Immigration Issue Page

U.S. immigration agents raided eight Mexican restaurants in northern Ohio on Wednesday and arrested 58 employees as part of a criminal operation against illegal immigrants, federal authorities said. All those arrested were citizens of Mexico and working at Casa Fiesta, a chain of Mexican restaurants in Ashland, Fremont, Norwalk, Oberlin, Oregon, Sandusky, Vermillion and Youngstown, Ohio, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement. It said the raid was the culmination of more than a yearlong investigation. The raid was the latest targeting businesses employing illegal workers.

For two weeks in May, Erik Camayd-Freixas, a Spanish interpreter with 23 years of experience and federal court certification, worked nearly round the clock as a translator for almost 400 illegal immigrants snatched in a raid on an Iowa meatpacking plant. His firsthand account describes in shocking detail how prosecutors trampled the immigrants' right to due process and made a mockery of justice. The immigrants, wrote Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, were charged with serious criminal offenses instead of civil immigration offenses. The harsh, mandatory sentences for the offenses railroaded the immigrants, many Guatemalan peasants illiterate in English and Spanish, into pleading guilty to crimes they could not have been guilty of.

The government is reporting a huge uptick in the number of arrests in their efforts to crack down on illegal immigration. In 2004, there were only 845 arrests. In 2007, there were 4,940 arrests. Only 8 million more to go. This is a farce, except for the families who are arbitrarily chosen to be made an example. The sad truth of the matter is that in our free market economy, there are some jobs that would never get filled if we did not hire undocumented workers. The agricultural sector and the construction industry are two areas where undocumented workers are disproportionately represented. The work is hard and/or sporadic. Undocumented workers will undertake it. Try hiring a full-time dishwasher in downtown D.C. or New York: Most of your applicants will not have proper papers.

Despite pleas from the White House and the State Department, as well as an international court order to review their cases, Texas will execute five Mexicans on death row, a spokeswoman for the governor said Thursday. The first of the executions- that of Jose Ernesto Medellin, 33, convicted in the 1993 rape and murder of two teenage girls here- is scheduled for Aug. 5. The decision by Gov. Rick Perry to allow the executions is the latest twist in a long-running battle between Mexico, which has no death penalty, and the United States over the fate of 51 Mexicans facing capital punishment in several states, including 14 in Texas.

From excessive strip searches and overcrowding to a lack of due process, an immigrant advocacy group alleges detainees are being mistreated at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, which houses illegal aliens in the process of deportation. The study- released by Seattle-based OneAmerica and the International Human Rights Clinic at Seattle University's law school- the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's operation at the Tacoma detention center is harshly criticized. The report contains anecdotes in which detainees describe what they call degrading treatment by guards and subpar conditions at the jail.

While doing good work in Africa and other parts of the world, local faith groups aren't forgetting people who've come to the U.S. and need their help. The American Islamic Center and the REP: Refugee Empowerment Pathway are two of many religion-related efforts assisting the area's flood of immigrants. Primary resettlers are the International Rescue Committee and Catholic Charities' Refugee and Empowerment Services. Both are nonprofit agencies that aid anyone in need, regardless of religion.

Businesses that employ illegal immigrants as workers can expect tougher enforcement through the end of 2008, Julie Myers, head of the federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement agency, said Tuesday. The agency has been criticized in recent months by Immigration rights advocates for treating employers too lightly while aggressively pursuing illegal immigrant workers during work site raids and other actions. Business groups, meanwhile, have balked at state and local enforcement measures around the country that, among other things, would revoke the licenses of companies that employ illegal immigrants.

The bishops of Guatemala are pleading for better treatment for migrants from their country, just as the European Union is hoping to finalize its new policy on immigrants. In a statement Thursday, the prelates expressed their "regret and concern" over the worldwide situation of immigrants, noting that migrants are motivated by "extreme reasons -- poverty, unemployment, insecurity, natural disasters, war, and others." Meanwhile European Union officials, at informal talks in France today, expressed optimism that the "European Pact on Immigration and Asylum" could be finalized by October. Many are criticizing the measure as xenophobic, though defenders say it is just an attempt to control and regulate human movement in the union.

Some states are making it harder for illegal immigrants to attend college by denying in-state tuition benefits or banning undocumented students. In the past two years, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Oklahoma have refused in-state tuition benefits to students who entered the USA illegally with their parents but grew up and went to school in the state. That represents a reversal from earlier this decade, when 10 states passed laws allowing in-state rates for such students. This summer, South Carolina became the first state to bar undocumented students from all public colleges and universities. Josh Bernstein of the National Immigration Law Center, an illegal-immigrants advocate, says sweeping anti-immigration bills are "a very serious threat" to the overall illegal population.

Under pressure from the toughest crackdown on illegal immigration in two decades, employers across the country are fighting back in state legislatures, the federal courts and city halls. Business groups have resisted measures that would revoke the licenses of employers of illegal immigrants. They are proposing alternatives that would revise federal rules for verifying the identity documents of new hires and would expand programs to bring legal immigrant laborers.