ICE raids warehouses in LA area

Submitted by WW4 Report on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 22:58.

On April 1, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 44 workers at the warehouses of three distribution companies—Samsung, Frontier and Imperial CSS—in an industrial park in Torrance, Calif., just south of Los Angeles. ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice said all but two of the 44 people arrested are Mexican. Kice said 17 of those arrested were released for humanitarian reasons. (Diario Hoy, LA/Chicago, April 2, 3; La Opinión, Los Angeles, April 3; Free Speech Radio News, April 2) The Mexican consulate in Los Angeles reported that its personnel were able to speak with 34 of the arrested Mexicans and offer them orientation about their legal situation. (El Financiero, Mexico, April 3) William Jarquin, the consul of El Salvador in Los Angeles, said he was informed that two of those arrested were Salvadoran, and that one of the two had been released. (Diario Hoy, April 2)

At least 11 of the Mexican workers who were arrested on April 1 were deported that same night, said Angélica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA). She added that it "seemed strange" that they were "deported so quickly, because that doesn't happen unless they have final orders of deportation, and none of these people even had the chance to talk to a lawyer."

Salvadoran immigrant Nemesio Hernández said he was arrested on April 1 despite having valid Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Hernández explained his situation to the ICE agents but they threw him violently to the floor, handcuffed him and jailed him for seven hours, said his sister, Isabel Hernández. He was then released without so much as an apology. (La Opinión, April 3)

Miguel Angel Reyes, a Mexican immigrant who had worked for four years at Imperial CFS, described how managers there collaborated with ICE to carry out the April 1 raid: "The managers said we were going to have a meeting. They had us sit down in the lunchroom and then Immigration began to ask for California identification. They put us on the floor one by one. After about two hours they started to take everyone in the van." Reyes said many of the workers did not try to escape because "the managers said everything was fine, that it was a routine check, that nothing was going to happen. When I turned around, all the immigration agents were right there in front of me." (Diario Hoy, April 3)

Salas said that according to workers at the raided companies, ICE agents only checked the documents of the workers who appeared to be of Latin American origin. (La Opinión, April 3) CHIRLA organized a press conference and demonstration on the afternoon of April 1 outside the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles where some of the arrested workers were apparently taken. The protest was attended by dozens of people, including family members of the workers arrested that morning and workers who had been arrested in a Feb. 7 raid at Micro Solutions Enterprises in Van Nuys. (CHIRLA e-mail alert, April 2; Diario Hoy, April 2; Free Speech Radio News, April 2) One woman who attended the protest, María Cruz, said her husband had been arrested on April 1 at the Amay's Bakery and Noodle Co. factory in central Los Angeles. He had been a legal resident in the US for 25 years, but in 2001 authorities dug up a 20-year old felony case they said made him deportable. Cruz said her husband suffers from epilepsy; the family is worried that his condition will be exacerbated by the stress of detention. (Diario Hoy, April 2; Free Speech Radio News, April 2)

ICE spokesperson Lori Haley claimed the operation in Torrance was simply a routine inspection of customs bonded warehouses. "We do this type of routine audit to make sure everything is safe and sound," said Haley. "In the course of the inspection, we found people who were in the country illegally and we arrested them." (Diario Hoy, April 2)

The raids in the area south of Los Angeles continued on April 2 with operations at the warehouses of Nippon Express Inc. on Francisco Street in Torrance and The Trading Center in Long Beach, and at a factory in Wilmington where some 25 ICE agents detained at least 10 workers, most of them women. (Diario Hoy, April 3; La Opinión, April 3; El
Financiero, April 3; TelemundoLA.com, April 3)

Kice confirmed that the warehouse "inspections" would continue. "ICE and CBP [Customs and Border Protection] are carrying out routine inspections at import-export companies in various communities of Los Angeles... to identify any security vulnerability," said Kice. (Diario Hoy, April 3) By April 3, as word spread about the raids, many Los Angeles-area immigrants reportedly stayed home from work. (El Financiero, April 3)

Following the February raid at Micro Solutions, groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California, the National Lawyers Guild and the National Immigration Law Center sought a restraining order in federal court against federal immigration officials who they said repeatedly blocked attorneys from accompanying workers during meetings and interrogations. On March 12, the two sides finalized a settlement guaranteeing that the workers arrested at Micro Solutions can be accompanied by an attorney to all meetings and interrogations. ACLU staff attorney Ahilan Arulanantham said the groups hoped that the case would set a legal precedent. "The government would have a hard time explaining why the rights of these people are different from those of others" detained in similar raids, he said. (Los Angeles Times, March 14)

