RE: article on I.C.E. enforcement on New York State farms

[Guest guest]

Might you able to cut and paste the article.

>>> las@... 12/29/2006 8:23 PM >>> Folks, Below is a link

to an article in the Dec. 24 New

York Times concerning enforcement raids on MSFWs in New York State. I

guess we'll see what 2007 will

bring on this issue -- changes perhaps.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/nyregion/24migrant.html?_r=1 & oref=slogin

Alice

Alice C. Larson, Ph.D.

Larson Assistance Services

las@...

206.463.9000 (voice)

206.463.9400 (fax)

P.O. Box 801

Vashon Island, WA 98070

This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the

intended recipient(s) and may contain private, confidential, and/or privileged

information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or distribution is

prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, employee, or agent

responsible for delivering this message, please contact the sender by reply

e-mail and destroy all copies of the original e-mail message.

[Guest guest]

NY Times December 24, 2006Immigrants Go From Farms to Jails, and a Climate of Fear Settles In By NINA BERNSTEINELBA, N.Y. — A cold December rain gusted across fields of cabbage destined for New York City egg rolls, cole slaw and Christmas goose. Ankle-deep in mud, six immigrant farmworkers raced to harvest 120,000 pounds before nightfall, knowing that at dawn they could find immigration agents at their door.The farmer who stopped to check their progress had lost 28 other workers in a raid in October, all illegal Mexican immigrants with false work permits at another farm here in western New York. Throughout the region, farm hands have simply disappeared by twos and threes, picked up on a Sunday as they went to church or to the laundry. Whole families have gone into hiding, like the couple who spent the night with their child in a plastic calf hutch. As record-setting enforcement of immigration laws upends old, unspoken arrangements, a new climate of fear is sweeping through the rural communities of western and central New York. “The farmers are just petrified at what’s happening to their workers,” said Maureen Torrey, an 11th-generation grower and a director of the Federal Reserve Bank’s Buffalo branch whose family owns this field and more than 10,000 acres of vegetable and dairy farms. And for the first time in years, farmers are also frightened for themselves. In small towns divided over immigration, they fear that speaking out — or a disgruntled neighbor’s call to the authorities — could make them targets of the next raid and raise the threat of criminal prosecution.Here where agriculture is the mainstay of a depressed economy, the mainstay of agriculture is largely illegal immigrant labor from Mexico. Now, more aggressive enforcement has disrupted a system of official winks, nods and paperwork that for years protected farmers from “knowingly” hiring the illegal immigrants who make up most of their work force.“It serves as a polarizing force in communities,” said Jo Dudley, who directs the Cornell Farmworker Program, which does research. “The immigrant workers themselves see anyone as a potential enemy. The growers are nervous about everyone. There’s this environment of fear and mistrust all across the board.” In a recent case that chilled many farmers, federal agents trying to develop a criminal case detained several longtime Hispanic employees of a small dairy farm in Clifton Springs, and unsuccessfully pressed them to give evidence that the owners knew they were here illegally.Since raids began to increase in early spring, arrests have netted dozens of Mexican farm workers on their way to milk parlors, apple orchards and vineyards, and prompted scores more to flee, affecting hundreds of farms. Some longtime employees with American children were deported too quickly for goodbyes, or remain out of reach in the federal detention center in Batavia, N.Y., where immigrants are tracked by alien registration number, not by name.Federal officials say events here simply reflect a national commitment to more intensive enforcement of immigration laws, showcased in raids in December at Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states. The effort led to a record 189,924 deportations nationally during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up 12 percent from the year before, officials said, and 2,186 deportations from Buffalo, up 24 percent. It includes prosecuting employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, better cooperation with state and local law enforcement, and new money from Congress for more agents, more detention beds and quicker deportations.In small towns like Sodus, Dresden and Elba, where a welcome sign declares that the population of 2,369 is “Just Right,” some residents quietly approve of the crackdown. They are unhappy with the growing year-round presence of Mexicans they consider a drain on public services, resentful of the political clout of farmers, or concerned about the porous borders denounced nightly on CNN by Lou Dobbs. Others are torn, praising Mexican families but worried that some farmers exploit them. Farm lenders and lobbyists warn of economic losses that will be measurable in unharvested crops, hundreds of closed farms and revenues lost in the wine tourism of the Finger Lakes. On the other side, supporters of stringent enforcement expect savings in schools and hospitals, and a boost to low wages as the labor market tightens. The harvest of fear may be harder to chart, but it is already here. It can be felt in Sodus, where an October raid left a dozen children without either parent for days, and in vineyards near Penn Yan, where a grower of fine cabernet grapes reluctantly permits a worker to sleep in a car, hidden in the vines that he prunes. Everywhere, rumors fly about why one place was raided and not another, feeding suspicion and a fear of speaking out.For Rodney and Debbie Brown, the dairy farmers in Clifton Springs who lost 6 of their 10 employees to immigration arrests, the experience began like an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”When no workers showed up at 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 28 to help milk 580 waiting cows, Mr. Brown went to the farmhouse where most of their Hispanic employees lived, only to find it eerily empty. Some of the workers had been with the Browns for more than seven years.