Dragnet for Illegal Workers

By Janice Castro

Miscues and poor planning in a search for scapegoats

Anthony Spinale, owner of G& T Terminal Packing, Inc., in New York City, was startled when armed agents from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) burst through the door last Monday. "They came in like Jesse James, covering this door, covering that door," Spinale said. "I thought it was a holdup." The agents arrested 18 of Spinale's workers, who had been packing fruits and vegetables for grocery-store produce counters, and took them away. Reason: the INS thought they might be illegal aliens.

Across the country, similar raids were conducted last week as a special strike force of 400 INS investigators and Border Patrol officers fanned out to search for undocumented workers in a $500,000 operation dubbed Project Jobs. In five days, more than 300 raids netted nearly 5,400 such workers in nine metropolitan areas.* The targets were supposed to be businesses paying considerably more than the minimum wage of $3.35 an hour, not the usual farms and restaurants. "We felt it would be good to center on these areas where we think the higher-paying jobs are held by illegal aliens," explained INS Spokesman Vern Jervis. "These kinds of jobs seem to be attractive to unemployed Americans." To help U.S. citizens get those jobs, the agency tried to keep local employment offices abreast of what businesses had been raided and how many jobs had opened up.

From the start, Project Jobs was plagued by miscues and poor planning. Alerted to the impending sweeps by news reports, some workers stayed away from their jobs to avoid encounters with INS agents. Some skilled illegal aliens were found employed as steelworkers and machinists, but many of the raids were on businesses offering mostly lowpaying, menial jobs. The raids often seemed more trouble than they were worth. In the Detroit area, for example, 40 sweeps netted a grand total of 34 illegal aliens. At the Utica Packing Co., some 30 miles north of Detroit, 20 agents rounded up 24 suspected aliens in a search that effectively shut down the meat-packing plant for several hours and cost its owners an estimated $8,000 in lost business. As it turned out, none of those taken into custody were in the U.S. illegally. All were back at their jobs by the next day.

An INS team stormed Detroit's Frederick and Herrud pork-processing plant, hauling off 33 workers. There, the bad feelings that greeted the agents everywhere across the U.S. took a comic twist when two gun-toting INS men rushed through a door into a holding area only to be charged by a herd of angry hogs. The terrified officers escaped by swinging across the rafters, Tarzan-style. None of the 33 arrested were illegal aliens.

The operation drew heavy fire from civic, business, religious and Hispanic groups. Charged Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in a letter to President Reagan:

"The Administration ... is scapegoating undocumented workers in an effort to shift the blame for [its] dismal failure to cope with increasing unemployment." Glasser and other critics further suggested that the sweeps were timed to garner congressional support for the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration-reform bill, which is aimed at slowing the flood of illegal aliens (an estimated 1 million last year) entering the U.S. Among other things, the bill would for the first time impose criminal penalties on employers of illegal workers. Other critics suggested that the INS was trying to justify its proposed 22% funding increase, from $428.6 million to $524.6 million, in the President's fiscal 1983 budget.

Equally disturbing were charges by Hispanic groups that INS agents had unfairly singled out Spanish-speaking workers. Some of the week's biggest raids were conducted in Southern California, and 83% of those arrested last week were Mexicans, who make up only about half of all illegal immigrants in the U.S. "They were not looking for Poles or Italians or Greeks," charged Juan Soliz, 32, attorney for Chicago's Mexican-American Defense and Education Fund. "They were looking for people who looked Mexican." Some employers reported that INS teams simply arrested all their Hispanic employees.

In several cases, U.S. citizens were detained for up to twelve hours. Among them was a twelve-year-old boy who was apprehended as he left a grocery store in Colorado. One unidentified Hispanic man was run over by a truck and killed when he fled INS agents at an egg-packing plant in Boulder, Colo. Fear among Hispanics was running so high that church groups in some communities were offering food and sanctuary to people who were afraid to leave their homes.

Many critics of the operation feared that it would fuel anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant prejudices at a time of economic uncertainty. In a telegram to Attorney General William French Smith, California's Democratic Senator Alan Cranston warned: "The raids are sowing dangerous seeds of racial and ethnic conflict." Hispanic groups charged that the raids would make businessmen hesitant about hiring Hispanics. In fact, some employers involved in the raids admitted reluctance even to take back workers who managed to prove their legal status to arresting officers.

INS officials in Washington called the operation a success, citing reports of Americans lining up for the jobs vacated by illegal aliens. But the big question was whether the new workers would stick with the jobs. The signs were not encouraging. At the Petaluma Poultry Co., some 55 miles north of San Francisco, hundreds of applicants vied to replace 18 chicken pluckers who were arrested. By week's end 14 of the 18 new employees had quit. After a much publicized raid in which 53 fish cleaners were arrested at the Point Saint George fishery in nearby Santa Rosa, 20 local job seekers came around, but none wanted to clean fish. They all wanted to drive trucks.

Most Americans would probably agree with the INS's premise that illegal workers should not be stealing jobs from U.S. citizens. But last week's sweeping police action left a sour taste, especially in view of its meager returns. The arrest of a few thousand people seemed a curious way to reduce the number of unemployed (10 million) or illegal aliens (some 3 million). -- By Janice Castro. Reported by David S. Jackson/Washington and Alessandra Stanley /Los Angeles, with other bureaus

*New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, Denver and Newark.

With reporting by David S. Jackson/Washington, Alessandra Stanley/Los Angeles

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.