So there you are, minding your business, working the evening shift at some manual labor job that pays less per hour than a lb. of the food you process or one of the car-parts you manufacture. Suddenly, heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials bust in and start arresting everyone–US citizens included.
This is common practice and is excused as a way to weed out people “posing as American citizens,” or so says I.C.E. spokeswoman Pat Reilly who used to have a slightly more decorous career in the non-profit marketing sector. This cool crew not only busts in with warrants issued for very specific people, but they make full sweeps using intimidation to gain consent. They arrest anyone with a pulse and will gladly detain you for as long as they see fit. And being as kitchen and factory workers often carry sub-machine guns, they come armed to the teeth. Just you try and resist.
It seems they’ve actually broken enough rights these days that they got the attention of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union International, who decided to file a class-action suit against them. There is a brief article in the Washington Post about it. The UFCWU also has a series of similar articles following the case.
They bust in looking for Pablito Perez and detain 300 employees of which any number could be American. The bottom line is that if immigrants with no documents have rights, American citizens shouldn’t have to deal with or put up with such trespasses on their rights. There is a sheet on immigrant rights posted by the National Immigration Law Center.
How often does this happen? Well, I.C.E’s annual report states that they arrested 863 criminals (kudos), and made 4,077 administrative arrests (whatever that means), during raids in workplaces last year. They also collected $30 million in fines–mostly from small and medium-sized companies who need the low-cost labor to compete against the corporate giants making a killing through government-backed trade agreements.
I should mention that it is amazing to anyone who has followed NAFTA since it’s birth in 1994, to see the two democratic candidates declaring their repugnance for the trade treaty. One of them is married to the man who drafted it–but that’s another story. I’m linking to an AP data sheet on Obama and Clinton’s history on NAFTA, just as an FYI.
Now, NAFTA matters because it has been the platform for the greatest Mexican emigration in history.
Meanwhile, make sure you know your rights both as an American and as an immigrant (documented or not).