“All of a sudden they were all gone,” Mrs. Brown said. “It was very scary.”Later, the Browns learned that agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been waiting for the workers in their driveway at dawn with state troopers, and had whisked them to the 450-bed detention center in Batavia, where there were 3,094 admissions this year. Like an estimated 650,000 immigrants in New York State and some 11 million nationally, the employees were in the United States illegally; the permits and Social Security cards they had shown to the Browns were fake. What prompts such raids is rarely disclosed. But federal officials have said that they pursue tips from the public, adding to uneasy speculation about private vendettas or political retaliation. Such talk abounded in Sodus, for example, after an October raid at Marshall Farms, a large breeder of ferrets and dogs for pharmaceutical companies. The consensus, several residents said, was that a disgruntled American employee had called in the complaint. More than 18 workers, many of them longtime employees with children in Sodus schools or day care, were summoned by name to the office from their jobs cleaning animal cages, and taken away — the men to Batavia, the women to unspecified county jails. “A lot of the employees down there were very heartbroken to see the women walk out with shackles around their feet and handcuffs chained around their waists, crying,” said Cliff DeMay, a large private labor contractor who supplies agricultural businesses in seven states with workers, and accepts their papers at face value — part of a system that has allowed deniability to everyone but the illegal worker. “The I.C.E., they’ve always picked up people on complaints,” he added. “It’s not the Border Patrol or I.C.E.’s fault. It’s the fault of our damn politicians.”But Mr. DeMay also echoed a widespread view that those who criticized the raids were asking for trouble. Others, including the Farm Bureau, pointed to the unusual intensification of the dairy investigation after Mr. Brown was quoted in a Sept. 11 Associated Press account. W. Gilhooly, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, responded that raids were “carefully planned” and “result from investigative leads and intelligence.” Mrs. Brown, 46, said she was summoned to the federal building in Rochester and questioned for an hour and a half by immigration agents who threatened to subpoena her phone records. Federal prosecutors then brought felony charges against the workers for using fake Social Security numbers to get their milking jobs.But rather than turn against their former employers in exchange for leniency, as prosecutors wanted, the Mexican men pleaded guilty to felonies and accepted deportation, said Bersani and Anne Doebler, lawyers who represented them in immigration court. Government lawyers would not discuss the case.Neighboring farmers, who helped the Browns milk, seemed shaken. “A lot of them say, ‘We should write letters to the editor, but we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,’ ” Mrs. Brown said. “Everyone is very panicky.”Some have a different perspective. Ray Woodhams, 58, a Sodus resident who works at a Rochester hospital that was sued by Hispanic employees who were barred from speaking Spanish, said he was glad to read of the arrests. “The farmers have got their view, but they’re shortsighted — they’re not looking at the country as a whole,” said Mr. Woodhams, who notes that he is a registered Democrat and the son of a Dutch immigrant farmer. “The farmers say they can’t get labor. Well, if they paid a decent wage, maybe they could.” The Browns, echoing many farmers, counter that they have found no one steady to fill the vacant jobs. Many labor advocates, after years of fighting farmers for wage and hour protections, find themselves in an uneasy alliance with their old foes. “Suddenly everybody’s interest is the same: Save the lives of the migrants,” said Ghertner, who is on the board of Rural and Migrant Ministry, an interfaith advocacy group. “From the farmers’ perspective, so they have labor. From our point of view, human rights.”The smaller the farm and the more settled the work force, the more wrenching the arrests. Or so it seemed as friends gathered around the wife of a vineyard worker arrested in Yates County four days earlier, on his way to prune vines he had tended for a decade. His three children, 14, 11 and 2, are all American-born.His wife, weeping, described how the agents who had taken him and two others into custody on the road circled back to the house to try to take her, too. As the agents banged at the door and tried to open it, she hid in the bedroom with the 2-year-old, she said, and put her hand over his mouth when he started to cry. Victor Feria Reyes, the state-licensed labor contractor who had dispatched the father and the others to the vineyard, said that throughout the Finger Lakes, his crews were down by half. “A lot of people hate us,” he said as his daughter Elenita, 8, leaned close. “They just say, ‘Take them away.’ ” The owner of the vineyard, who had lost three of his five workers to immigration arrests, called them “part of my family,” but begged not to be named. “I’m afraid of retaliation,” he said. Emilie C. Sisson, Coordinator Wayne County Rural Health Network P.O. Box 111 Newark, NY 14513 Telephone:(315)483-3266 Fax:(315)483-3270 From: [mailto: ] On Behalf Of PABLO NUNEZSent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 6:58 AM GroupsSubject: Re: [ ] article on I.C.E. enforcement on New York State farmsMight you able to cut and paste the article.>>> laswolfenet 12/29/2006 8:23 PM >>> Folks, Below is a linkto an article in the Dec. 24 New York Times concerning enforcement raids on MSFWs in New York State. Iguess we'll see what 2007 will bring on this issue -- changes perhaps.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/nyregion/24migrant.html?_r=1 & oref=sloginAliceAlice C. Larson, Ph.D.Larson Assistance Serviceslaswolfenet 206.463.9000 (voice)206.463.9400 (fax)P.O. Box 801Vashon Island, WA 98070This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain private, confidential, and/or privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, employee, or agent responsible for delivering this message, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original e-mail message.**********************************************************************This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential andintended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom theyare addressed. If you have received this email in error please delete it from your system.This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept forthe presence of computer viruses.Thank You,Viahealth**********************************************************************

[Guest guest]

Thank you for cutting and pasting this article that reflects the

challenges MSFW service providers have to contend with as they help

MSFWs throughout the U.S.

