ICE Cold to Kids (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

[marmar]

from In These Times:



ICE Cold to Kids
By Kay Steiger


At 10 a.m. on May 12, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended on a meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa, about 200 miles northwest of Des Moines. ICE agents arrested 389 workers who it determined were undocumented — 304 of whom were indicted on various charges, mostly related to their immigrant status. The list of arrested did not include the owners or managers at the meat processing plant.

After Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform in 2006, ICE adopted what is referred to as an “enforcement-only” approach to immigration. The incident in Postville is one example.

ICE arrests have increased 45-fold since 2001, according to the National Council of La Raza, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit. In 2007, nearly 5,000 workplace immigration arrests occured nationwide.

The children of those arrested — many of whom are U.S. citizens — suffer consequences. The raid in Iowa “created panic in the school,” said Janet Murgu’a, president of the National Council of La Raza, during a May 20 hearing before the House subcommittee on workforce protections. She said it forced St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in Postville to mobilize and feed 450 migrants the first night of the raid, and to shelter 150 children who spent the night on mats and in pews.

The number of children with undocumented parents is unknown, but a March 2005 report by the Pew Hispanic Center found that 4.9 million children are in families with at least one undocumented parent. Of those, 3.1 million — or 63 percent — are U.S. citizens.

Last November, ICE adopted humanitarian guidelines after Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and others pushed for their implementation. The discretionary guidelines require agents to investigate whether humanitarian concerns exist among those arrested — including “those with serious medical conditions … pregnant women, nursing mothers, parents who are the sole caretakers of minor children or disabled or seriously ill relatives, and parents who are needed to support their spouses in caring for sick or special needs children or relatives.” ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3744/ice_cold_to_kids/