Beefed-Up Ins Flexes Its Muscles Raids, Deportations Up Sharply As Budget Hike Follows ‘96 Law

Recent raids on Idaho businesses marked the beginning of an era for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

More power, a bigger budget and unsuspecting immigrants mean the agency will deport more people this summer than it has in years in a renewed conflict between compassion and the law.

Agents argue that the scores of illegal workers arrested and deported this spring free up jobs for hungry Idahoans. But there appears to be plenty of work. The last time unemployment statewide was lower than in May was 1989.

What the INS calls work-site enforcements, the Hispanic community calls raids. But those enforcing the law say they have sympathy for the people they are deporting.

“There’s such a disparity between our standard of living and theirs,” said Randolph Robinson, the assistant district director for investigation. “I’d be jumping the fence, too.”

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 beefs up border patrols and their technology. It increases the sentence to 15 years in prison for using fraudulent documents to get a job. It creates a new penalty for employers who knowingly hire 10 or more illegal aliens. And it made deportation the penalty for new crimes like domestic violence and illegal voting.

INS got $428 million more to carry out the new mandate, a budget increase of 16 percent to $3.1 billion.

Dan Ramirez of the Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs suggested that the relatively lax attitude toward immigration since the 1986 amnesty act that gave legal status to huge numbers of previously illegal aliens left immigrants unprepared for today’s crackdown.

And Idaho Migrant Council Director Humberto Fuentes said, “A lot of people here are scared.”

Technically, residents of foreign countries are supposed to apply for a U.S. visa in their home nation. Then, they should wait in their home country until their visa is approved. Applicants who have relatives in the United States are given priority. But the government allots only a specific number of visas to each country every year. For Mexicans, it takes about six years to get a visa and then the prized “green card” needed to work in America.

Those cards, along with Social Security cards, were the counterfeit documents federal agents found on the illegal workers they have arrested this year.

“Just to possess these documents is a felony,” Robinson said, but rather than jail the workers for up to three days at $45 each a day, Robinson opted to save his agency nearly $11,000 and deport them immediately.

The decision means those aliens will not even have a record of deportation, which would hurt their chances of earning a visa later.

Their hasty deportation, however, concerned many members of the Hispanic community. While some disagree with the policy, most just wish the INS executed it more humanely.

Of special concern were reports of agents staking out businesses to catch illegal immigrants who had come to pick up their deported family members’ paychecks.

“We understand the officers have to enforce the law,” Fuentes said. “But they’re discriminatory. Just because I’m Hispanic, they should not treat me like an animal.”

Immigration officials did not press charges against the businesses because they had filed the appropriate forms showing the workers provided proof they could be legally employed.

Businesses like food processors or manufacturers attract illegal workers.

“It’s hard work, and there’s a constant demand for employees because there is relatively high turnover,” Simplot Co. spokesman Fred Zerza said. “It also doesn’t require high entry skills and offers year-round employment, so it can become part of the migrant workers’ cycle.”

But that’s only half of the story, according to Ramirez. By the time poor immigrants apply for American visas, they have invested up to $8,000 for a family of five and are in debt. And they must work wherever they can - and as much as they can - to support their families, he said.

Ramirez said Mexican immigrants pay up to $1,500 for counterfeit documents that allow them to work in the United States in the meantime.

“Immigrants are the hardest working people in America. They don’t complain, they’re always on time, and they’re willing to do hard work,” Ramirez said. “They don’t come here to live or because they want to be here. They come here to survive.”

Fractured families and futures are the most painful ramification of deportation. One mother panicked when she heard her husband had been deported. He had a prescription for their daughter in his pocket, and without it, the mother did not know how to make the sick child well.

A legal immigrant living in Caldwell was left alone to raise his children without his wife, who had not yet received her visa.

Two promising Caldwell High School students who had attended Caldwell schools for at least seven years returned to Mexico with their family.

Even though the INS allowed the illegal workers to call home, Fuentes said their speedy deportation left families reeling and confused. Given more time, he said, schools, social service agencies and other groups could help.

But Robinson isn’t apologizing.

“We give them the opportunity to take their families. In fact we encourage it,” Robinson said. “So if they’re ripped away from their loved ones, it’s their choice.”

But few yank their children out of good schools to take them back to an impoverished nation.

“We’re just enforcing the laws for society,” Robinson said. “If society doesn’t like the laws, they need to elect some people to change them. It’s not our position to decide whether it’s fair or unfair.”