Bush's Guatemala Visit Spotlights His Cruel Immigration Policies

By Tim Costello and Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, AlterNet. Posted March 15, 2007.

President Bush got a big surprise on his goodwill visit to Guatemala this week. Protesters filled the streets of Guatemala City to denounce an immigration raid that took place at a leather goods factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts on March 6th. The raid resulted in the arrest of 361 people, most of them undocumented immigrants from Guatemala and El Salvador. Even the President of Guatemala criticized the raids in his welcoming speech to Bush on his arrival. This is big news in Guatemala because 10% of the entire Guatemalan population -- many of them undocumented -- lives in the US.

The press in Guatemala - and in Massachusetts -- has been filled with stories of the raid and its aftermath of families shattered, children separated from their parents, and children being held in federal custody. According to The New York Times:

Facing pointed questions from Guatemalan journalists, Mr. Bush stood by the raid, saying, "People will be treated with respect, but the United States will enforce our law.Mr. Bush said he disputed "conspiracies" relayed by Mr. Berger [Guatemala's President] that children were taken away from families. Mr. Bush denied such accounts. "No es la verdad," Mr. Bush said, "That's not the way America operates. We're a decent, compassionate country. Those are the kind of things we do not do. We believe in families, and we'll treat people with dignity.

Well, sí es verdad. Days after the raids the Massachusetts Department of Social Services ( DSS) reported that they "... could not connect 100 children with their families." One woman arrested in the raid was flown back from Texas where she was being held when her 7 year old daughter called a hot line created to unite families divided by the raid to ask about her mother's whereabouts. Two nursing infants were hospitalized for dehydration when they were separated from their mothers.

Once again Bush is either lying or out of touch with reality. The events of this raid have been well documented and roundly condemned by the press and politicians in Massachusetts across the political spectrum. In the era of global communications, people in Guatemala didn't even have to rely on the media; they could pick up the phone and call their relatives in New Bedford to find out what was really going on.

The New Bedford raid had what is by now a familiar feel to it. On March 6, up to 500 government agents, police, and others surrounded the Michael Bianco, Inc. leather goods factory in New Bedford Massachusetts. Inside, an announcement came over loudspeakers, "Stay where you are. Immigration agents are in the building." Panic ensued as workers made a run for it, but the exits were blocked, some by police with guns drawn. Some workers scurried into hiding places, hoping to wait out the raid.

When the building was finally locked down agents instructed US citizens or green card holders to move to one area and all others to another area. Workers were interviewed. Some were released in a few hours because of compelling health or family reasons. But most were loaded onto buses and transported to a holding facility on Fort Devens, a former military base about 60 miles away.

Following processing at Fort Devens, 70 of those arrested were released for a variety reasons within a few days, 90 are being held in various jails in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and 207 were flown far from their homes and families to jails in Texas. Eight minors were picked up, three were released the rest are being held in Miami.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick engaged in a few testy exchanges with the Department of Homeland Security as did Senators Kennedy and Kerry and other members of the state's Congressional delegation. Patrick attacked the "race to the airport," to move the workers out of state before they could be properly interviewed. Kennedy compared the effect of the raids to, "the tragedy and human suffering that we all witnessed after the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina. ...These men and women had not harmed anyone. They were victims of exploitation, forced to work under barbaric conditions by an employer who knew that they could not afford to complain. Their children, many of whom are United States citizens, had done nothing wrong at all. None of them had any reason to expect that the Department of Homeland Security would decide to make an example out of them."

Kerry called for a Congressional investigation of the raid.

Meanwhile, immigrant rights groups rushed to court and won a federal court order to halt the out of state flights. But most of the captives had already been moved.

See more stories tagged with: bush, guatemala, immigration

Tim Costello, Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith are the co-founders of Global Labor Strategies, a resource center providing research and analysis on globalization, trade and labor issues.