>>> Emilie.Sisson@... 1/4/2007 2:08:28 PM >>> NY Times

December 24, 2006

Immigrants Go From Farms to Jails, and a Climate of Fear Settles In

By NINA BERNSTEIN

<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/nina_bernstein/ind\

ex.html?inline=nyt-per>

ELBA, N.Y. - A cold December rain gusted across fields of cabbage

destined for New York City egg rolls,

cole slaw and Christmas goose. Ankle-deep in mud, six immigrant

farmworkers raced to harvest 120,000 pounds before nightfall, knowing

that at dawn they could find immigration agents at their door.

The farmer who stopped to check their progress had lost 28 other

workers in a raid in October, all illegal Mexican immigrants with false

work permits at another farm here in western New York. Throughout the

region, farm hands have simply disappeared by twos and threes, picked

up on a Sunday as they went to church or to the laundry. Whole families

have gone into hiding, like the couple who spent the night with

their child in a plastic calf hutch.

As record-setting enforcement of immigration laws upends old, unspoken

arrangements, a new climate of

fear is sweeping through the rural communities of western and central

New York.

" The farmers are just petrified at what's happening to their workers, "

said Maureen Torrey, an 11th- generation grower and a director of the

Federal Reserve Bank's Buffalo branch whose family owns this field

and more than 10,000 acres of vegetable and dairy farms.

And for the first time in years, farmers are also frightened for

themselves. In small towns divided over immigration, they fear that

speaking out - or a disgruntled neighbor's call to the authorities -

could make

them targets of the next raid and raise the threat of criminal

prosecution.

Here where agriculture is the mainstay of a depressed economy, the

mainstay of agriculture is largely

illegal immigrant labor from Mexico. Now, more aggressive enforcement

has disrupted a system of

official winks, nods and paperwork that for years protected farmers

from " knowingly " hiring the illegal immigrants who make up most of their

work force.

" It serves as a polarizing force in communities, " said Jo Dudley,

who directs the Cornell Farmworker Program, which does research. " The

immigrant workers themselves see anyone as a potential enemy. The

growers are nervous about everyone. There's this environment of fear

and mistrust all across the board. "

In a recent case that chilled many farmers, federal agents trying to

develop a criminal case detained

several longtime Hispanic employees of a small dairy farm in Clifton

Springs, and unsuccessfully pressed

them to give evidence that the owners knew they were here illegally.

Since raids began to increase in early spring, arrests have netted

dozens of Mexican farm workers on

their way to milk parlors, apple orchards and vineyards, and prompted

scores more to flee, affecting

hundreds of farms. Some longtime employees with American children were

deported too quickly for

goodbyes, or remain out of reach in the federal detention center in

Batavia, N.Y., where immigrants

are tracked by alien registration number, not by name.

Federal officials say events here simply reflect a national commitment

to more intensive enforcement of immigration laws, showcased in raids in

December at Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states.

The effort led to a record 189,924 deportations nationally during the

fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up 12% from the year before, officials

said, and 2,186 deportations from Buffalo, up 24%. It includes

prosecuting employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, better

cooperation with state and local law enforcement,

and new money from Congress for more agents, more detention beds and

quicker deportations.

In small towns like Sodus, Dresden and Elba, where a welcome sign

declares that the population of 2,369

is " Just Right, " some residents quietly approve of the crackdown. They

are unhappy with the growing year-

round presence of Mexicans they consider a drain on public services,

resentful of the political clout of

farmers, or concerned about the porous borders denounced nightly on CNN

by Lou Dobbs. Others are torn, praising Mexican families but worried

that some farmers exploit them.

Farm lenders and lobbyists warn of economic losses that will be

measurable in unharvested crops,

hundreds of closed farms and revenues lost in the wine tourism of the

Finger Lakes. On the other side, supporters of stringent enforcement

expect savings in schools and hospitals, and a boost to low wages

as the labor market tightens.

The harvest of fear may be harder to chart, but it is already here. It

can be felt in Sodus, where an

October raid left a dozen children without either parent for days, and

in vineyards near Penn Yan,

where a grower of fine cabernet grapes reluctantly permits a worker to

sleep in a car, hidden in the

vines that he prunes. Everywhere, rumors fly about why one place was

raided and not another, feeding suspicion and a fear of speaking out.

For Rodney and Debbie Brown, the dairy farmers in Clifton Springs who

lost 6 of their 10 employees to immigration arrests, the experience

began like an episode of " The Twilight Zone. "

When no workers showed up at 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 28 to help milk 580

waiting cows, Mr. Brown went to

the farmhouse where most of their Hispanic employees lived, only to

find it eerily empty. Some of the

workers had been with the Browns for more than seven years.

" All of a sudden they were all gone, " Mrs. Brown said. " It was very

scary. "

Later, the Browns learned that agents from Immigration and Customs

Enforcement had been waiting for

the workers in their driveway at dawn with state troopers, and had

whisked them to the 450-bed detention

center in Batavia, where there were 3,094 admissions this year. Like an

estimated 650,000 immigrants in

New York State and some 11 million nationally, the employees were in

the United States illegally; the

permits and Social Security cards they had shown to the Browns were

fake.

