“The U.S.-Mexican border has be-
come a hot spot for armed political
unrest and violent drug trafficking.
Because of the threats of violence, the
U.S. government has put its border
S.W.A.T_ team on alert. CBS News
has learned [that] for almost a year the
U.S. Border Patrol has secretly been
training a special 100-man unit. This
elite group is known as the Border
Patrol Tactical Team. BORTAC is
trained to use heavy fire power.”
CBS News Anchor Dan Rather is-
sued this report on March 8. But
BORTAC’s operations were first un-
covered by the Mexican American
Legal Defense and Education Fund
(MALDEF) which learned last
November that the elite patrol is being
trained to deal with “immigration
emergencies” which “pose a life-
threatening situation to officers or citi-
zens.”
When MALDEF representatives
asked Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS) Commissioner Alan
Nelson to define an “immigration
emergency,” he stated only that
BORTAC would be activated “when
lives and property are threatened.”
He also cited two occasions that might
have justified deployment of the pa-
trol: the recent riots over alleged elec-
toral fraud in Piedras Negras, Mexico,
which led some 100 Mexican citizens
to flee across the border, and the inci-
dents surrounding the death of a U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency official in
Mexico.
Created in a climate of heated pub-
lic debate over U.S. immigration pol-
icy, BORTAC is only one facet of a
growing government campaign to de-
fend the nation against “the silent in-
vasion.” In an era of high unemploy-
ment and economic insecurity, public
officials and the media repeatedly
Haitians in a Brooklyn class.
charge the estimated 2 to 6 million un-
documented workers-most of Latin
American origin-with taking jobs
from U.S. citizens, depleting public
resources and threatening national se-
curity.
Over the past four years, supporters
of a series of legislative packages de-
signed to crack down on undocu-
mented immigrants (best known as the
Simpson-Mazzoli Bill). have framed
their as yet unsuccessful campaign
in these same terms. And according
to recent polls, U.S. public opinion
largely supports efforts to seal the
nation’s borders.
The Crime of Being Hispanic
Though largely unfounded, the re-
strictionists’ charges have provided
the backdrop for recent assaults on the
rights of the undocumented. On May
23, “Jos6 Valdez” approached the
San Francisco laundry plant where he
worked sorting dirty linen. An INS
agent confronted him at the door, de-
manding to see his immigration pa-
pers. “I’m not carrying my wallet,”
Valdez responded. “You are very
nervous,” said the agent, who yelled
back into the plant for assistance. Two
officers ran up to Valdez, grabbed his
arms and twisted them behind his
back to handcuff him. One also grab-
bed him by the hair and hit his head
against a laundry truck. “They didn’t
have to treat me that way,” Valdez
said later. “I am a simple, honest
worker, not a drug trafficker or an as-
sassin.” INS seized six other un-
documented laundry workers that day.
This episode is only the latest in a
series of workplace raids dating from
April 1982, when the INS conducted a
week-long offensive designed to “re-
move illegal aliens from the jobs that
would be attractive to unemployed
U.S. workers.” Known as “Opera-
tion Jobs,” the highly publicized
campaign resulted in over 5,400 ar-
rests nationwide, mostly of Latin
Americans. MALDEF reports that in
the San Francisco Bay Area, 462 of
the 467 persons arrested were of His-
panic origin, a figure highly dispro-
portionate to the area’s estimated
ethnic break-down of undocumented
workers.
But beyond selectively enforcing
immigration laws against Latinos, the
raids raised other concerns. Accord-
ing to National Lawyers Guild (NLG)
attorney Bill Tamayo. “‘dozens, if not
hundreds, of reports were made con-
cerning INS violations of [the work-
ers’] rights. Several employees were
beaten by INS agents, some ap-
prehended were never allowed to see
or talk to a lawyer, while others were
never even given a chance to show
their ‘green cards’ before being hand-
cuffed and taken away to INS deten-
tion centers. Mothers and fathers were
unexpectedly separated from their
children for hours artd sometimes
overnight .. Mass confusion regard-
ing the right of the INS to conduct
these raids resulted in employers lay-
ing off or firing Latino workers.”
Groups fighting the raid.-or “area
control surveys”-say these practices
deny workers the right to legal due
process and freedom from unreasona-
ble search and seizure, as protected
under the Fifth and Fourth Amend-
ments to the U. S. Constitution.
The government claims that its ac-
tions are covered by a 1984 Supreme
Court decision-INS v. Delgado-in
which the court held that a typical fac-
JULYIAUGUST 1985
Lindie Bosniuk, a graduate student in
Latin American Studies at U.C. Ber-
keley, will be entering law school this
fall.
