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 Mary 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. Michael 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 Michael 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 John 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
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