What prompts such raids is rarely disclosed. But federal officials have

said that they pursue tips from the

public, adding to uneasy speculation about private vendettas or

political retaliation. Such talk abounded

in Sodus, for example, after an October raid at Marshall Farms, a large

breeder of ferrets and dogs for pharmaceutical companies. The consensus,

several residents said, was that a disgruntled American

employee had called in the complaint.

More than 18 workers, many of them longtime employees with children in

Sodus schools or day care,

were summoned by name to the office from their jobs cleaning animal

cages, and taken away - the men

to Batavia, the women to unspecified county jails.

" A lot of the employees down there were very heartbroken to see the

women walk out with shackles

around their feet and handcuffs chained around their waists, crying, "

said Cliff DeMay, a large private

labor contractor who supplies agricultural businesses in seven states

with workers, and accepts their papers at face value - part of a system

that has allowed deniability to everyone but the illegal worker.

" The I.C.E., they've always picked up people on complaints, " he added.

" It's not the Border Patrol or I.C.E.'s fault. It's the fault of our

damn politicians. "

But Mr. DeMay also echoed a widespread view that those who criticized

the raids were asking for trouble.

Others, including the Farm Bureau, pointed to the unusual

intensification of the dairy investigation after Mr. Brown was quoted in

a Sept. 11 Associated Press account. W. Gilhooly, a spokesman

for

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, responded that raids were

" carefully planned " and " result from investigative leads and

intelligence. "

Mrs. Brown, 46, said she was summoned to the federal building in

Rochester and questioned for an hour

and a half by immigration agents who threatened to subpoena her phone

records. Federal prosecutors

then brought felony charges against the workers for using fake Social

Security numbers to get their

milking jobs.

But rather than turn against their former employers in exchange for

leniency, as prosecutors wanted, the Mexican men pleaded guilty to

felonies and accepted deportation, said Bersani and Anne

Doebler, lawyers who represented them in immigration court. Government

lawyers would not discuss the case.

Neighboring farmers, who helped the Browns milk, seemed shaken. " A lot

of them say, 'We should write

letters to the editor, but we don't want to draw attention to

ourselves,' " Mrs. Brown said. " Everyone is

very panicky. "

Some have a different perspective. Ray Woodhams, 58, a Sodus resident

who works at a Rochester

hospital that was sued by Hispanic employees who were barred from

speaking Spanish, said he was

glad to read of the arrests.

" The farmers have got their view, but they're shortsighted - they're

not looking at the country as a whole, "

said Mr. Woodhams, who notes that he is a registered Democrat and the

son of a Dutch immigrant farmer. " The farmers say they can't get labor.

Well, if they paid a decent wage, maybe they could. " The Browns, echoing

many farmers, counter that they have found no one steady to fill the

vacant jobs.

Many labor advocates, after years of fighting farmers for wage and hour

protections, find themselves in an uneasy alliance with their old foes.

" Suddenly everybody's interest is the same: Save the lives of the

migrants, " said Ghertner, who is

on the board of Rural and Migrant Ministry, an interfaith advocacy

group. " From the farmers' perspective,

so they have labor. From our point of view, human rights. "

The smaller the farm and the more settled the work force, the more

wrenching the arrests. Or so it

seemed as friends gathered around the wife of a vineyard worker

arrested in Yates County four days

earlier, on his way to prune vines he had tended for a decade. His

three children, 14, 11 and 2, are all American-born.

His wife, weeping, described how the agents who had taken him and two

others into custody on the road circled back to the house to try to take

her, too. As the agents banged at the door and tried to open it, she

hid in the bedroom with the 2-year-old, she said, and put her hand over

his mouth when he started to cry.

Victor Feria Reyes, the state-licensed labor contractor who had

dispatched the father and the

others to the vineyard, said that throughout the Finger Lakes, his

crews were down by half. " A lot of

people hate us, " he said as his daughter Elenita, 8, leaned close.

" They just say, 'Take them away.' "

The owner of the vineyard, who had lost three of his five workers to

immigration arrests, called them " part

of my family, " but begged not to be named. " I'm afraid of retaliation, "

he said.

Emilie C. Sisson, Coordinator

Wayne County Rural Health Network

P.O. Box 111

Newark, NY 14513

Telephone:(315)483-3266 Fax:(315)483-3270

_______________________________

Alice

Alice C. Larson, Ph.D.

Larson Assistance Services

las@... <mailto:las%40wolfenet.com>

206.463.9000 (voice)

206.463.9400 (fax)

P.O. Box 801

Vashon Island, WA 98070

This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of

the intended recipient(s) and may contain private, confidential, and/or

privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or

distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient,

employee, or agent responsible for

delivering this message, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and

destroy all copies of the original e-mail message.

**********************************************************************

This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and

intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are

addressed. If you have received this email in error please delete it

from your system.

This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept for

the presence of computer viruses.

Thank You,

Viahealth

**********************************************************************

This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the

intended recipient(s) and may contain private, confidential, and/or privileged

information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or distribution is

prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, employee, or agent

responsible for delivering this message, please contact the sender by reply

e-mail and destroy all copies of the original e-mail message.

[Guest guest]

Thank you for the article!

Deborah RestivoPublic Health Nurse - Public HealthOrleans County14012 Route 31 WestAlbion, NY 14411Phone: (585) 589-2763 ext 2763 Fax: (585) 589-6647Website: http://www.orleansny.comEmail: drestivo@...

