'Just News' Blog

"I think employers are beginning to feel the pinch and in many cases I think they are trying not only to be sort of extra cautious but ... to be pre-emptive," said Chishti. "What's troubling is that employers have taken it upon themselves the job of ascertaining whether a crime has been committed.""

ANABELLE GARAY for the Associated Press.

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LAUREL, MISS. -- "Fabiola Peña considered running away from her factory job when she realized she was being targeted in a federal immigration raid. She was deterred when she noticed the helicopters hovering overhead.

But helicopters were not what shocked Peña the most on her last, fateful day at Howard Industries, the largest employer in this small Southern town. It was the black co-workers who clapped and cheered, Peña said, as she and hundreds of other Latino immigrant laborers were arrested and hauled away.

"They said we took their jobs, but I was working from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.," said Peña, 21, a day after the raid last week that resulted in the arrest of nearly 600 suspected illegal immigrants. "I didn't see them working like us."

The raid at Howard Industries, a manufacturer of electrical distribution equipment, was the largest of its kind in many years,and it exposed some of the rawest emotions that fuel the illegal immigration debate."

MIGUEL BUSTILLO  and RICHARD FAUSSET in the Los Angeles Times.

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They'd been listening to Spanish radio and television but none of them knew what to do and were waiting for someone to come by and tell them, said Pictor Soto, 44, of Peru. Told they could take a bus at Union Passenger Terminal, they all shook their heads, fearful that immigration agents would be looking for them. "The problem is, there will be immigration people there and we're all undocumented," Soto said."

BECKY BOHRER for the Associated Press.

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"Friction between the union and immigrant workers, along with a tipoff at an electrical manufacturing plant, boiled over this week into the biggest workplace immigration raid in the nation's history.

When the first of the 595 suspected illegal immigrants was taken into custody Monday, some fellow workers broke into applause. A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the investigation started three years ago after agents received a tip from a union member."

HOLBROOK MOHR, SHEILA BYRD, EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS and EILEEN SULLIVAN for the Associated Press.

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"When federal agents raided the Howard Industries plant early Monday, they sealed off the exits and made it impossible for any of the workers to escape, some of the detainees released said Tuesday.

The woman and another detainee, who also would not allow her name to be published, said one worker who tried to run was sprayed with Mace.

When the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents scrambled into the plant, they ordered workers to form two lines - one for Hispanics and one for non-Hispanics."

EMMA JAMES in the Hattiesburg American.

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"In a week spent at the Tijuana gate, The Associated Press watched busload after busload of deportees arrive, some in a daze, still stunned over their sudden expulsion. Many stumbled over the Mexican official's question, "Where are you from?" after spending decades in the United States."

JULIE WATSON for the Associated Press.

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DERBY LINE, Vt.:  "The changes started coming slowly to this small town where the U.S. border with Canada runs across sleepy streets, through houses and families, and smack down the middle of the shared local library.

First was the white, painted lettering on the pavement on three little side streets -- "Canada" on one side, "U.S.A." on the other. Then came the white pylons denoting which side of the border was which. After that, signboards were erected on some streets, ordering drivers to turn back and use an officially designated entry point."

KEITH B. RICHBURG in the Washington Post.

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Operation Scheduled Departure — an experimental program designed to convince illegal immigrants to turn themselves in for voluntary deportation — ended Friday. The pilot program had operated in five cities since early August, but not many eligible immigrants availed themselves of it.

TED ROBBINS has the audio for NPR.

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"An Associated Press investigation found that an understaffed labor agency in the nation's biggest agricultural state fails to consistently hold farms and labor contractors accountable for heat deaths or ensure they pay for violations and improve conditions in one of the most brutal jobs in America."

GARANCE BURKE for the Associated Press.