Day laborers arrested in Northern California
On March 28, local police officers in Fremont, Calif., (in the Bay Area, southeast of San Francisco) carried out a sting operation against day laborers who were waiting for jobs outside a local Home Depot outlet. The Fremont Police Department cited about 15 workers for trespassing and took 13 of them who had no ID to the Santa Rita Jail to be identified, according to Detective Bill Veteran. There, the laborers were apparently handed over to ICE.

The raid was carried out in response to complaints from Home Depot, Veteran said, because some of the laborers allegedly harass customers and drink in public. "As a matter of courtesy, we alert ICE when we conduct" these kinds of operations, said Veteran. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco said it will look into whether the operation violated the Constitution and will consider legal options. (NBC11.com, April 3)

According to information received by Larisa Casillas, director of the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition (BAIRC), the workers were told at the time of their arrest that they would be placed in deportation proceedings. Casillas said her organization has received other reports indicating that people detained for traffic violations in Fremont are also being placed in deportation. Bay Area advocates are seeking to meet with Fremont police to discuss the issue. (E-mail message from Casillas received April 2)

From Immigration News Briefs, April 6

See our last post on the politics of immigration.

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April 4, 2008

Lawsuit Challenges Immigration Raids in New Jersey

By JULIA PRESTON

Immigration agents systematically entered homes and made arrests without proper warrants during raids to round up immigration fugitives in New Jersey, according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday.

The lawsuit, brought by lawyers at the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall Law School in Newark, will provide a constitutional test of law enforcement methods often used by immigration agents since May 2006 when they began operations across the country to track down and deport immigrants who had been ordered to leave by the courts.

The suit, against officials of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, on behalf of 10 plaintiffs, including two United States citizens, contends that teams of ICE agents used “deceit or, in some cases, raw force” to gain “unlawful entry.”

The lawsuit claims that agents, sometimes misrepresenting themselves as local police officers hunting for criminals, entered homes where no fugitives being sought were present and detained residents without showing any legal cause. Immigration agents have broad authority to question foreigners about their immigration status, but they may not enter a home without either a warrant or consent.

A spokesman for the immigration agency, Michael Gilhooly, said he could not comment on pending litigation. The suit was filed in Federal District Court in New Jersey.

Speaking generally, Mr. Gilhooly said all fugitives who were targets of ICE searches had been ordered deported by immigration judges.

“They became fugitives when they chose to ignore the judge’s order,” Mr. Gilhooly said, adding that operations to arrest fugitives “are planned after meticulous investigation and surveillance.”

In the last two years, immigration authorities have faced intense political pressure to track down fugitive illegal immigrants. In most cases, the immigrants overstayed visas or were caught when they tried to sneak into the country over a land border, then failed to appear at hearings, leading judges to order them to be deported.

Last year, ICE agents arrested 30,408 immigration fugitives, according to official figures, about double the number for 2006.

One plaintiff in the lawsuit, Maria Argueta, has been a legal immigrant since 2001. During a predawn operation in January at her home in North Bergen, N.J., the lawsuit claims, ICE agents persuaded Ms. Argueta to open her door by telling her they were police officers searching for a wanted criminal. Ms. Argueta was detained and held for 36 hours.

Another plaintiff, Arturo Flores, a United States citizen, said ICE agents showed no warrant when they forced their way into his house in Clifton, N.J., in November 2006 and conducted a search. A third plaintiff, Veronica Covias, a legal immigrant in Paterson, N.J., said agents pushed open her door in March 2007 even though she demanded that they show her a warrant.

