Truck driver forced to show birth certificate claims racial-profiling (AZFamily.com)

Truck driver forced to show birth certificate claims racial-profiling

by Alicia E. Barrón
azfamily.com
Posted on April 21, 2010 at 5:04 PM

PHOENIX – A Valley man says he was pulled over Wednesday morning and questioned when he arrived at a weigh station for his commercial vehicle along Val Vista and the 202 freeway.

Abdon, who did not want to use his last name, says he provided several key pieces of information but what he provided apparently was not what was needed.

He tells 3TV, “I don't think it's correct, if I have to take my birth certificate with me all the time.”

3TV caught up with Abdon after he was released from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in central Phoenix. He and his wife, Jackie, are still upset about what happened to him.

Jackie tells 3TV, “It's still something awful to be targeted. I can't even imagine what he felt, people watching like he was some type of criminal.”

Abdon was told he did not have enough paperwork on him when he pulled into a weigh station to have his commercial truck checked. He provided his commercial driver’s license and a social security number but ended up handcuffed.

An agent called his wife and she had to leave work to drive home and grab other documents like his birth certificate.

Jackie explains, “I have his social security card as well and mine. He's legit. It's the first time it's ever happened.”

Both were born in the United States and say they are now both infuriated that keeping important documents safely at home is no longer an option.

Jackie says, “It doesn't feel like it's a good way of life, to live with fear, even though we are okay, we are legal…still have to carry documents around.”

A representative at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) returned 3TV’s calls after researching the incident and she said this was standard operating procedure.

The agents needed to verify Abdon was in the country legally and it is not uncommon to ask for someone's birth certificate. She also said this has nothing to do with the proposed bill or racial profiling.

Immigrant Workers Face Firings Even Without Arizona’s Laws (New American Media)

Immigrant Workers Face Firings Even Without Arizona’s Laws
New America Media, News Report, David Bacon, Posted: Apr 30, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- While the potential criminalization of undocumented people in Arizona continues to draw headlines, the actual punishment of workers because of their immigration status has become an increasingly bitter fact of life across the country.

In the latest move by the Department of Homeland Security, 475 immigrant janitors will soon be fired from their jobs in San Francisco. Weeks ago, DHS went through the employment records of their employer, ABM, one of the largest building service companies in the country. DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement sifted through Social Security records and the I-9 immigration forms all workers have to fill out when they apply for jobs. They then told ABM that the company had to fire 475 workers who were accused of lacking legal immigration status.

ABM has been a union company for decades and many of the workers have been there for years. "They've been working in this industry for 15, 20, some as many as 27 years in the buildings downtown," says Olga Miranda, president of Service Employees Local 87. "They've built homes. They've provided for their families. They've sent their kids to college. They're not new workers. They didn't just get here a year ago."

Those workers are now faced with an agonizing dilemma. Should they turn themselves in to Homeland Security, who might charge them with providing a bad Social Security number to their employer, and even hold them for deportation? On the other hand, for workers with families, homes and deep roots in a community, it's not possible to just walk away and disappear. " I have a lot of members who are single mothers whose children were born here," Miranda says. "I have a member whose child has leukemia. What are they supposed to do? Leave their children here and go back to Mexico and wait? And wait for what?"

Miranda's question reflects not just the dilemma facing individual workers, but one facing the 12 million undocumented people living in the United States. Since 2005, successive congresspeople, senators and administrations have dangled the prospect of gaining legal status in front of those who lack it. In exchange, their various schemes for immigration reform have proposed huge new guest worker programs, and a big increase in exactly the kind of enforcement now directed at the 475 San Francisco janitors.

Pres. Barack Obama, condemning Arizona's law that would make being undocumented a state crime, said it would "undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans." But then he called for legislation with guest worker programs and increased enforcement.

While the country is no closer to legalization of the undocumented than it was 10 years ago, the enforcement provisions of the comprehensive immigration reform proposals have already been implemented on the ground. The Bush administration conducted a high-profile series of raids in which it sent heavily armed agents into meatpacking plants and factories, holding workers for deportation, and sending hundreds to federal prison for using bad Social Security numbers.

After Obama was elected president, immigration authorities said they'd follow a softer policy, using an electronic system to find undocumented people in workplaces. People working with bad Social Security numbers would be fired. As a result, last September, 2,000 seamstresses in the Los Angeles garment factory of American Apparel were fired, followed a month later by 1,200 janitors working for ABM in Minneapolis. In November, over 100 janitors working for Seattle Building Maintenance lost their jobs.

"Homeland Security is going after employers that are union," Miranda says. "They're going after employers that give benefits and are paying above the average." While American Apparel had no union, Minneapolis janitors belonged to SEIU Local 26, Seattle janitors to Local 6 and San Francisco janitors to Local 87.

Obama says sanctions enforcement targets employers "who are using illegal workers in order to drive down wages -- and oftentimes mistreat those workers." An ICE Worksite Enforcement Advisory claims "unscrupulous employers are likely to pay illegal workers substandard wages or force them to endure intolerable working conditions."

Curing intolerable conditions by firing or deporting workers who endure them doesn't help the workers or change the conditions, however. And despite Obama's notion that sanctions enforcement will punish those employers who exploit immigrants, at American Apparel and ABM the employers were rewarded for cooperation by being immunized from prosecution. Javier Murillo, president of Local 26, says, "The promise made during the audit is that if the company cooperates and complies, they won't be fined. So this kind of enforcement really only hurts workers."

