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DEPORTATION OF 39 ILLEGAL LABORERS DIVIDES TOWN
Immigration Agents Were Protecting Schoolgirls, Some Say, But Others In
Greenfield Cry Racism
By Ken McLauglin
San Jose Mercury News,
April 23, 2001, page 1A
-- Greenfield, California
The US. immigration agents thought they would be hailed as heroes.
After witnessing school girls -- some as young as 9 and 10 -- being sexually
taunted and rubbed against, a dozen agents swept into town and arrested and
deported 39 illegal immigrants.
But there were few public cheers. Instead, the people of Greenfield couldn't
be more furious.
It's whom that anger is directed against, though, that has sharply divided
this over-whelmingly Latino farming community of 12,500 in Monterey County
leading to a stew of charges and countercharges that include racism, bad
police work and political-correctness gone mad.
To many parents and schoolchildren, it seems so simple.
"I'm glad they were deported," said one 14-year-old Mexican-American girl,
an eighth grader from Vista Verde Middle School. "We'd walk by and they'd
try to pinch our butts. They'd wave and whistle and make bad remarks."
Sharon Rummery, a spokeswoman for the US. Immigration and Naturalization
Service,
said the agency was "meeting the spirit of addressing" one of its highest
priorities -- the deportation of "criminal aliens," a term that refers to
both legal and illegal immigrants guilty or suspected of committing crimes.
But the questions that linger, and anger many here, are more complicated.
Did INS agents swoop in to protect children in a town where 88 percent of
the population is Latino? Or did they use the complaints to arrest anyone
they saw who appeared to be undocumented?
Rummery said the arrests after the April 6 raid were "targeted at men who
had been observed taking part in these activities." But she allowed that "in
many INS enforcement actions some non-criminal aliens will be taken into
custody."
Some in town say the INS might have caught a few bad guys, but that a lot of
innocent people were snared in the agents' web -- law-abiding farm workers
who leave behind wives and children to fend for themselves.
But Rummery said, "Only a few fell into that category. What would you have
done if you had heard these complaints? Ignore them?"
The deportees are indigenous people from Oaxaca, a dirt-poor province in
Mexico where Indians have suffered a long history of racial discrimination.
They speak their own dialect, and few speak Spanish well, isolating them
from the general society.
"We've just come here to work and feed our families in Mexico, not hurt
anyone," said Andres Cruz Garcia, a Oaxacan farm laborer.
Hugo Juarez, the Mexican vice consul in San Jose, promised to help press for
a human rights investigation.
Mendoza's Family Games on Greenfield's main drag, directly across from the
police station, might be a good place to start.
The men often hung out in front of the pool hall and arcade, and it was
here, many of the girls said, that they were harassed as they walked home
from school.
Another 14-year-old Latina from the middle school said many of the men were
often drunk. "They pretended they weren't but they were," she said,
contending that the men often were drinking alcohol in juice bottles. "All
the girls would just have to walk by fast."
It was also here and at a nearby street corner where after being tipped off
by a sheriff's deputy and others -- undercover INS agents watched the men.
"Our agents witnessed behaviors that could have led to new crimes," said
Rummery, who noted that the agency had received written and oral complaints
beginning in mid-March from a white sheriff's deputy assigned to a drug
program in the elementary school, as well as eight Latino parents, children
and school employees. None of them have spoken publicly.
But at an incendiary Greenfield City Council meeting last week,
immigration
rights activists and farm workers excoriated the INS for overreaction,
discrimination and even lying about what their agents saw.
"I think all these charges are fabricated," said Maximano, a longtime farm
worker in Greenfield who did not give his last name.
He and other speakers who made similar allegations were roundly applauded by
more than 100 Latino activists and members of the Teamsters and United Farm
Workers unions who packed the small room. Dozens of Latino laborers left
outside peered into windows to watch their fellow workers ask the council to
adopt a resolution declaring Greenfield an "INS Raid-Free Zone."
Paul Johnston, executive director of the Salinas-based Citizenship Project,
said the agency has a "long and shameful tradition of abuse of authority and
violation of human rights." The raid, he alleged, was done under the false
cover of "defending the sexual purity of... girls from dark-skinned,
dangerous predators."
The INS is obviously taking the attacks seriously.. The agency's presentation
at the council meeting was made by David Still acting director of 49-county
INS district that stretches from Bakerfield to the Oregon border.
Still revealed that six other Oaxacans had been picked up outside the pool
hall on March 30, and that interviews with those men helped lead to the
arrests a week later. One laborer was seen taking off all his clothes in
front of the children, Still said.
Monterey County Sheriff Gordon Sonne said the INS learned of the alleged
harassment when the sheriff's deputy assigned to the D.A.R.E program at
Greenfield Elementary had dinner with an INS agent. The agent encouraged the
deputy to describe the conduct in writing.
At the council meeting, several people criticized Greenfield police for not
taking the matter into their own hands. But Police Chief Raymond Sands said
the information his officers received was hearsay. "We had no specific
complaints, no specific victims," the chief said.
Mayor J.M. Romo and the council directed the city staff to investigate the
arrests and perhaps come back with an ordinance making Greenfield a
raid-free zone.
For Joey Lopez, a former farm worker, the raid brought back haunting
memories of when he worked in the fields in the mid-'70s and farm workers
routinely were rounded up by the Border Patrol.
"I'm against that kind of thing all the way," said Lopez, 40, a Greenfield
resident since 1967. "I've never seen anything this big happen right in
town. It was like the days when all Mexicans were treated like trash."
But capturing the very division that divides Greenfield, Lopez added: "If
it's true that these young girls were being sexually hassled by these guys,
to hell with them. I have kids, a daughter. So I say ship 'em back. There
are perverts in any nationality."
********************END OF REPORT******************************
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