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"It was twilight Aug. 6 when Officer Jeff Brown of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission noticed an empty Toyota Pathfinder while patrolling an access road near the Haw River. After inspecting the car and finding no one, Brown walked to the edge of the river access point and saw men casting a fishing net. They had come from Kernersville after having heard of the good fishing to be had in Burlington, one man told him. According to Brown, the men were trying to hide a cooler full of fish as he approached.

Brown asked to see each of their fishing licenses, but no one had one. He then asked for their identification. Among them, all they had were two El Salvadorian ID cards and an expired California driver's license. He arrested the five men—Antonio Ordaz, Jose Ernesto, Javier Jimenez, Edwin Marquez and Juan Aria—who, because they were fishing at the wrong hole at the wrong time, are in custody at the Immigration and Custom Enforcement holding facility in Alamance County Jail, waiting to be deported to their home countries.

The men could have merely been cited, but Brown chose to arrest them."

VERNAL COLEMAN for IndyWeek.com.

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"ICE never knowingly detains a U.S. citizen," says Dankers.

But apparently, as Castillo's case shows, ICE makes mistakes. Jorge Barón claims that since the Seattle University/One America report was written early this year, his organization has discovered five additional cases of individuals who spent time at the detention center before it was found they were citizens."

NINA SHAPIRO in the Seattle Weekly.

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"A federal judge on Friday made permanent a decision barring Cave Creek from enforcing an anti-solicitation ordinance that critics say was used unlawfully to target day laborers and Latinos."

Jourdan Rassás in the Arizona Republic.

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"He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons.

But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.

In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months."

NINA BERNSTEIN in the New York Times.

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"Ethnic slurs ricocheted in the night, echoing what many have muttered for years in this crumbling mountainside town that was once the thriving jewel of Pennsylvania's coal country. Then, fists flew, and one teen, an honor student, reportedly delivered a skull-shattering kick to the head, killing Ramirez.

This pocket of blue-collar America, where big-band musicians Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey got their start, is spinning in the ugly vortex of the nation's racially charged war over illegal Immigration. Federal officials have launched an investigation into last month's murder to determine if it is part of a rising trend of anti-Latino hate crimes around the country."

ANTONIO OLIVO in the Chicago Tribune.

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SAN DIEGO: "Quietly over the past 14 years, gay men and lesbians from Mexico have sought -- and received -- political asylum in the United States based on their sexual orientation and the argument that the culture of "machismo" in their country has sometimes put homosexuals there in danger.

But as Mexico and other Latin American countries begin to liberalize laws regarding homosexuality, hold gay pride events and expand treatment for people with AIDS, it is becoming increasingly difficult to win such cases, say asylum applicants, U.S. lawyers and Latino activists."

CECI CONNOLLY in the Washington Post.

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American immigration authorities play no role in these private repatriations, carried out by ambulance, air ambulance and commercial plane. Most hospitals say that they do not conduct cross-border transfers until patients are medically stable and that they arrange to deliver them into a physician’s care in their homeland. But the hospitals are operating in a void, without governmental assistance or oversight, leaving ample room for legal and ethical transgressions on both sides of the border."

DEBORAH SONTAG in the New York Times.

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"It was a very stupid thing to do, Kathryn Ingleson says now. She was a teenage cashier, and she used customers' credit card numbers to buy $339.07 worth of items, including a fake Christmas tree. She pleaded guilty, got probation and pretty much forgot about it.

Until, that is, she took a trip abroad six years later and federal authorities decided the crimes made her deportable. Now the British citizen, who has lived in Newport News as a lawful permanent resident since she was 7, has been ordered to leave the United States this month.

"It's just like a nightmare, really," said Ingleson, 31, who has worked at a packaging company for a decade and has two children, both U.S. citizens.

Lawyers and activists said Ingleson is one of a rising number of legal immigrants with relatively old and minor criminal records to be snagged in the federal government's stepped-up efforts to deport those whom authorities refer to as "criminal aliens.""

KARIN BRULLIARD in the Washington Post.

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