The Washington Peace Letter is published monthly for the social justice community of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. It's purpose is to support local, national and international struggles against oppression. It seeks to present a radical analysis of current events, covering information not readily available in the corporate media.

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They arrest workers on the street corner for asserting the fundamental human right to find employment. They knock on the door and without a warrant they arrest family members. When tenants complain about horrible housing conditions, landlords respond by threatening to call them. If workers complain or try to organize in unions, management threatens to report their names to La Migra (the INS).

Immigration raids, or the threat of raids, undermine organizing and tear apart families. People are threatened with violence, sometimes hit or bloodied, chained, detained and torn from the life they’ve built for the crime of working without papers.

On October 14, 1998, a national report will be simultaneously released in thirteen major U.S. cities. The report will document Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) abuses, and the impact of raids on families and workers. The National Week of Action Against Immigration Raids will focus on human rights abuses against immigrant communities, and will demonstrate how these abuses affect the entire community.

D.C. Organizing

In the D.C. metropolitan area the D.C. Immigrant Coalition on Immigration and Welfare Rights (DCIC) documents incidents of raids by interviewing eye-witnesses and affected families. On the local level, the Coalition aims to centralize information on enforcement operations in the D.C. area in order to assess trends in enforcement and the scope of the problem. As a member of the National Raids Task Force, the Coalition shares and develops resistance strategies with other local coalitions from across the country.

“The Coalition creates spaces for people to relate the terrifying experience of immigration raids, and raises consciousness on what people should do, or not do, during a raid through street theatre, press work and church teach-ins., “ according to Jessica Alvarez, coordinator of the Latino Leadership Institute.

The Coalition’s attention focuses on Maryland in light of the increase in the number of raids targeting small businesses in Montgomery and Prince George’s County including Latino-owned restaurants, parking lots, laundry and dry cleaners, landscaping, cabling, construction sites, home and apartments and even County-run public libraries. DCIC with CASA de Maryland in Montgomery County, formed a taskforce last February to follow-up on interviews and to develop a report they submitted to the Department of Justice on Maryland enforcement operations.

Affidavits by business owners, management personnel, detainees, and other eye-witnesses of recent INS enforcement operations disclose discriminatory targeting of Latino employees and Latino small businesses, gun wielding and verbal abuse, restrictive access to telephones, and lack of information and misinformation on detainee’s legal rights by Maryland INS officers.

A Work Site Raid

An example of a work-site raid in Maryland occurred on March 25, 1998, when members of the DC Immigrant Coalition were marching for permanent residency for Central Americans in downtown Washington, INS agents and local police surrounded the Nutech laundry plant in Hyattsville, MD. INS agents arrived inside by kicking in the unlocked door of the management’s main office. One employee commented, “I was so startled, I thought there was a fire.” Upon finding the manager outside, INS issued him a warrant and said, “Until we leave here we own this place.”

Inside, immigrant workers had received word that la migra was surrounding the building from the woman who sells pupusas outside. Quickly workers came together and decided that certain people had to be hidden. Inside industrial machinery and laundry bins people hid themselves while others scrambled to find their belongings and papers. When INS came on the plant floor, they began to pull workers into areas to separate people by immigration categories: “with papers”; “without papers”; “claim to have papers.” One agent climbed a moving-ladder and with pistol in hand pointed it directly at workers as they became separated and shackled to become detained.

One worker, a legal permanent resident, was chained to her coworkers and told by an INS agent that her immigration number (A#) was invalid. Esperanza Guzman explained, “I began to hand out money from my purse to people lined up to be detained, because I thought they might not have any. I saw my brother taken away when an INS agent grabbed me, and told me that my A# was fake. I told her, ‘What can I say—how else can I tell you—I am a legal permanent resident, my number is valid. I got it directly from Immigration [INS].’ They chained me to the others with a stomach belt and then chained my hands to the belt. I asked them if I could be chained to my sister-in-law and niece. I wanted to show the INS my other identification, my driver’s license and my credit card—but the agent said she didn’t need to see anything else.” Guzman was finally released when one INS agent took pity on her and allowed her to make a simple phone call to INS Baltimore to verify her number, according to procedure. Her residency was found to be valid.

Most people without papers were processed in Baltimore at INS District offices and then sent to the Wicomico County Detention Center in Salisbury, MD. Men and women workers from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala were detained that day. Maria, whose name has been changed, faced typical detention procedures for criminals who enter the facility. But Maria is not a criminal. Maria, a campesina woman from southern Mexico, feared for her family and children from whom she was “disappeared” in the middle of the day while at work. In Wicomico, she was told to stick out her arm, and was then injected with an unknown substance without warning or permission. The unknown substance is known by us as a tuberculosis shot, but no one informed her what was happening to her in Spanish or English. Following this shock, she was told to undress and under went a full anity cavity check in front of other detainees, including her coworkers.

