Public advocacy toward Justice and Peace

The United Church of Christ Justice and Peace Action Network (JPAN) posts the following:

"Postville, Iowa. Dulles Airport, Virginia. Providence, Rhode Island. Immigrant raids aren’t immigration reform.

In recent months agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have carried out well-publicized immigration raids in factories, meatpacking plants, construction sites and other workplaces employing undocumented immigrants. ICE calls these workers criminals because immigration law forbids employers to hire them, but while workers get deported, often leaving their children with relatives or even strangers, the employers who benefited from their cheap labor will not go to jail.

Since ICE can't deport all 12 million undocumented workers in the country, it has developed a plan that seeks to deport 500,000 workers who have overstayed their visas, offering to deport their US citizen children or legal resident children and spouses as well, presumably as a humanitarian gesture. In case these workers are not sufficiently enticed by this offer, ICE announced that it has over 100 teams of agents working full time to seek out and arrest these half a million people who, even according to ICE, have done nothing wrong except come to this country, accept employment from U.S. companies, pay taxes and support their families.

ICE agents have been seen outside of schools, waiting for parents to come to pick up their children, many of whom are U.S. citizens. In some states ICE has recruited local police to set up road blocks as people come out of churches on Sunday. ICE agents continue to knock on doors in the middle of the night to arrest workers and in the process, terrorize their children.

After the recent raid at Dulles Airport, advocates for immigrants with the National Capital Immigrant Coalition, complained that ICE officials refused to grant the detained men access to a lawyer even though the advocates arranged for one to be present. The tactics employed by ICE have earned sharp congressional rebuff.

Questionable tactics, civil rights violations, and abandoned children will not solve our immigration situation. Both presidential candidates support a comprehensive immigration reform. So does President Bush. Until there is such a bill and unless we start addressing the root causes of migration throughout the world, the tension between undocumented workers and our government will continue.

Please contact your Member of Congress during recess and let them know that while political realities may stall comprehensive immigration reform being achieved by this Congress, that ICE raids are not the American way to deal with our immigration problem."