Department of Homeland Security, Immigration Officers Sued for Constitutional Violations in Pre-Dawn Home Raids Practice

Posted on Thu, Apr. 03, 2008 Department of Homeland Security, Immigration Officers Sued for Constitutional Violations in Pre-Dawn Home Raids Practice Lowenstein Sandler PC NEWARK, N.J., April 3, 2008 -- Seton Hall Law School's Center for Social Justice and Lowenstein Sandler PC, filed suit today in federal court, alleging that federal law enforcement officials violated the ten victims' constitutional privacy and due process rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments by entering their homes without consent or a judicial warrant during pre-dawn "raids." The plaintiffs include two U.S. citizens, a permanent resident, and a lawful protection-status grantee. The complaint is based on eight home raids across the state of New Jersey between August 2006 and January 2008. The raids all follow a similar pattern, in which immigration agents forced their way into each plaintiff's home in the early hours of the morning without a judicial warrant or the occupants' consent. Most of the plaintiffs were awakened by loud pounding on their doors and answered the door, fearing an emergency. ICE agents subsequently either lied about their identity or purpose to gain entry, or simply shoved their way into the home. During each raid the agents swept through the house and, displaying guns, rounded up all the residents for questioning. In some cases they ordered children out of their beds, shouted obscenities, shoved guns into residents' chests, and forbade detained individuals from calling their lawyers. In at least half the raids, the officers purported to be searching for a person who did not even live at the address raided. The complaint asserts that these practices are not isolated violations, but are examples of a clear modus operandi typical of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") program called "Operation Return to Sender." Under this program, the complaint alleges, ICE agents have been ordered to meet dramatically increased immigrant arrest quotas using grossly outdated address information and without having been trained on lawful procedures. "This is the first lawsuit in the country to focus on the consistency of these abusive home raid practices across an entire state, and over a significant period of time," said Bassina Farbenblum, an attorney at the Seton Hall Center for Social Justice. "Our complaint shows that what happened to our plaintiffs in the middle of the night was not exceptional. It was part of a routine, widespread practice, condoned at the highest levels of government, that tramples the rights of citizens and non-citizens alike." ICE claims that Operation Return to Sender was designed to arrest criminals and individuals with old deportation orders, people whom ICE calls "fugitives." But the statistics belie this explanation. Of the 2,079 people arrested in New Jersey last year under this program, 87% had no criminal record, and as few as 1 in 3 were "fugitives" with outstanding deportation orders. These statistics demonstrate that the program has been used as a pretext for dragnet searches in which ICE makes thousands of what it euphemistically calls "collateral arrests" of people like the plaintiffs in today's suit. The complaint alleges that responsibility for the pre-dawn raids and the associated constitutional violations reaches senior federal officials, including the head of ICE, Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security Julie Myers, who knew about the practice and allowed it to continue. The complaint also seeks to hold responsible local police officers who participated in one of the raids alongside ICE agents. "None of the home raids in today's case involved valid warrants allowing the agents to enter, and none of the residents gave consent," noted plaintiffs' attorney Scott Thompson, of Lowenstein Sandler. "The Constitution is very clear about the circumstances under which law enforcement may enter a private home, and the entries in this case did not even come close." According to the complaint, the constitutional violations did not cease once agents had entered the homes. For example, plaintiff Maria Argueta, a legal resident, was arrested in her home at 4:30 in the morning and detained for 24 hours without food or water; the agents lied to get into her home then refused to even to look at her immigration papers proving her status. Agents shoved a gun into the chest of another plaintiff and screamed obscenities at her. Numerous ICE agents and local Penns Grove police officers stormed yet another plaintiff's house at three in the morning with guns drawn, without a search warrant, claiming they were looking for her brother, whom the government had actually deported at least two years earlier. "Repeatedly in this country's history, and especially during our most challenging times, immigrant populations have been the targets of suspicion, hostility and overly aggressive law enforcement tactics," said plaintiff's lawyer and Seton Hall Law Professor Baher Azmy. "If we don't want to regret this moment, as we've come to regret previous ones, we should stop to consider the costs of these lawless and abusive practices -- to our commitment to fair and humane procedures and to the human beings in our midst who suffer real harm." Previously, the Center for Social Justice and the newspaper Brazilian Voice filed a Freedom of Information Act suit in federal court, challenging the government's withholding of documents about the raids. That lawsuit, filed January 28, 2008, can be found at http://law.shu.edu/csj/iceraids.html. A copy of the complaint and fact summaries can be found at http://law.shu.edu/csj/iceraids.html . Seton Hall University School of Law, New Jersey's only private law school and a leading law school in the New York metropolitan area, is dedicated to preparing students for the practice of law through excellence in scholarship and teaching with a strong focus on clinical education. The Center for Social Justice, a core of Seton Hall Law School's Catholic mission, provides clinical education and volunteer opportunities to students and engages in various forms of advocacy, scholarship and direct legal services in an effort to secure equality, civil rights and legal protection for individuals and communities in need. Seton Hall Law School is located in Newark. For more information visit http://law.shu.edu/ . Lowenstein Sandler PC is a nationally recognized corporate law firm with offices in New York, New Jersey and Boston, with more than 275 attorneys providing a full range of legal services. The firm's commitment to its clients is demonstrated through its client-centered, service-oriented culture. Lowenstein Sandler attorneys are regularly recognized for excellence by clients and peers in national publications, including Best Lawyers in America, Chambers USA Guide to America's Leading Lawyers for Business and The Legal 500. http://www.lowenstein.com SOURCE Lowenstein Sandler PC Bassina Farbenblum, Esq., +1-973-642-8700, farbenba@shu.edu, or Janet LeMonnier, +1-973-642-8724, Cell, +1-973-985-3165, lemonnja@shu.edu, both of Seton Hall Law School; or Robin Wagge for Lowenstein Sandler, +1-212-843-8006, Cell, +1-917-816-4790, rwagge

