Raid raises concern in D.C.

SEATTLE – Immigration agents this week conducted their first work-site raid since President Barack Obama took office, but it was news to their boss, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who on Wednesday ordered a review of the action.

Workplace raids involving the arrests of hundreds of illegal immigrants at a time became almost routine in the last years of the Bush administration, but Napolitano’s response to Tuesday’s raid at a Bellingham manufacturing plant highlighted the Obama administration’s much different approach to a hot-button issue.

Napolitano told lawmakers during a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday that she did not know about the raid before it happened and was briefed on it early Wednesday morning. She has asked U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which arrested 28 illegal immigrants in the raid, for answers.

“I want to get to the bottom of this as well,” she said. She said work-site enforcement needs to be focused on the employers.

In a statement, an ICE official said the agency conducted the raid after information from two “gang members” led agents to start an investigation at the company.

“Follow-up investigation uncovered a potentially large number of illegally employed workers. ICE conducted the operation in order to identify and, if appropriate, apprehend any unauthorized workers and to further determine potential criminal activity,” ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said in an e-mail from Washington, D.C.

Obama, who appointed Napolitano, has signaled a shift in immigration policy that would rely less on work-site enforcement, focusing instead on employers who hire illegal immigrants and on overall immigration reform.

ICE agents rounded up 25 men and three women at Yamato Engine Specialists, all Mexicans except for a Honduran, a Salvadoran and a Guatemalan. Except for three people freed on humanitarian grounds, those arrested are at a detention center in Tacoma, awaiting deportation proceedings.

In a statement Tuesday, ICE officials said many of the people obtained the jobs using fake Social Security numbers and other counterfeit documents.

Shirin Dhanani Makalai, whose family owns the business, said the raid came after months of cooperating with ICE on an audit, which included providing employee rosters to federal authorities on several occasions. She said the family-owned business does not advocate hiring illegal immigrants.

“We try to stay within the guidelines, within the law,” Makalai said Tuesday.

Makalai added that the company did not knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and that employers have no clear way of checking an employee’s legal status. Tuesday’s raid marked the second time ICE had taken workers from the factory, but Makalai said that after an audit in 2006, agents conducted individual interviews, instead of a raid.

She said that family members – who are originally from Uganda – estimate about 60 agents came into the sprawling factory and asked management to round up the workers. She said the business is losing about $60,000 a day and lost four highly skilled workers.

For immigrant advocacy groups, the raid was a surprise as well.

Marissa Graciosa of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, said it was deeply disappointing that ICE has executed a raid since Obama took office. She called the raids destructive and ineffective.