ICE director John Morton says the agency is auditing the records of 1,654 companies nationwide. "What kind of economic recovery goes with firing thousands of workers?" Miranda asks. "Why don't they target employers who are not paying taxes, who are not obeying safety or labor laws?"

Union leaders like Miranda see a conflict between the rhetoric used by the president and other Washington, D.C. politicians and lobbyists in condemning the Arizona law, and the immigration proposals they're making in Congress. "There's a huge contradiction here," she says. "You can't tell one state that what they're doing is criminalizing people and at the same time go after employers paying more than a living wage and the workers who have fought for that wage."

Renee Saucedo, attorney for La Raza Centro Legal and former director of the San Francisco Day Labor Program, is even more critical. "Those bills in Congress, which are presented as ones that will help some people get legal status, will actually make things much worse," she says. "We'll see many more firings like the janitors here and more punishments for people who are just working and trying to support their families."

Increasingly, however, the Washington proposals have even less promise of legalization and more emphasis on punishment. The newest Democratic Party scheme virtually abandons the legalization program promised by the "bipartisan" Schumer/Graham proposal, saying that heavy enforcement must come before any consideration of giving 12 million people legal status.

"We have to look at the whole picture," Saucedo says. "So long as we have trade agreements like NAFTA that create poverty in countries like Mexico, people will continue to come here, no matter how many walls we build. Instead of turning people into guest workers, as these bills in Washington would do, while firing and even jailing those who don't have papers, we need to help people get legal status and repeal the laws that are making work a crime."

ICE makes arrests in Mount Vernon (Mount Vernon News)

ICE makes arrests in Mount Vernon

By Samantha Scoles
April 30, 2010
MOUNT VERNON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was in Mount Vernon on Friday making arrests.

“I can just confirm that the arrests made were part of an ongoing enforcement effort,” said Khaalid Walls, public affairs officer for ICE.

Walls refused to comment further on Friday’s actions as to how many arrests were made and how ICE was directed to Mount Vernon, but, said when he can release more information he will contact the News.

According to its Web site, ICE is responsible for the enforcement of over 400 national security and public safety statues and is “the largest investigative agency in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.”

Immigration laws have been front and center since Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill into law on April 24 that allows law enforcement to ask for immigration papers.

Courtney Combs, an Ohio state representative from the Cincinnati area, has called for Ohio to create a similar law. Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones said Thursday he believes an initiate should be placed on the November ballot allowing for enforcement similar to that of Arizona.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland told the Associated Press earlier this week he did not feel Ohio needs to enact a similar mandate because Ohio is not involved in the same immigration “difficulties” as Arizona.

'Operation Cross Check' Nets 596 Arrests (WGCL-GA)

'Operation Cross Check' Nets 596 Arrests
ICE: People Arrested Have Dangerous Criminal Records

By Mike Paluska, CBS Atlanta Reporter
POSTED: 5:43 pm EDT April 30, 2010

ATLANTA -- A nine-state operation led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement ended late Thursday night. In Georgia, agents said 124 illegal immigrants were taken into custody.

All of the foreign nationals served time in the past for convictions, including for murder, sexual assault, drugs and domestic abuse.

“These are not the people we want on the streets of Atlanta,” said Felicia Skinner , director of the ICE field office in Atlanta . “Aliens with criminal convictions who legally return after being convicted will be prosecuted and receive lengthy prison sentences if convicted, the maximum is 20 years."

Three of the people arrested are convicted murderers, she said. But after serving their prison terms, they were released back into the United States, forcing federal agents and local law enforcement to track them down again.

CBS Atlanta News had tough questions for the director about what needs to be done to keep that from happening again in the future. “ These convictions are usually state offenses, and once they serve their time, they are released through possibly probation after they've served their time,” said Skinner. “The fact of the matter is, ICE has limited resources and as we continue to expand our partnerships with county jails and local authorities, we recognize we need to do more.”

The operation included agents working with teams from the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and local law enforcement. Arrests in Florida and Puerto Rico accounted for the largest number of apprehensions during the operation . A total of 258 were taken into custody in those places.

The Atlanta Field Office , which includes neighboring states, that includes, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama recorded the next highest number of arrests with 232. ICE officials said they have removed a total of 136,126 criminal aliens from the United States in the last year, a record number.

Authorities arrest nearly 90 in South Florida in immigration sweep (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Authorities arrest nearly 90 in South Florida in immigration sweep

By Sofia Santana, Sun Sentinel
9:26 p.m. EDT, April 30, 2010

Authorities this week arrested nearly 90 foreign nationals in South Florida they say were convicted criminals who now will be speedily deported, or convicts who were otherwise in the United States illegally.

The sweep, led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was part of the largest operation targeting illegal immigrants ever conducted in the southeastern United States, officials said.

Two dozen of the arrests were in Broward County, 11 were in Palm Beach County, 48 in Miami-Dade County and five in the Florida Keys, authorities said.

The arrests were among 258 made statewide and in Puerto Rico, with most of those arrested slated for immediate deporation or an appearance before a U.S. immigration judge.

Atlanta ICE Field Director Felicia Skinner said that "communities around the Southeast are safer than they were before" as a result. She said three of the people arrested had been previously convicted of murder and 144 of assault charges.

At least a dozen of the arrestees face additional federal charges because they had been convicted of a crime in the United States and deported, but then re-entered this country illegally, officials said.

One of them is Jose Oscar Avalo-Molina, of El Salvador, who authorities say was convicted of first-degree murder in the United States, served a 20-year sentence and was deported in 1997. Sometime afterward, he returned to this country illegally, authorities said.

He was arrested Wednesday in Pembroke Park.

The federal crime of felony re-entry into the United States carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.