From: [mailto: ] On Behalf Of Sisson, EmilieSent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 2:08 PMPABLO NUNEZ; GroupsSubject: RE: [ ] article on I.C.E. enforcement on New York State farms

NY Times

December 24, 2006

Immigrants Go From Farms to Jails, and a Climate of Fear Settles In

By NINA BERNSTEIN

ELBA, N.Y. — A cold December rain gusted across fields of cabbage destined for New York City egg rolls, cole slaw and Christmas goose. Ankle-deep in mud, six immigrant farmworkers raced to harvest 120,000 pounds before nightfall, knowing that at dawn they could find immigration agents at their door.

The farmer who stopped to check their progress had lost 28 other workers in a raid in October, all illegal Mexican immigrants with false work permits at another farm here in western New York. Throughout the region, farm hands have simply disappeared by twos and threes, picked up on a Sunday as they went to church or to the laundry. Whole families have gone into hiding, like the couple who spent the night with their child in a plastic calf hutch.

As record-setting enforcement of immigration laws upends old, unspoken arrangements, a new climate of fear is sweeping through the rural communities of western and central New York.

“The farmers are just petrified at what’s happening to their workers,” said Maureen Torrey, an 11th-generation grower and a director of the Federal Reserve Bank’s Buffalo branch whose family owns this field and more than 10,000 acres of vegetable and dairy farms.

And for the first time in years, farmers are also frightened for themselves. In small towns divided over immigration, they fear that speaking out — or a disgruntled neighbor’s call to the authorities — could make them targets of the next raid and raise the threat of criminal prosecution.

Here where agriculture is the mainstay of a depressed economy, the mainstay of agriculture is largely illegal immigrant labor from Mexico. Now, more aggressive enforcement has disrupted a system of official winks, nods and paperwork that for years protected farmers from “knowingly” hiring the illegal immigrants who make up most of their work force.

“It serves as a polarizing force in communities,” said Jo Dudley, who directs the Cornell Farmworker Program, which does research. “The immigrant workers themselves see anyone as a potential enemy. The growers are nervous about everyone. There’s this environment of fear and mistrust all across the board.”

In a recent case that chilled many farmers, federal agents trying to develop a criminal case detained several longtime Hispanic employees of a small dairy farm in Clifton Springs, and unsuccessfully pressed them to give evidence that the owners knew they were here illegally.

Since raids began to increase in early spring, arrests have netted dozens of Mexican farm workers on their way to milk parlors, apple orchards and vineyards, and prompted scores more to flee, affecting hundreds of farms. Some longtime employees with American children were deported too quickly for goodbyes, or remain out of reach in the federal detention center in Batavia, N.Y., where immigrants are tracked by alien registration number, not by name.

Federal officials say events here simply reflect a national commitment to more intensive enforcement of immigration laws, showcased in raids in December at Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states.

The effort led to a record 189,924 deportations nationally during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up 12 percent from the year before, officials said, and 2,186 deportations from Buffalo, up 24 percent. It includes prosecuting employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, better cooperation with state and local law enforcement, and new money from Congress for more agents, more detention beds and quicker deportations.

In small towns like Sodus, Dresden and Elba, where a welcome sign declares that the population of 2,369 is “Just Right,” some residents quietly approve of the crackdown. They are unhappy with the growing year-round presence of Mexicans they consider a drain on public services, resentful of the political clout of farmers, or concerned about the porous borders denounced nightly on CNN by Lou Dobbs. Others are torn, praising Mexican families but worried that some farmers exploit them.

Farm lenders and lobbyists warn of economic losses that will be measurable in unharvested crops, hundreds of closed farms and revenues lost in the wine tourism of the Finger Lakes. On the other side, supporters of stringent enforcement expect savings in schools and hospitals, and a boost to low wages as the labor market tightens.

The harvest of fear may be harder to chart, but it is already here. It can be felt in Sodus, where an October raid left a dozen children without either parent for days, and in vineyards near Penn Yan, where a grower of fine cabernet grapes reluctantly permits a worker to sleep in a car, hidden in the vines that he prunes. Everywhere, rumors fly about why one place was raided and not another, feeding suspicion and a fear of speaking out.

For Rodney and Debbie Brown, the dairy farmers in Clifton Springs who lost 6 of their 10 employees to immigration arrests, the experience began like an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

When no workers showed up at 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 28 to help milk 580 waiting cows, Mr. Brown went to the farmhouse where most of their Hispanic employees lived, only to find it eerily empty. Some of the workers had been with the Browns for more than seven years.

“All of a sudden they were all gone,” Mrs. Brown said. “It was very scary.”

Later, the Browns learned that agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been waiting for the workers in their driveway at dawn with state troopers, and had whisked them to the 450-bed detention center in Batavia, where there were 3,094 admissions this year. Like an estimated 650,000 immigrants in New York State and some 11 million nationally, the employees were in the United States illegally; the permits and Social Security cards they had shown to the Browns were fake.

What prompts such raids is rarely disclosed. But federal officials have said that they pursue tips from the public, adding to uneasy speculation about private vendettas or political retaliation. Such talk abounded in Sodus, for example, after an October raid at Marshall Farms, a large breeder of ferrets and dogs for pharmaceutical companies. The consensus, several residents said, was that a disgruntled American employee had called in the complaint.

