Bloomington, Minn.

According to ICE officials, through May 31 of fiscal year 2008, which began Oct. 1, 2007, 542 illegal immigrants were arrested by Fugitive Teams in the five-state area covered by the Bloomington ICE office, including Nebraska.

Of the total, 452 were fugitive aliens; 90 were immigration violators encountered by the ICE Fugitive Operations Teams during their targeted arrests. Of the 542 apprehended, 103 had criminal convictions in addition to their administrative immigration violations.

In all of fiscal year 2007, Fugitive Operations Teams in the six-state area arrested 914 immigrants.

Last year, ICE officials said the fugitive operations teams nearly doubled the number of 2006 arrests, increasing from 15,000 to more than 30,000. Additionally, in 2007, the nation's fugitive immigrant population declined for the first time in history.

Estimates now place the number of immigration fugitives in the United States at about 572,000, a decrease of nearly 23,000 since October 2007.

Following are some of the criminal immigrants arrested by ICE's Chicago Fugitive Operations Teams during its Central Nebraska operation:

-- Alberto De Jesus Arias-Lopez, 28, a citizen of Guatemala, was arrested June 20 in Cozad. He was ordered deported by a federal immigration judge July 26, 2007, but failed to surrender. Arias-Lopez has convictions in Dawson County for assault and carrying a concealed weapon.

-- Juan Mejia-Perez, 33, a citizen of Guatemala, was arrested June 21 in Lexington. He was ordered deported by a federal immigration judge Jan. 10, 2006, but failed to surrender. Mejia-Perez has a prior conviction in Dawson County for assault.

-- Diego Avellan-Castro, 50, a citizen of Nicaragua, was arrested June 22 in Lexington. He was ordered deported by a federal immigration judge Aug. 8, 1990, but failed to surrender. Avellan-Castro has a felony conviction in Dawson County for cruelty toward a child.

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