Every person interviewed in the Nutech case related that only Latino “looking” workers were told to freeze, but that others could move freely. Management also moved freely, but INS did not allow them or their corporate attorney or immigration lawyer they had previously hired for several work-sponsorship visas, to enter the plant floor during the operation. Management waited, distressed, without being able to witness the treatment of the workers, or to inform them of legal services that had arrived. INS told management that the arrested workers would receive free legal help. In fact, unlike criminal suspects, immigrants in INS custody do not by law automatically receive public defense. Instead, they are handed a list of community organizations who often can not serve them or accept collect-calls.

“The use and the threat of violence to intimidate peaceful men and women of color is deplorable. This behavior from the INS, in collaboration with other law enforcement agencies, has a chilling effect on all workers.,” stated Sasha Kahokha from the National Raids Task Force of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. In fact, the manager of Nutech reported that the entire second-shift, including immigrant and non-immigrant employees, did not show-up following the raid. A nearby grocer reported that some parents pulled their children out of the neighboring school in fear of the police and INS presence.

Behind Anti-Immigrant Policies

Race-based immigration enforcement usually targets people of Latin American origin. Although six of every ten undocumented immigrants are non-Mexican visa overstays, Mexicans account for 75% of the 112,000 immigrants deported in 1997 (double the 50,000 total of people deported in fiscal 1996 (Migration News)).

The INS budget for FY 1999 includes $115 million dollars and 745 new positions to address “interior enforcement,” or the investigation and apprehension of immigrants in non-border areas. Community organizer, Fredy Tejada who works at the D.C. Council of Latino Agencies said, “At the National Raids Task Force national meeting this June in Los Angeles, we asked, what are the true motivations behind the misguided and harmful immigration policies? We came to the following conclusions: Criminalizing immigrant labor, policing workplaces and neighborhoods, and militarizing the border allows employers to maintain a cheap and exploitable labor force. Preserving the right to mobility for a small elite—corporations, executives, and high skilled” workers—allows these sectors to profit at the expense of poor workers who are prevented from legal migration. Using immigration and changing demographics as a scapegoat for the economic fears of US-born residents who face the consequences of a global economy allows politicians and corporations to avoid blame.

Arnoldo Ramos, the Director of the Council of Latino Agencies, told about the L.A. meeting saying, “Groups from distinct parts of the country came together to create a front against INS abuses and to defend immigrant rights. More than petitions, people are looking for direct action.”

D.C. Actions in October

During the National Week of Action Against Immigration Raids, Washington, D.C. will hold local events to raise consciousness about raids, human rights, and to protest immigration enforcement strategies. Speakers will give testimony to specific incidents of verbal and physical abuse, civil rights violations, and illegal interrogations by INS agents. Actions will also denounce the negative effect of INS cooperation with local police, Department of Labor, and other state and federal agents. Most importantly, D.C. actions will begin at the neighborhood level. The D.C. Immigrant Coalition believes that raids are detrimental to community involvement, empowerment and organizing.

In Mt. Pleasant, a group of Bell Multicultural High School students participated in a Georgetown University-sponsored program which formed the Youth Action Research Group. Heriberto Vasquez from the YARG team concluded in YARG’s report of over more than 50 interviews with community members this summer: “People should get treated the same because everyone, immigrant or non-immigrant, has human rights. Some people put pressure on immigrants saying that they are going to call La Migra (the INS) on them so they get scared and sometimes they will leave their job and become homeless.”

The National Week of Action Against Immigration Raids October Events will focus on the Mt. Pleasant, Columbia Heights, and Adams Morgan neighborhoods in D.C. On October 10, community groups will kick-off the National Week of Action Against INS Raids with a “Free Market Day for the Dignity of Immigrants” at Diversity Park at the intersection of Columbia Rd. and Champlain Sts. From noon-5 p.m. people can donate or receive clothes, school supplies or toys. There will be children’s activities, musicians, a consulta popular (interviews), street theatre, and a presentation by the YARG team. Contact Jessica Alvarez of the Latino Leadership Institute for more information or to donate materials ahead of time (202-328-9451).

On October 14, 1998, the National Raids Task Force will release the national report at the Capitol. The press conference is open to the supporting public. Please call Marnie Brady at 202-328-9451 for more information.

On October 15, 1998 a group of peaceful demonstrators will hold civil disobedience to protest INS raids. Please call the D.C. Immigrant Coalition for more information at 202-328-9451.

Marnie Brady works with the D.C. Immigrant Coalition.

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