FedEx works with ICE to detain immigrant workers (PSLWeb.com)

FedEx works with ICE to detain immigrant workers
Friday, January 29, 2010
By: Emmanuel López

Business, state working hand in hand to enforce racist policies

On Jan. 6, Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents detained four Guatemalan immigrant workers at a FedEx store in Riviera Beach, Fla., after the immigrants had gone there to pick up newly issued passports from their home country.

FedEx had contacted two of the immigrants and told them they had packages waiting for them at FedEx’s Riviera Beach location. When they arrived, they were told the packages could not be found and were asked to wait. In the meantime, FedEx officials contacted ICE agents, who arrived shortly thereafter and detained the two men.

Damaris Roxana Vasquez, 21, who had accompanied the two men to the FedEx store and was waiting for them in the car was also detained at gunpoint by ICE officials, along with her two-year-old son. Another Guatemalan immigrant who had come on his own was also detained.

“They pointed a gun at me, I felt a lot of fear. I started to cry, it’s the first time something like this happened to me,” Vasquez said. (El Sentinal, Jan. 23)

According to Vasquez, when another immigrant worker tried to escape from the scene, the agents fired a shot in the air. She was then placed in the back of a patrol car with her infant son. A total of two ICE units, two patrol cars, and eight officers were on the scene.

Two of the Guatemalan immigrants have already been deported. Vasquez now faces deportation proceedings. The fourth victim is being held at an immigration detention facility in Broward County also awaiting deportation proceedings.

FedEx calls ICE because of ‘suspicious’ packages

John De Leon, an attorney representing the Guatemalan government in the United States, told reporters: “These people were contacted [by FedEx] to go pick up their packages. … That’s the only reason they went to FedEx. The fact that the immigration authorities were available to detain these people clearly shows there was some coordination between FedEx and immigration authorities.”

Addressing the issue of racial profiling, De Leon also stated, “The names on the packages were clearly Hispanic, they were all Guatemalans, so if there was profiling going on here, I think most people would find that very troubling.” (South Florida CBS4, Jan. 15)

Back in November, officials at the Guatemalan consular office in Miami held a daylong session in Jupiter, Fla., to help Guatemalans in the area resolve problems with birth certificates, passports and other documents. Dozens of Guatemalans signed up for new or renewed passports, which are useful for workers to open up bank accounts and to carry out other day-to-day tasks.

When roughly 30 packages could not be delivered to the address listed, FedEx officials at the Riveria Beach store opened the packages. Allison Sobczak, a FedEx spokeswoman, said that officials then contacted ICE “to make sure the documents were legitimate.” Several of the passports where subsequently seized by ICE. (New York Times, Jan. 18)

“Each foreign government has an obligation to provide their citizens with a passport and no foreign government should interfere with that process and that’s what the U.S. government did and that’s what FedEx did,” stated De Leon. He also noted that ICE’s actions may have violated various treaties and established laws that allow foreign governments the right to communicate with its citizens.

FedEx’s justification for opening the packages was that they were “suspicious and undeliverable.” However, FedEx successfully reached several Guatemalan immigrants.

‘National security’ used as pretext to persecute immigrant workers

ICE spokeswoman Nicole Navas said agents responded to the FedEx office on Jan. 6 and began their own investigation by opening additional packages.

“Our agents were investigating whether these documents were legitimate,” she said. “There are national security ramifications if these were fraudulent documents.”

When asked by reporters to explain under what authority federal agents opened the FedEx envelopes, Navas said: “We have the authority to investigate any threats to our national security.”

However, the only legitimate threat here comes from the collusion between ICE and FedEx to arrest four workers whose only crime was to come to this country to feed their families. The justification of ICE that they were investigating a “threat” to national security is just another example of a national trend of the federal agency oppressing immigrant communities and demonizing migrant workers forced to leave countries economically decimated by imperialist relationships.

FedEx, for its part, has also been notorious enemy of working people. FedEx’s contribution to the mailing industry has been to exploit its workers as much as possible, thereby undermining the union wages and conditions won by the U.S. postal and UPS workers.

Even after the Jan. 6 arrests, the Guatemalan consulate was not contacted by ICE. Consulate officials became aware of the situation only after local activists from the Palm Beach County Immigrant Rights Coalition notified them that people were getting arrested at FedEx and others were being notified to pick up their passports.

The government of Guatemala has issued a formal protest to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. It is also looking into filing a lawsuit against FedEx for possible violation of the Geneva Convention for interfering in the business between a foreign government and its citizens, as well as violations of the Fourth Amendment rights of the immigrant workers for opening their mail without a warrant.

The consulate has also ended all its contracts with FedEx. Immigrant rights activists and members of the large Guatemalan community in South Florida are discussing possible actions as well.