More than 18 workers, many of them longtime employees with children in Sodus schools or day care, were summoned by name to the office from their jobs cleaning animal cages, and taken away — the men to Batavia, the women to unspecified county jails.

“A lot of the employees down there were very heartbroken to see the women walk out with shackles around their feet and handcuffs chained around their waists, crying,” said Cliff DeMay, a large private labor contractor who supplies agricultural businesses in seven states with workers, and accepts their papers at face value — part of a system that has allowed deniability to everyone but the illegal worker.

“The I.C.E., they’ve always picked up people on complaints,” he added. “It’s not the Border Patrol or I.C.E.’s fault. It’s the fault of our damn politicians.”

But Mr. DeMay also echoed a widespread view that those who criticized the raids were asking for trouble.

Others, including the Farm Bureau, pointed to the unusual intensification of the dairy investigation after Mr. Brown was quoted in a Sept. 11 Associated Press account. W. Gilhooly, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, responded that raids were “carefully planned” and “result from investigative leads and intelligence.”

Mrs. Brown, 46, said she was summoned to the federal building in Rochester and questioned for an hour and a half by immigration agents who threatened to subpoena her phone records. Federal prosecutors then brought felony charges against the workers for using fake Social Security numbers to get their milking jobs.

But rather than turn against their former employers in exchange for leniency, as prosecutors wanted, the Mexican men pleaded guilty to felonies and accepted deportation, said Bersani and Anne Doebler, lawyers who represented them in immigration court. Government lawyers would not discuss the case.

Neighboring farmers, who helped the Browns milk, seemed shaken. “A lot of them say, ‘We should write letters to the editor, but we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,’ ” Mrs. Brown said. “Everyone is very panicky.”

Some have a different perspective. Ray Woodhams, 58, a Sodus resident who works at a Rochester hospital that was sued by Hispanic employees who were barred from speaking Spanish, said he was glad to read of the arrests.

“The farmers have got their view, but they’re shortsighted — they’re not looking at the country as a whole,” said Mr. Woodhams, who notes that he is a registered Democrat and the son of a Dutch immigrant farmer. “The farmers say they can’t get labor. Well, if they paid a decent wage, maybe they could.” The Browns, echoing many farmers, counter that they have found no one steady to fill the vacant jobs.

Many labor advocates, after years of fighting farmers for wage and hour protections, find themselves in an uneasy alliance with their old foes.

“Suddenly everybody’s interest is the same: Save the lives of the migrants,” said Ghertner, who is on the board of Rural and Migrant Ministry, an interfaith advocacy group. “From the farmers’ perspective, so they have labor. From our point of view, human rights.”

The smaller the farm and the more settled the work force, the more wrenching the arrests. Or so it seemed as friends gathered around the wife of a vineyard worker arrested in Yates County four days earlier, on his way to prune vines he had tended for a decade. His three children, 14, 11 and 2, are all American-born.

His wife, weeping, described how the agents who had taken him and two others into custody on the road circled back to the house to try to take her, too. As the agents banged at the door and tried to open it, she hid in the bedroom with the 2-year-old, she said, and put her hand over his mouth when he started to cry.

Victor Feria Reyes, the state-licensed labor contractor who had dispatched the father and the others to the vineyard, said that throughout the Finger Lakes, his crews were down by half. “A lot of people hate us,” he said as his daughter Elenita, 8, leaned close. “They just say, ‘Take them away.’ ”

The owner of the vineyard, who had lost three of his five workers to immigration arrests, called them “part of my family,” but begged not to be named. “I’m afraid of retaliation,” he said.

Emilie C. Sisson, Coordinator Wayne County Rural Health Network P.O. Box 111 Newark, NY 14513 Telephone:(315)483-3266 Fax:(315)483-3270

From: [mailto: ] On Behalf Of PABLO NUNEZSent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 6:58 AM GroupsSubject: Re: [ ] article on I.C.E. enforcement on New York State farms

Might you able to cut and paste the article.>>> laswolfenet 12/29/2006 8:23 PM >>> Folks, Below is a linkto an article in the Dec. 24 New York Times concerning enforcement raids on MSFWs in New York State. Iguess we'll see what 2007 will bring on this issue -- changes perhaps.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/nyregion/24migrant.html?_r=1 & oref=sloginAliceAlice C. Larson, Ph.D.Larson Assistance Serviceslaswolfenet 206.463.9000 (voice)206.463.9400 (fax)P.O. Box 801Vashon Island, WA 98070This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain private, confidential, and/or privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, employee, or agent responsible for delivering this message, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original e-mail message.

**********************************************************************This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential andintended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom theyare addressed. If you have received this email in error please delete it from your system.This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept forthe presence of computer viruses.Thank You,Viahealth**********************************************************************

[Guest guest]

Thank you for the article good information

keep on passing it on.

Rene Quintana

Manos Unidos

Del Norte

From: [mailto: ] On Behalf Of Deborah Restivo

Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007

9:07 AM

Subject: RE:

[ ] article on I.C.E. enforcement on New York State

farms

Thank you for the article!