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Lawsuit claims immigration raids are unconstitutional

by Brian Donohue/The Star-Ledger

Thursday April 03, 2008, 11:30 AM

Warrantless immigration raids that have led to the deportation of hundreds of illegal immigrants living in New Jersey in recent years violate the U.S. Constitution, a human rights group associated with Seton Hall University charges in a lawsuit filed today.

The lawsuit, filed by Seton Hall Law School's Center for Social Justice and the Roseland law firm Lowenstein Sandler, challenges a growing and widespread tactic by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in which immigrants are arrested at their homes in pre-dawn raids.

Based on eight home raids that occurred across New Jersey between August 2006 and January 2008, the suit alleges ICE agents lied about their identity, illegally forced their way into homes and often claimed to be looking for someone who did not even live at the address.

In some cases, the plaintiffs charge, they arrested and detained people living legally in the U.S.

"This is the first lawsuit in the country to focus on the consistency of these abusive home raid practices across an entire state, and over a significant period of time,'' Bassina Farbenblum, an attorney at the Seton Hall Center for Social Justice, said in a prepared release.

"Our complaint shows that what happened to our plaintiffs in the middle of the night was not exceptional," she added. "It was part of a routine, widespread practice, condoned at the highest levels of government, that tramples the rights of citizens and non-citizens alike."

None of the raids involved valid warrants and none of the eight gave consent for agents to enter their homes, the lawsuit says.

In one case, Maria Argueta, a legal U.S. resident living in North Bergen, says she was arrested by agents who did not ask to check her paperwork, detained 24 hours without food or water. In another, ICE agents and police from Penn's Grove stormed a house with guns drawn, looking for a man ICE had deported two years earlier.

In New Jersey, the raids are conducted by four fugitive operations teams, part of a nationwide program launched in 2003 to round up illegal immigrants who had ignored old deportation orders.

The program once set a goal of making criminals comprise 75 percent of its arrests. But government auditors found that, in order to boost arrest statistics and meet the 1,000-arrests-per-year quota set by their bosses, agents turned their attention away from criminals and other tough targets, such as illegal immigrants who use fake or stolen identities, government auditors found last year.

In a story published in December, The Star-Ledger reported the four New Jersey teams arrested 2,079 people in the year that ended Sept. 30 - twice as many as the year before, when two teams were on the streets. The paper found that 88 percent of those arrested had no criminal histories and were picked up instead for civil immigration violations.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-ice3apr03,1,6459683.story

From the Los Angeles Times

The right kind of immigration raid

Law enforcement and immigrant advocates are working together to make for kinder crackdowns.

April 3, 2008

Before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took 144 men and women into custody at Micro Solutions Enterprises in Van Nuys a few weeks ago, the agency sent advance notice to civil rights groups. It put social service agencies on standby in case children whose parents were detained needed help. Once the suspected illegal immigrants were identified, ICE agents asked if they had chronic health conditions, child-care issues or other urgent personal situations. Those who did were released and given an order to appear in court at a later date. Lastly, ICE handed out a list of attorneys who would take cases pro bono.