9tory raid did not violate the workers’
constitutional rights. In the Delgado
case, as in most raids, INS agents sur-
rounded the factory buildings, blocked
all exits and questioned workers
inside about their immigration status.
The court ruled that workers had
willingly complied with the question-
ing and were free to leave.
This amounts to “a twisted and tor-
tured reading of the facts of the case,”
according to NLG attorneys Claudia
Slovinsky and Marc Van Der Hout,
given “the presence of agents block-
ing each exit, armed with badges,
walkie-talkies and guns and roving
agents in open view questioning
workers and taking some of them
away.
Roundups Lead to Drownings
Workplace raids have had much
more serious consequences. Califor-
nia Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA)
reports that at least 14 farmworkers
have drowned in the last decade dur-
ing Border Patrol roundup operations.
Several California civil rights, church
and farmworker organizations have
charged the Border Patrol with “herd-
ing” farmworkers toward waterways,
forcing them to choose between sur-
render or an attempt to swim across.
According to information released by
California Senator Alan Cranston,
eyewitnesses to farmworker drown-
ings say the Border Patrol “forcibly
restrain[ed] them from saving such
victims.” Several immigrant workers
have also been killed during high-
speed highway chases by the Border
Patrol. At the request of the California
groups, the Organization of American
States initiated an investigation into
the charges late last year.
In recent months, INS has sought to
buttress its own deteriorating profile
and minimize costs to the employers
by instituting an immigrant arrest pro-
gram dubbed “Operation Co-opera-
tion.” INS quietly notifies employers
of an impending sweep, allowing
them time to find legal replacements
for undocumented employees before
moving on the plant. Sometimes INS
requests employer consent before in-
terviewing employees. Co-operative
employers are able to significantly re-
duce work-place disruption, while those
who decline to co-operate face sur-
prise sweeps in the future.
INS has also extended its raids
beyond the worksite to include whole
communities, enlisting the assistance
of other law enforcement agencies to
do the job. One such operation oc-
curred on the evening of September 8,
1984, in the small agricultural town of
Sanger, in California’s San Joaquin
Valley. One hundred and fifty law en-
forcement officials from the INS, the
Fresno County Sheriff’s Department,
the Sanger and Fresno Police depart-
ments, the California Department of
Alcoholic Beverage Control and the
U.S. Border Patrol, armed with
helicopters, automatic weapons, bul-
let-proof vests, floodlights, police
dogs and several empty buses, block-
aded the main street downtown and
conducted a sweep of 16 bars fre-
quented by the town’s predominantly
Hispanic population.
“Officers came in like Hitler’s
police or the police in South Africa,”
said one tavern owner. In each bar, all
patrons were declared under arrest, in-
cluding U.S. citizens and legal resi-
dents, and each was interrogated
about immigration status. Most were
held for several hours, denied permis-
sion to use the bathroom or to move in
any manner. Although the stated ob-
jective of the sweep was to enforce al-
cohol, drug and prostitution laws,
295 people “were herded into four
buses and transported back to Mex-
ico,” according to the Herald News of
Fontana, California.
This and similar sweeps throughout
California and Florida have provoked
strong public outrage. Local newspa-
pers and city councils have con-
demned the raids, while Hispanic
groups report that their offices have
been flooded with callers concerned
about future roundups. Six U.S. citi-
zens (five of Latin American ancestry)
have launched a class-action suit a-
gainst the INS, claiming that their
civil rights were violated during town
raids.
Attorneys for CRLA, which is hand-
ling the suit, charge that “the Mexi-
can immigrant is “the ‘new Jew,’ the
victim of a government hysteria that
ends up costing everyone their
rights.” CRLA notes that virtually all
the sweeps have occurred on the
Saturday evening after the harvest has
ended. “It is an old story but one
made all the more distasteful by the
new tactic of masking the raids in the
garb of crime-busting,” said attorney
Steve Teixeira.
Effort to Deny Social Services
A most hotly debated aspect of
these operations and other recent INS
enforcement practices is the agency’s
increasing collaboration with other
law enforcement bodies. The law on
inter-agency co-operation in immigra-
tion detentions is cloudy, but cases
have emerged around the country in
which agencies appear to be overstep-
ping legal bounds, according to some
observers. And even where such co-
operation is not illegal, some
municipalities have chosen to restrict
the practice.
Last March, Chicago Mayor Harold
Washington issued an Executive
Order declaring that his city will cease
to co-operate with federal immigra-
tion authorities. The Police Chiefs of
San Jos6 and Santa Ana, California
have publicly announced a policy of
non-co-operation with INS and Bor-
der Patrol officials, because, accord-
ing to the Santa Ana Police Depart-
ment, “the raids jeopardize communi-
ty relations.”
