Raid yielding mixed signals
Workers, given permits, now face deportation
BELLINGHAM – First they were arrested and faced deportation under what has proved to be the Obama administration’s only workplace raid. Then they were given work permits and told they could stay in the United States while their employer was being prosecuted.
Now, the more than two dozen undocumented workers arrested during the February raid here at Yamato Engine Specialists Ltd. are again facing deportation.
“Well, what can you do? You can’t run, that’d be worse,” Gerardo Arreola Gonzalez, one of the 28 workers arrested, said about the raid. “I had to face it. Yes, I felt fear, thinking, ‘The dream is over.’ ”
Gonzalez’s unusual journey through the immigration system symbolizes just how much immigration policy has changed under President Barack Obama – and how it’s still a work in progress.
The deportations and likely removals are a conclusion to a case that displeased both advocates for illegal immigrants and those who lobby for stricter immigration enforcement.
In this case, the company, the workers, and even the Seattle U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office that conducted the raid came in for some sort of punishment or special scrutiny.
Two days after the raid, ICE officials traded urgent e-mails going over answers to questions sent by an apparently miffed White House, according to e-mails obtained by the Associated Press through a federal records request.
In all, 28 men and women – mostly from Mexico – were arrested that February morning. One man opted to leave the country shortly after the raid. The 27 who remained were given work permits until the case against Yamato ended.
Now, five of the 27 workers have been deported. Seven have been allowed to leave the country voluntarily and 15 await court dates with an immigration judge, said ICE spokeswoman Lorie Dankers.
Dankers declined to comment further on the case.
“We’re disappointed. We really did think that things would be different under the Obama administration,” said Pramila Jayapal, executive director of OneAmerica, a Seattle-based immigration advocacy group.