Immigration Raid was Ham-handed - U.S. Court of Appeals

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston criticized how the government handled the March arrest of 361 immigrant workers at a New Bedford leather-goods factory, according to the Boston Globe on 11/27/2007.

The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said yesterday that the raid by the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which drew widespread public criticism for separating parents from children, was "ham-handed" and seemed callous.

The court upheld the dismissal of a civil suit brought by immigrants who were transferred to a Texas detention center. The tranfer prevented many of them from contacting their families and lawyers.

The appeals court said it hopes ICE views the raid as a "learning experience in order to devise better, less ham-handed ways of carrying out its important responsibilities."

The Boston Herald added that ICE gave social welfare agencies insufficient notice

of the raid, that caseworkers were denied access to detainees until after the first group had been transferred, and that various ICE actions temporarily thwarted any effective investigation into the detainees’ needs."

As a result, a substantial number of the detainees’ minor children were left for varying periods of time without adult supervision, according to the ruling.

"We are sensitive to the concerns raised by the petitioners and are conscious that undocumented workers, like all persons who are on American soil, have certain inalienable rights".

Let's hope for a more fair policy for the future.

And those kids who were separated from their mothers with no safety net in place. Imagine the effect on those children.

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In another case the New Jersey Attorney General, according to today's New York Times, said that

city police official acted improperly by asking about the immigration status of two journalists who witnessed a crime scene in September, violating a state directive on immigrants and law enforcement. The journalists, a freelance photographer and the editor of The Brazilian Voice newspaper, reported to the police that the photographer had found a woman’s body in a Newark alley. They were questioned about their immigration status by the official, Deputy Chief Samuel A. DeMaio, the attorney general’s office said. The directive, introduced in August, tells the police to ask the immigration status only of those arrested on indictable offenses or for drunken driving. In a statement, Attorney General Anne Milgram, above, said the directive "specifically prohibits police from inquiring about the immigration status of any victim, witness or person requesting police assistance." The Newark police director, Garry F. McCarthy, said the Police Department would review the matter before deciding whether to reprimand Chief DeMaio.

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The N.J. Attorney General has the wisdom to know that punishing people that are being "good citizens", good samaritans and victims or witnesses to crimes is bad policy. That policy would create an atmosphere where even legal immigrants are profiled and discriminated against and where it's better just to not get involved.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Is that the society we want?