Deborah Restivo

Public Health Nurse - Public Health

Orleans County

14012 Route 31 West

Albion, NY

14411

Phone: (585) 589-2763 ext 2763 Fax: (585) 589-6647

Website: http://www.orleansny.com

Email: drestivoorleansny

From:

[mailto: ]

On Behalf Of Sisson, Emilie

Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007

2:08 PM

PABLO NUNEZ; Groups

Subject: RE: [ ]

article on I.C.E. enforcement on New

York State

farms

NY Times

December 24, 2006

Immigrants Go From Farms to Jails, and a Climate of Fear

Settles In

By NINA BERNSTEIN

ELBA, N.Y. — A cold

December rain gusted across fields of cabbage destined for New York City

egg rolls, cole slaw and Christmas goose. Ankle-deep in mud, six immigrant

farmworkers raced to harvest 120,000 pounds before nightfall, knowing that at

dawn they could find immigration agents at their door.

The farmer who stopped to check their progress had lost 28 other

workers in a raid in October, all illegal Mexican immigrants with false work

permits at another farm here in western New York. Throughout the region, farm

hands have simply disappeared by twos and threes, picked up on a Sunday as they

went to church or to the laundry. Whole families have gone into hiding, like

the couple who spent the night with their child in a plastic calf hutch.

As record-setting enforcement of immigration laws upends old,

unspoken arrangements, a new climate of fear is sweeping through the rural

communities of western and central New York.

“The farmers are just petrified at what’s happening to

their workers,” said Maureen Torrey, an 11th-generation grower and a

director of the Federal Reserve Bank’s Buffalo branch whose family owns

this field and more than 10,000 acres of vegetable and dairy farms.

And for the first time in years, farmers are also frightened for

themselves. In small towns divided over immigration, they fear that speaking

out — or a disgruntled neighbor’s call to the authorities —

could make them targets of the next raid and raise the threat of criminal

prosecution.

Here where agriculture is the mainstay of a depressed economy, the

mainstay of agriculture is largely illegal immigrant labor from Mexico.

Now, more aggressive enforcement has disrupted a system of official winks, nods

and paperwork that for years protected farmers from “knowingly”

hiring the illegal immigrants who make up most of their work force.

“It serves as a polarizing force in communities,” said

Jo Dudley, who directs the Cornell Farmworker Program, which does

research. “The immigrant workers themselves see anyone as a potential

enemy. The growers are nervous about everyone. There’s this environment

of fear and mistrust all across the board.”

In a recent case that chilled many farmers, federal agents trying

to develop a criminal case detained several longtime Hispanic employees of a

small dairy farm in Clifton Springs, and unsuccessfully pressed them to give

evidence that the owners knew they were here illegally.

Since raids began to increase in early spring, arrests have netted

dozens of Mexican farm workers on their way to milk parlors, apple orchards and

vineyards, and prompted scores more to flee, affecting hundreds of farms. Some

longtime employees with American children were deported too quickly for

goodbyes, or remain out of reach in the federal detention center in Batavia, N.Y.,

where immigrants are tracked by alien registration number, not by name.

Federal officials say events here simply reflect a national

commitment to more intensive enforcement of immigration laws, showcased in

raids in December at Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states.

The effort led to a record 189,924 deportations nationally during

the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up 12 percent from the year before,

officials said, and 2,186 deportations from Buffalo, up 24 percent. It

includes prosecuting employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, better

cooperation with state and local law enforcement, and new money from Congress

for more agents, more detention beds and quicker deportations.

In small towns like Sodus, Dresden

and Elba, where a welcome sign

declares that the population of 2,369 is “Just Right,” some

residents quietly approve of the crackdown. They are unhappy with the growing

year-round presence of Mexicans they consider a drain on public services,

resentful of the political clout of farmers, or concerned about the porous

borders denounced nightly on CNN by Lou Dobbs. Others are torn, praising

Mexican families but worried that some farmers exploit them.

Farm lenders and lobbyists warn of economic losses that will be

measurable in unharvested crops, hundreds of closed farms and revenues lost in

the wine tourism of the Finger Lakes.

On the other side, supporters of stringent enforcement expect savings in

schools and hospitals, and a boost to low wages as the labor market tightens.

The harvest of fear may be harder to chart, but it is already

here. It can be felt in Sodus, where an October raid left a dozen children

without either parent for days, and in vineyards near Penn Yan, where a grower

of fine cabernet grapes reluctantly permits a worker to sleep in a car, hidden

in the vines that he prunes. Everywhere, rumors fly about why one place was

raided and not another, feeding suspicion and a fear of speaking out.

For Rodney and Debbie Brown, the dairy farmers in Clifton Springs

who lost 6 of their 10 employees to immigration arrests, the experience began

like an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

When no workers showed up at 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 28 to help milk 580

waiting cows, Mr. Brown went to the farmhouse where most of their Hispanic

employees lived, only to find it eerily empty. Some of the workers had been

with the Browns for more than seven years.

“All of a sudden they were all gone,” Mrs. Brown said.

“It was very scary.”

Later, the Browns learned that agents from Immigration and Customs

Enforcement had been waiting for the workers in their driveway at dawn with

state troopers, and had whisked them to the 450-bed detention center in Batavia,

where there were 3,094 admissions this year. Like an estimated 650,000

immigrants in New York State and some 11 million

nationally, the employees were in the United States

illegally; the permits and Social Security cards they had shown to the Browns

were fake.

