INS Resumes Raids, Seizes 400 Workers as Illegals

More than 400 workers have been arrested in raids by the Immigration and Naturalization Service over the last week in Los Angeles and Orange counties, but the agency is finding that most employers are complying with the new immigration law that prohibits hiring undocumented workers.

There is a “positive trend toward compliance,” INS Western Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell said Tuesday at a press conference in which officials reported on implementation of the employer sanctions portion of the law.

Ezell said that three out of four companies approached by INS officials have cooperated by allowing agents to talk with workers. And of those firms, about 20% have been found to be out of compliance with the law.

Five firms were raided last week by agents armed with search warrants, after the employers refused the agents access. In an effort to foster voluntary compliance, the agency had curtailed such raids since signing of the law last November. Officials indicated Tuesday that there will be more raids, including several this week.

Will Check Records

INS officials said they will check employment records at the raided firms to determine whether employers knowingly hired the illegal workers, in which case they could be cited and possibly fined.

Some immigrants’ advocates maintain that the new law, which requires that employers maintain proof of their workers’ legal residence status, does away with the need for “disruptive” raids. But officials contend that proof provided by workers may be fraudulent and that access to workers by INS representatives is necessary.

Dave Utick, part owner of Hehr, Inc., a window manufacturing firm in Los Angeles and one of those raided last week, said he initially refused access to INS officials because he was not sure what it would entail and was concerned about the possible disruption to his operation.

Although all the firm’s workers had provided their employer with proof of legal residence, Utick said that about one-fourth were arrested in the raid.

“It hurts to lose people that, based on the data you have, you think are legitimate workers,” he said. To make up for the lost workers, others have had to work overtime at the plant, he said.

Utick’s quandary is that, considering that his company has been “as careful as can be” in an effort to comply with the law, he knows no way to avoid future raids, he said.

It is this type of “no-win situation” that Linda Wong, immigration specialist for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said she finds “outrageous.”

“One of the arguments of having employer sanctions was to avoid the disruption of INS workplace raids,” she said, noting that a lawsuit filed by her agency in 1982 challenging such raids is still pending in federal court. “By resurrecting these raids, INS is putting employers into a corner where they lose no matter what they do.”

Since Sept. 1, when the INS began enforcing the employer sanctions portion of the law, more than 75 warning citations have been issued in the Western region to employers found to be in violation of the law. In that period, about 800 aliens have been arrested in raids by INS agents.

Last week’s raids at five manufacturing firms resulted in 254 arrests. Of these, 121 resulted in deportations, while 102 of the workers were found to be eligible for legal status under the law’s amnesty provisions. Others have appealed deportation orders.

An additional 213 persons were arrested at four day labor pick-up spots in Los Angeles, Commerce, Santa Ana and Orange--street corners where immigrants congregate for a day’s work offered by drive-by employers. None of these workers was found eligible for amnesty under the new law, which requires continuous residence in the United States since Jan. 1, 1982.