The ICE-men cometh: Local Skirmishes in the War Against Illegal Immigrants - On The Other| David Scribner's column from the Berkshire Other

The ICE-men cometh: Local Skirmishes in the War Against Illegal Immigrants
2008
By David Scribner

At dawn on Saturday morning, Sept. 27, 2008, men in jeans, flannel shirts and workboots were getting into old cars and battered pickups outside what is known by the Hispanic population in Valatie, N. Y., as the "blue apartments." Valatie is in Columbia County, across the Hudson River from the state capital of Albany, in upstate New York.

The "blue apartments" is a four-story structure on the picturesque village's Main Street, across from an organic grocery store, and is home to a number of Latino immigrants. As two of the men were driving to work, they were pulled over by authorities from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. They were arrested when they could not provide documentation of legal occupancy in the United States.

The pair was nabbed in a roundup of 30 undocumented workers in Valatie and Saratoga, N.Y., prompted by deportation warrants for three men. It is not clear whether the three individuals ICE was seeking were among those detained, but it is the second sweep of the Valatie area in 18 months. In April of 2007, customs officials arrested eight undocumented workers.

ICE spokesman Michael Gilhooley did not reply to a request for clarification of the details of this year's raid in time to be included in this article.

At around the same date, a smaller but tactically similar raid was taking place across the border in Pittsfield, Mass. According to Hilary Greene, director of the Berkshire Immigrant Center, one morning at 6 a.m. two ICE officers knocked on the door of an apartment in the city. They demanded to be let in because a neighbor, they claimed, had complained about a noise coming from the apartment, a complaint they used as a pretext to enter the dwelling. They took away a young man from Colombia, and threatened to detain the man's girlfriend, an Asian student. After being transported to a detention center in Hartford, Conn., he was released, Greene said.

These incidents represent but two of numerous immigrant roundups nationwide. They sometimes go unreported, as did the one in Pittsfield but in one of the more notorious and widely publicized operations last May, immigration agents took into custody 400 workers at an Agriprocessors Inc. kosher meat packinghouse in Postville, Iowa. Last month, the former chief executive of the company was charged with harboring illegal immigrants.

But aggressive immigration enforcement has created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation for documented as well as undocumented immigrants.

"People are afraid to work, or even to pick up their kids at school," Greene reports.

Her perspective seems to be borne out, at least anecdotally, by attempts to interview foreign-born residents on the record.

"Myself, I have nothing to worry about," said one patron, a Brazilian by birth, at the Brazilian Grocery on North Street in Pittsfield, who nevertheless declined to provide his name, "but I have many friends who are scared. The American dream that brought people here is going down the river. I'm hoping things will change after the election."

"Of course they're all afraid," declared attorney Michele Sisselman of Pittsfield, a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "All it takes is for someone to read their name in a story and call ICE."

"We like to think of ourselves in the Berkshires as an open, tolerant, diverse community," Greene related, "but just the other day a client of ours, a Mexican by birth but now an American citizen, had a flyer put on her car at the Big Y supermarket in Pittsfield. It said: 'Mexicans go home.' "

Ironically, she points out, the state and Berkshire County, too, depend on immigrant labor.

"In Massachusetts, 17 percent of the workforce is made up of immigrants," she said, "and nationally, 95 percent of farm workers and 30 percent of garment workers are immigrants. In Berkshire County, we estimate that there are 10,000 to 12,000 immigrants of which 700 to 800 are here illegally. Most immigrants live in Pittsfield, and work in South County, at restaurants, Kripalu, Canyon Ranch, and places where they do housekeeping. Based on our clients, they mostly come from Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico."

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On a Sunday morning at the Picante Uno grocery in Valatie, proprietor Jacqueline Stoddard is helping a half dozen young Hispanic men send their earnings back home to Mexico to support families and relatives. During the growing season and harvest, from May through September, about 100 immigrants a month come to her store to wire their wages home.

And more are coming to Picante Uno all the time. Bowing to pressure from ICE, big chain stores like Hannaford's, which have Western Union terminals, have begun to demand immigration identification before allowing money to be wired.

Stoddard, 39, came to Valatie seven years ago, and married an American who works in construction in Poughkeepsie. She has owned her store for four. It stocks Mexican brands such as Goya, Tama Roca, Barcel and GroMex spices. At the back of the store is a kitchen; a long table runs down the store's center, flanked by stools.

"I've got plans for this store," she said proudly. "We've got the kitchen out back, but I want to add more tables for people, so that they meet here."

Picante Uno is a family affair. Her 8-year-old niece, Daniella, works in the kitchen with her mother Erika. Jacqueline's 14-year-old daughter Kristen, a freshman at Taconic Hills High School, helps work the counter. She wears a silver ring in the shape of a peace sign; she explains she wants to go to Princeton if she can keep her grades up. Her older sister, Tanysha, a senior, intends to become a lawyer, she says.

But being an immigrant and running a business in Valatie has not been easy. "A lot of people in Valatie don't like it that Mexicans have settled here, and that their friends come from Saratoga, Albany, Schenectady to be near family," she said. "I overheard someone say that they were going to clean up Valatie, just like we did years ago with the black people."

Next door is the American Legion Post 47. They have not been particularly welcoming.

