US: children left abandoned by factory immigration raid

Many of these families, now forcibly torn apart, had lived and worked at the company for years. Of those detained, 115 were from Mexico, two were from Honduras and the other two were from El Salvador and Guatemala.

This surprise raid caught the town’s mayor, the Clark County sheriff, and the plant manager by surprise, and no provisions were made to care for the children or to alert relatives. The federal agents failed to even contact the Department of Human Services, the agency that is usually responsible for abandoned children.

“A lot of those families had kids in day care in different places, and they didn’t know why Mommy and Daddy didn’t come pick them up,” Arkadelphia Mayor Charles Hollingshead told the Associated Press.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman claimed Friday that every one of the immigrants had lied to the agents, telling them they had no children. He later changed his story, admitting that the detainees did tell the agents that they had children left behind. Still, the agents did not allow the detainees to contact their families to make arrangements for their children.

Jose Luis Vidal told the Associated Press that his sister and brother-in-law left behind children aged ten, five and one when they were deported to Laredo, Mexico.

“The children are very sad, especially the baby. She cries all the time,” Vidal said. His sister is attempting to obtain a work permit to return to the United States. Vidal said his sister had been be able to make a furtive call before she was taken away, while many of the others were not as fortunate.

Faced with the choice of either waiting in jail indefinitely for a hearing or being deported, many of the workers have agreed to immediate deportation. The burden of caring for the children has fallen on to the local community, mostly relatives, while some are still being looked after by a local church. In addition, many spouses were left alone after their husbands or wives were deported.

Ronnie Farnam, the plant manager, told the local Sifting Herald News that the immigration agents were abusive in their treatment of the workers. “I know they were arrested for working here illegally, but they’re still human beings,” he said. “(The agents) say they were arresting folks for identity theft, yet none of them has been charged with identity theft. It was an immigration raid, pure and simple.”

The raid will also have a wider effect on the community as a whole. According to Farnam, some 60 workers have not shown up for the night shift since the raid occurred, likely fearing they will also be detained. Finding and training replacements for these workers will take months, during which time the plant will run at 40 to 60 percent of normal production. This means that millions of dollars that would have been paid in wages and taxes to the community will now be lost, causing a wider depression in an already poor area.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/raid-a05.shtml