What prompts such raids is rarely disclosed. But federal officials

have said that they pursue tips from the public, adding to uneasy speculation

about private vendettas or political retaliation. Such talk abounded in Sodus,

for example, after an October raid at Marshall Farms, a large breeder of

ferrets and dogs for pharmaceutical companies. The consensus, several residents

said, was that a disgruntled American employee had called in the complaint.

More than 18 workers, many of them longtime employees with

children in Sodus schools or day care, were summoned by name to the office from

their jobs cleaning animal cages, and taken away — the men to Batavia, the

women to unspecified county jails.

“A lot of the employees down there were very heartbroken to

see the women walk out with shackles around their feet and handcuffs chained

around their waists, crying,” said Cliff DeMay, a large private labor

contractor who supplies agricultural businesses in seven states with workers,

and accepts their papers at face value — part of a system that has

allowed deniability to everyone but the illegal worker.

“The I.C.E., they’ve always picked up people on

complaints,” he added. “It’s not the Border Patrol or

I.C.E.’s fault. It’s the fault of our damn politicians.”

But Mr. DeMay also echoed a widespread view that those who

criticized the raids were asking for trouble.

Others, including the Farm Bureau, pointed to the unusual

intensification of the dairy investigation after Mr. Brown was quoted in a

Sept. 11 Associated Press account. W. Gilhooly, a spokesman for

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, responded that raids were “carefully

planned” and “result from investigative leads and

intelligence.”

Mrs. Brown, 46, said she was summoned to the federal building in Rochester and

questioned for an hour and a half by immigration agents who threatened to

subpoena her phone records. Federal prosecutors then brought felony charges

against the workers for using fake Social Security numbers to get their milking

jobs.

But rather than turn against their former employers in exchange

for leniency, as prosecutors wanted, the Mexican men pleaded guilty to felonies

and accepted deportation, said Bersani and Anne Doebler, lawyers who

represented them in immigration court. Government lawyers would not discuss the

case.

Neighboring farmers, who helped the Browns milk, seemed shaken.

“A lot of them say, ‘We should write letters to the editor, but we

don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,’ ” Mrs. Brown

said. “Everyone is very panicky.”

Some have a different perspective. Ray Woodhams, 58, a Sodus

resident who works at a Rochester

hospital that was sued by Hispanic employees who were barred from speaking

Spanish, said he was glad to read of the arrests.

“The farmers have got their view, but they’re

shortsighted — they’re not looking at the country as a

whole,” said Mr. Woodhams, who notes that he is a registered Democrat and

the son of a Dutch immigrant farmer. “The farmers say they can’t

get labor. Well, if they paid a decent wage, maybe they could.” The

Browns, echoing many farmers, counter that they have found no one steady to

fill the vacant jobs.

Many labor advocates, after years of fighting farmers for wage and

hour protections, find themselves in an uneasy alliance with their old foes.

“Suddenly everybody’s interest is the same: Save the lives

of the migrants,” said Ghertner, who is on the board of Rural and

Migrant Ministry, an interfaith advocacy group. “From the farmers’

perspective, so they have labor. From our point of view, human rights.”

The smaller the farm and the more settled the work force, the more

wrenching the arrests. Or so it seemed as friends gathered around the wife of a

vineyard worker arrested in Yates County

four days earlier, on his way to prune vines he had tended for a decade. His

three children, 14, 11 and 2, are all American-born.

His wife, weeping, described how the agents who had taken him and

two others into custody on the road circled back to the house to try to take

her, too. As the agents banged at the door and tried to open it, she hid in the

bedroom with the 2-year-old, she said, and put her hand over his mouth when he

started to cry.

Victor Feria Reyes, the state-licensed labor contractor who had

dispatched the father and the others to the vineyard, said that throughout the Finger Lakes, his crews were down by half. “A

lot of people hate us,” he said as his daughter Elenita, 8, leaned close.

“They just say, ‘Take them away.’ ”

The owner of the vineyard, who had lost three of his five workers

to immigration arrests, called them “part of my family,” but begged

not to be named. “I’m afraid of retaliation,” he said.

Emilie C. Sisson,

Coordinator

Wayne County Rural Health Network

P.O. Box 111

Newark, NY 14513

Telephone:(315)483-3266 Fax:(315)483-3270

From:

[mailto: ]

On Behalf Of PABLO NUNEZ

Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007

6:58 AM

Groups

Subject: Re: [ ]

article on I.C.E. enforcement on New

York State

farms

Might you able to cut and paste the article.

>>> laswolfenet

12/29/2006 8:23 PM >>> Folks, Below is a link

to an article in the Dec. 24 New

York Times concerning enforcement raids on MSFWs in New York State.

I

guess we'll see what 2007 will

bring on this issue -- changes perhaps.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/nyregion/24migrant.html?_r=1 & oref=slogin

Alice

Alice C. Larson, Ph.D.

Larson Assistance Services

laswolfenet

206.463.9000 (voice)

206.463.9400 (fax)

P.O. Box 801

Vashon Island, WA 98070

This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended

recipient(s) and may contain private, confidential, and/or privileged

information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or distribution is

prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, employee, or agent

responsible for delivering this message, please contact the sender by reply

e-mail and destroy all copies of the original e-mail message.

**********************************************************************

This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and

intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they

are addressed. If you have received this email in error please delete it from your system.

This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept for

the presence of computer viruses.

Thank You,

Viahealth

**********************************************************************