"I wanted to put out a Mexican flag," she said. "A guy from the American Legion threatened to tear it down if I did."

Stoddard knew something was up the morning of the September ICE raid. "Nobody was in the Laundromat, nobody was hanging around the front steps on my store waiting for me to open. I knew something was happening," she recalled.

"What is the sense in this? To scare all these people when all they want to do is work to support their families. they're not criminals and they're not hurting anyone," she argued. "Something has got to be worked out so they can come to America, work for a few months, or whatever, and then go home."

The immigrant community, however, is not without its supporters. Among them is Susan Davies of Chatham, N.Y., who learned of the plight of immigrants through membership in the Chatham Peace Initiative.

"After the raid a year ago, I've become friends with some of the Mexican immigrants, and I helped set up a meeting between immigrants and an immigration lawyer from Albany, Seth Leech, to explain to them their rights," she said. "The main thing is these people need the moral support of American citizens - just to be there as a witness if they are taken into custody."

When immigrants were seized, she said, they were taken to an Albany County jail for two nights. If they could not provide $5,000 in bail, they were sent to a detention center in Batavia, N.Y., to await trial before an immigration court. In the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security paid the Albany lockup $200 to $400 a night to hold the alleged illegal immigrants.

In the latest raid, Davies helped mobilize the collection of bail money so that at least some of those arrested could return to their families. One of those detained who could not raise bail was the father of two children, she said. Two pregnant women, however, were released.

And even if they are freed on bond, Davies points out, it is a big hardship for them to get out to Buffalo for a court date.

What prompts these raids, immigration attorney Seth Leech explains, is usually a tip. "Typically, a neighbor will call ICE after noticing nonwhite people working on a job or in a farmer's fields," he said. "The fact is there is a critical shortage of people to do farm work. ICE knows that. And farmers who employ them are not thinking they should act as immigration agents. I made a presentation at the Farm Bureau in Columbia County about immigration. ICE was there too, and their spokesman insisted they didn't target farm laborers. The farmers broke out laughing."

Leech believes that only "a very vocal minority" harbor anti-immigrant sentiments. "A silent majority don't share these attitudes, including farmers and businesses, who consistently say they need immigrant labor."

He explains that immigrants who are not U.S. citizens have certain rights. Authorities have to have a warrant to enter a private residence, but many immigrants don't know they can refuse to let an agent in if he doesn't have one.

On the other hand, local and state police have the authority to pull over a vehicle for any pretext and demand identification. If the driver or passengers do not have adequate papers, police can call in the ICE agents.

* * *

In Berkshire County, even though Gov. Deval Patrick - himself a resident of the Berkshires -- has rescinded his predecessor's mandate for State Police to pursue immigration violations, officers from the Lee State Police barracks have been so aggressive in targeting immigrants for traffic violations that the American Civil Liberties Union has been considering a lawsuit for racial profiling.

"The Pittsfield Police are fabulous," notes Hilary Greene of the Immigrant Center. "They have enough on their plate in keeping the community safe, and they want to foster trust between the immigrant population and themselves. But officers in the Lee barracks are horrible."

Attorney Sisselman agrees. She charges that state cops park in the lot outside Marshalls' discount store on the Pittsfield-Lenox Road and run license plates of Hispanics shopping inside. If the registered owner of the car does not have a driver's license in Massachusetts, they pull the car over.

"My concern is that while law enforcement has a duty to protect the public, how far does that extend?" she asks. "Do the cops have probably cause because a trooper sees a guy who looks Hispanic and speaks with an accent. Is that sufficient?"

She reports that ICE agents are beginning to show up in court in Great Barrington to whisk those accused of a traffic violation and who don't have proper identification off to an immigrant detention center in Hartford, Conn.

"I'm wondering if Berkshire County isn't part of an ICE enforcement pilot program," she muses.

But the larger issue is what she describes as the "legal la-la land" for immigrants.

"They're treated like nonentities," she says. "If America stands for anything, it stands for due process. They can simply be removed from the country. And they don't get due process until they're a citizen. So I advise all my clients to apply for begin the citizenship process."

It is not simply the illegal workers who are suffering. It is also their children.

"One of the really sad consequences of our policy is that Congress hasn't had the courage to pass the DREAM act," complains Susan Davies of Chatham. Introduced in 2005 by U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Il.), the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act would provide the children of illegal immigrants the opportunity to become permanent residents if they planned to attend college or serve in the armed forces.

"I know a high school student in this situation, a wonderful student, who's really invested in the American dream, and she will have to be sent back to Mexico if she wants to go to college," Davies said. "It is such a waste of human resources and abilities."

It is not much better in Massachusetts, Hilary Greene notes. "For three years in a row, the Instate Tuition Bill has been shot down that would allow the children of undocumented workers to receive a college education," she said. "We're not talking financial aid. We simply mean being allowed to enroll at in-state tuition rates. We have kids who were brought here when they were 2 years old. They're as American as anyone."

Attorney Sisselman argues that only way immigrants, legal and illegal, will be given a fair shake in America is to overhaul immigration policy.

"The system's broken. We all know it," she notes. "The responsibility for repairing it remains with Congress. We have 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants in this country, and they're all scared silly. Very little is being done on their behalf."

This article appeared as the cover story for the December, 2008 Hill Country Observer.