It should have been the perfect immigration raid -- considerate, humanitarian, efficient, the agency's standard since the debacle in New Bedford, Mass., last year when children, including a breast-feeding baby, suffered when their parents were taken away for days. But the Van Nuys action still resulted in a lawsuit -- which led to progress. Lawyers waiting to assist the immigrants filed an injunction against ICE after they were stopped from accompanying the immigrants to interviews, a clear violation of the constitutional right to representation. ICE settled the suit several days ago, and since then attorney access has been smoother.

This is the reform of immigration enforcement far from the halls of Congress. It is being cobbled together bit by bit, with compromises, cooperation and confrontation by naturally opposing forces -- those charged with enforcing the law and deporting illegal immigrants and those who advocate on their behalf.

Tuesday afternoon, outraged immigration activists picketed ICE's downtown intake station, protesting the detention of about 30 suspected illegal immigrants taken in what they believed were "raids" on warehouses. Even a well-conducted raid is a hypocrisy, they said, illustrating contradictions between immigration enforcement policies and immigration law: A humane raid would not separate mothers from their young children for a long time, but the law allows the harsher separation of deportation.

It turns out, however, that the people picked up Tuesday were taken in routine port customs security inspections of freight warehouses. Those businesses have to comply with a lengthy list of security requirements, one of which is to not hire illegal immigrants, who are particular security risks because their status makes them vulnerable to coercion. All reasonable. So Wednesday morning, immigration advocates and ICE officials were on the phone together, examining and clarifying Tuesday's events -- and preparing for the next time.

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Raids snare 38 illegal aliens

By Doug Keeler
Published: Tuesday, April 1, 2008 2:01 PM CDT
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Midway Driller Editor

It started out as a simple code enforcement assignment for Kern County Sheriff's deputies and code enforcement officers Thursday afternoon.

It ended up as a major raid by deputies and federal immigration agents that led the apprehension and deportation of 38 undocumented aliens, all from Mexico, living at four locations in Ford City.

Deputies and code enforcement officers went to 216 Monroe St. to investigate code enforcement issues and found 18 men, all in this county illegally, living in a large room at the house.

“It was an (illegal alien) motel,” Sheriff's Sgt. Martin Downs said.

Downs contacted Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers who responded rapidly with a large bus.

The eighteen aliens detained on Monroe Street were loaded onto the bus, and deputies and ICE agents decided to check several more locations where aliens have been known to gather.

They went next to a house at 502 Tyler Street and found nine undocumented men.

They already had several detained from the house when three more walked up to the house and were taken into custody.

Next, a raid on a residence at 219 Van Buren turned up nine undocumented aliens and a fourth stop at a house on Buchanan Street added four more to the round-up.

The raids were halted only because they ran out of room on the bus.

All of the men detained were going to be taken to the United States-Mexican boarder and released into Mexico within about 12 hours.

Most are expected to get back into this country within a day or so, deputies and ICE agents said.

The structure the aliens were staying in on Monroe Street was an add-on to an existing home.

Downs said it contained cubicles for 18 people with a toilet and shower.

The men were paying $125 per month each for a spot in the structure, Downs said.

It was declared unsafe for occupancy by code enforcement officers.

“Deputies were surprised when they found so many people staying there.

“We went in and there was this group of people,” Downs said. “We just kept finding more and more and more of them.”

Instead of deputies holding the 18 men detained or just releasing them onto the street, Downs came up with a plan.

He contacted ICE officials in Bakersfield and they agreed to come pick the men up and stage raids at the other locations.

Agents raid restaurant

From omaha.com

Published Friday | March 28, 2008
Agents raid restaurant

Immigration agents on Thursday arrested eight Sarpy County restaurant workers who they suspect are in the country illegally.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Tim Counts said the work site enforcement operation at Azteca Restaurant, 9429 S. 142nd St., occurred shortly before the lunch hour.

Six men and two women from Mexico and El Salvador were arrested on administrative immigration violations that were not criminal offenses, Counts said.

It was the second immigration raid in the Omaha area in as many days.

Wednesday, a months-long investigation into American Clothing Co., 3211 Nebraska Ave. in Council Bluffs, led to the arrests of 16 undocumented workers. All of those workers were being held on administrative immigration violations also.

Counts called the timing coincidental.

He said the cases were separate investigations that happened to culminate the same week. Such work site immigration raids, however, have increased over the past several years.

"The public should expect additional work site enforcement operations," Counts said. "We do have other investigations under way."

The Sarpy County Sheriff's Office assisted Immigration agents in Thursday's operation. — Cindy Gonzalez