One year after the New Bedford raid, has anything changed?

Today marks one year since the raid on the Michael Bianco factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has said that it has learned its lesson. But raids continue at an alarming pace, both in workplaces and in homes.

In the past year, ICE carried out over one hundred workplace and home raids, and it plans to do more. In Fiscal Year 2007, ICE deported 276,912 persons - an all time record - and this year promises to be no different, with immigration detention now being the fastest growing form of incarceration in the country.

Immediately following the New Bedford raid, ACLUM, together with other advocates, filed a lawsuit challenging ICE’s practices. While a court ultimately found that jurisdictional issues prevented it from hearing the case, it said that it hoped “ICE .. will treat this … series of events as a learning experience in order to devise better, less ham-handed ways of carrying out its important responsibilities.”

Yesterday at a press conference, ICE chief Julie Myers continued to defend the New Bedford raid, stating that no children were left stranded. Of course, we know that this simply is not true. On the day of the raid, community groups counted 200 affected children and could name those who had been left without a caretaker. While ICE, at the insistence of Senator Kerry, has come up with humanitarian standards to be used when carrying out large raids, problems continue, and the “ham-handed” approach still seems to dominate.

Just last month, the ACLU of Southern California was forced to bring a lawsuit when 100 immigrants were arrested in a workplace raid and ICE denied their lawyers the ability to accompany them to interviews where officials questioned them about their status.

Without binding rules and extensive training on how to conduct enforcement actions, each raid is an opportunity for abuse.

In Massachusetts, fear and distrust of authorities continues in immigrant communities, leading to crimes going unreported and previously active members of communities going underground. The Boston Globe recently reported that a pair of robbers dressed as police officers were targeting homes of undocumented immigrants because they knew that they would not report the robberies.

ACLUM continues to fight against unjust policies that put families and communities at risk by challenging illegal conduct and educating the public about ICE abuses.