INS has extended the scope of its
enforcement activities nationally to
include entering homes without war-
rants; offering U.S. jobs to Mexicans
in an undercover operation known as
“cold line”; making arrests at soup
lines; conducting raids on institutions
acting as advocates for the Latino
community; and sweeping worksites
where undocumented employees are
attempting to organize. INS has also
increased co-operation with state and
federal social service agencies, aim-
ing to identify the undocumented and
deny services. Rights advocates argue
that as a result, immigrants are afraid
to seek medical care and other forms
of basic assistance for which they are
eligible.
Legal challenges to many of these
practices are underway. But even if
the courts declare that INS’s ap-
prehension techniques are illegal,
another 1984 Supreme Court decision
REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10could render such rulings virtually
useless for those facing deportation.
In INS v. L6pez-Menoza, the court
held that information obtained in vio-
lation of the Fourth Amendment by
INS is not excludable as evidence
from deportation proceedings.
Though the case represents another
major setback, attorneys argue that
legal means, though limited, do re-
main for protecting the undocumented
and challenging INS conduct. In addi-
tion, preemptive defense is being or-
ganized through “know-your-rights”
campaigns around the county. Immi-
grants are advised of their right to re-
main silent when approached by im-
migration officials, and to demand a
deportation hearing if taken into cus-
tody. The evidence on which the de-
portation order is based is almost in-
variably obtained directly from the
immigrant, according to Antonio
Rodriguez of the Los Angeles Center
For Law and Justice, and INS figures
indicate that over 90% of arrested un-
documented immigrants in 1983 ac-
cepted deportation without a legal
fight.
Thousands of Children Held
For immigrants who do end up in
INS custody, conditions can be both
abusive and dangerous. According to
Carlos Holguin of the National Center
For Immigrants Rights, Inc. (NCIR
Inc.) in Los Angeles, INS has made a
practice of arresting unaccompanied
minors and not releasing them until
their parent, usually also undocu-
mented, turns him/herself in for inter-
rogation. INS has deported scores of
children to Mexico alone, while close
to 2,000 Central American children
around the country are being held
in immigration detention facilities,
some for months at a time.
Prison conditions for both children
and adults are frequently grim. At the
detention center in El Centro, Califor-
nia, immigrants are reportedly sub-
jected to hazardous sanitary condi-
tions, forced to remain in unshaded,
1 I10-degree sun for hours at a time and
are provided with no recreational or
reading materials other than the New
Testament. At the Laredo, Texas Im-
migration Processing Center, privately
owned and run by Corrections Corpo-
ration of America, strip searches of
women and girls were routine until
May, when INS yielded to public
pressure.
South Texas legal aid attorney Pat-
rick Hughes reports that children in
the Laredo center were placed in iso-
lation cells during a recent chicken
pox epidemic. According to Hughes,
detention capacity for immigrants and
refugees in Texas has increased fif-
Latin American immigrants worship in a Manhattan church.
teen-fold since 1981. Miami immi-
grant and refugee rights groups charge
that rapes and beatings are common at
the nearby Krome Detention Center,
and medical care there is inadequate.
The grossly overcrowded facility
mainly confines Haitians and Central
Americans.
Moves to heighten public aware-
ness of INS abuses are underway. The
National Consultation on Immigrants’
and Refugees’ Rights. held in Los
Angeles April 26-27. drew represen-
tatives of church, community, legal
and labor groups from 16 states. The
group agreed to press for Congres-
sional hearings into repressive and il-
legal INS practices, to launch a na-
tional know-your-rights campaign, to
encourage municipalities not to co-op-
erate with INS and to prepare for a
National Day of Justice for Immi-
grants and Refugees this fall.
But conference participants know
they face an uphill struggle. “The
Civil Rights Act of 1964 [was not] in-
troduced and passed simply due to the
good hearts of a few congressmen,”
says consultation organizer and
panelist Maria Kamiya. “Getting that
act passed was the result of years of
hard work, of community organizing
and protest. This is the kind of battle
we face in the coming years.”
Meanwhile, tension at the border
continues to rise. Though BORTAC
has not yet been deployed, the Border
Patrol is experiencing an unprece-
dented expansion in funding and
manpower. There have been at least
eight border shootings between im-
migration agents and Mexican nation-
als in 1985 alone. In one highly pub-
licized case, a Border Patrolman shot
and critically wounded a 12-year-old
Mexican boy, Humberto Carrillo Es-
trada, near San Ysidro, California.
The boy was standing on Mexican
soil. Though the agent claimed that
Humberto was going to pelt him with
rocks, and was accompanied by other
rock-throwers, the child was shot in
the back. The INS defended the
agent’s actions, claiming they “were
justified to protect his fellow agents
from grave bodily harm.” The San
Diego District Attorney’s office an-
nounced it will not prosecute the
agent.
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