Immigration raids ignite hard feelings

By 6 a.m. most days, immigrants looking for daywork gather at the Baltimore Workers Employment Center on East Fayette Street near Fells Point. Hours later, they fan out across the area, painting buildings, constructing sidewalks, cleaning houses and landscaping yards for hourly, cash wages. It’s a scene played out in cities across Maryland as many of the state’s nearly 200,000 illegal immigrants seek to support themselves.

Such day laboring has ignited a bitter public debate. To some, hiring undocumented workers threatens the state’s workforce, while others insist they have a clear right to seek employment and are ramping up legal battles to prove it.

“I feel like the only place where a shimmer of light can be seen is in the courts,” said Melissa Crow, a private immigration attorney in Baltimore. She used to serve as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where federal immigration legislation was written.

Crow said the failure of Congress to pass the legislation to deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country has left it to states to address the issue—and workplace raids abound. Such incidents, Crow said, have forced state and local courts to bear the legal load.

She describes her casework as constantly “putting out fires” for the immigrants.

“There’s a lot of tension between the needs of employers who don’t have enough unskilled laborers to get their work done and the vulnerability of the workers who are here and ready to do the jobs nobody else wants to do,” Crow said.

Crow says workplace raids by local and federal immigration enforcement officers over the past two years escalated the immigrants’ legal problems. Raids in Baltimore and Annapolis have prompted crackdowns on hiring undocumented workers and led to deportations.

To some, that is justice served.

“I describe Maryland as a sanctuary state for illegal aliens, and there aren’t too many of those,” said Brad Botwin, director of Help Save Maryland, a grassroots organization with members in 18 counties and Baltimore.

The group wants to end the use of public funds to support illegal immigration in Maryland, which Botwin said is fostered by public policy pushed by Gov. Martin O’Malley and Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon.

“We are probably one of the worst [states] in the country” in immigration policy, Botwin said, adding that most members joined Help Save Maryland “because they are fed up” with driver’s licenses and public education benefits being given to non-citizens.

Botwin said efforts by CASA de Maryland, which opened the Baltimore Workers Employment Center in 2007 with the help of public funding, are a slap in the face to those who file for legal citizenship and to current citizens.

Sterling Clifford, Mayor Dixon’s spokesman, said the city believes the immigration debate is strictly “a federal issue.”

“What Baltimore city has to do is protect the welfare of all who live in Baltimore city,” he said, meaning all residents, including illegal ones.

At the workers center, immigrants receive workforce placement and training, financial literacy and educational programs, and legal assistance, said Kerry O’Brien, who heads the legal program in CASA de Maryland’s Silver Spring office. CASA also serves as an advocate for illegal workers who are identified and targeted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“I would characterize the problems as dire,” O’Brien said of her clients. “We have put together an excellent team of lawyers to respond to raids and help people with individual cases, particularly in larger-scale efforts to combat the enforcement efforts of ICE.”

She cited June 30 raids on workers from Annapolis Painting Services Inc., conducted by more than 100 county and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) police officers. The predawn raids were made not at the worksite, but at houses and apartments, she said, a tactic that resulted in civil charges against undocumented workers and a criminal investigation of the company.

Many of the workers couldn’t post bond, O’Brien said. CASA announced a national fund drive Aug. 11 for bond money.

“The real human thing is, there were 46 people physically taken from their families and put into jail for the reason that they are working in this country and trying to earn a living,” she said.

The regional Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency office in Baltimore did not respond to a request for comment. {EXA}

Melody Simmons is a freelance writer based in Baltimore.