Immigrant Rights Groups Gather to Protest Abuses

Immigrant advocates nationwide, alarmed about heightened U.S. enforcement efforts, gathered in Los Angeles on Saturday to craft new strategies to protect the continued influx of immigrants.

“We are concerned about increasing human-rights violations in immigration enforcement and a public atmosphere of apathy or even hostility,” said Cathi Tactaquin of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, a co-sponsor of the conference, held at USC.

The two-day event, which concludes today, featured sessions focusing on topics as wide-ranging as renewed immigrant enforcement in the workplace, gaining access to detention facilities, welfare reform and the plight of day laborers. Speakers urged that immigrants’ rights be viewed as a human rights issue, with the application of international standards of behavior.

Throughout, there was a broad sense that immigrants are increasingly under siege, especially in light of the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s unprecedented buildup of forces along the U.S.-Mexico border and an increasingly aggressive deportation campaign. The INS reported deporting almost 80,000 during the first six months of the current fiscal year, up 78% from the same period last year.

“The worsening plight of refugees and immigrants has dramatized the situation,” said Susan Alva of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, which hosted the conference.

Participants from rural areas said they were especially concerned that local police officials were often working in tandem with the INS to arrest and deport suspected illegal immigrants. An immigration overhaul adopted by Congress in 1996 expanded the potential for police-INS cooperation while speeding procedures for deportations, though many local police agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department, have policies limiting such partnerships.

But the favorite target was the INS, which was assailed for raids and sweeps condemned by the advocates as illegal and for allegedly disrupting stable communities of hard-working people. One Oregon activist described how agents raided a rural restaurant and hauled away both employees and patrons.

INS officials acknowledge that enforcement activity is on the rise, but they say they are responding to congressional direction and say care is taken to ensure that people’s rights are respected.

“We have a job to do, but we make every effort to do it with a measure of fairness and compassion, and to treat people with dignity,” said Virginia Kice, an INS spokeswoman contacted after the conference. “I think we’ve also made significant strides in recent years to reach out to the community.”

Co-sponsoring the event were the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and the Immigration Law Enforcement Monitoring Project of the American Friends Service Committee.