Man suing government over raid at 7-Eleven fled to U.S. because of death threat

Immigration officials say lawsuit should be thrown out and man deported

By Nick Madigan, health Originally posted in: 0, medical 2065062.story” target=”_blank”>The Baltimore Sun | 5:28 p.m. EDT, June 25, 2011

Sitting on a bus in Honduras in 2002, Denis Alvarez Alvarado says he overheard two men in front of him discussing how he was going to die.

Unaware that he was there, the men said that members of a gang called MS3 — who had kidnapped Alvarez a few days earlier, beaten him and eventually released him — intended to silence him so that he would not tell police about the abduction.

“I left Honduras because I was afraid that MS3 members would kill me,” Alvarez, now 32, says in court documents drawn up in his legal fight against the U.S. government to avoid deportation to his native country. “I fear that if I return the MS3 gang will have me killed.”

On Jan. 23, 2007, Alvarez, who had arrived in the U.S. without documentation, was arrested by immigration agents outside a 7-Eleven store in Upper Fells Point. A judge ordered him deported, but he is still here. Four years after his release on bail, he remains embroiled in a legal war as both defendant and plaintiff, and the battle could go on for years.

One of Alvarez’s legal cases is the effort by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport him, and the other is his lawsuit against the federal government, claiming that his constitutional rights were violated because he was targeted as a Latino. He seeks a half-million dollars in damages.

What seemed a routine matter of rounding up illegal immigrants has become a test of the government’s ability to force a man to return to a place in which, he says, he could die.

The raid in which Alvarez and others were arrested left Baltimore’s Latino community angry. Human rights activists, politicians and representatives of Casa de Maryland, an advocacy group, accused federal immigration agents of racial profiling.

Attorneys for the ICE declined to comment, and court documents contain no references, other than Alvarez’s own, to his claim that his life would be in danger should he be forced to go home. Alvarez’s lawyers were silent, too. Alvarez, whose 11-year-old son was born in the U.S., says in court documents that he is the sole source of financial support for his father, who is in Honduras, disabled and using a wheelchair.

In documents Alvarez filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, he explained the events that had prompted his departure from Honduras. He had lived in Choluteca, the country’s fourth-largest city, in a neighborhood called El Porvenir that he said was “known to belong to a gang called 18.”

Alvarez wrote that in October 2002 he was kidnapped by members of MS3, a rival gang from the Santa Lucia neighborhood. “The MS3 gang falsely believed that I was a member of 18,” he said. “I tried telling them that I was not a gang member and that I had no connections to 18 or any other gang. However, they did not believe me.”

For two days he was kept in a room, he said, beaten and deprived of food and with only a single bottle of water. Alvarez’s father, Santos, whom he described as “respected in the community,” convinced MS3 that his son had no connection to the rival gang.

Alvarez was released. Several days later, he was riding a bus to work when he overheard the chilling conversation between the two men and the death threat. He fled to the U.S. and worked as a day laborer in Baltimore, where the 7-Eleven parking lot on Broadway was a popular spot to pick up workers.

In an interview at his East Baltimore home in November, Alvarez said the agents had “grabbed me unjustly” during the roundup in 2007. Alvarez said he was waiting for a man who had promised to hire him as a painter but decided to go home when the man failed to show up. Alvarez said that as he was leaving, a van appeared and the men inside — who turned out to be federal agents — solicited the crowd for construction workers.

In the lawsuit, Alvarez said that as he walked away, a second vehicle blocked his exit and men emerged wearing holstered guns. Alvarez was arrested, held for several days in the Dorchester County jail and released on $10,000 bail.

Alvarez said in court documents that the ICE’s Fugitive Operations Team had arrested him “based on nothing more than his race.”

A response filed by the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the ICE, said members of its fugitive team went to the 7-Eleven only to get food and coffee, and had not planned to arrest anyone as part of a raid.

An immigration judge overseeing Alvarez’s appeal of his deportation said the officers “were not forthcoming” about the arrests. The judge said it was “implausible” that the officers “went to the store to food and coffee,” considering the “nearly immediate arrival of two additional ICE vehicles.” He admonished the officers for their “complete lack of candor to the court” and said they had misrepresented to the laborers “that they were seeking to hire them for casual employment.”

But the judge determined that the officers had not violated Alvarez’s rights and ordered him deported, though he may remain here while he appeals.

Other documents filed in the case suggest that immigration agents were determined to boost their arrest numbers. An internal DHS administrative report says that after the officers had detained nine people earlier on the day of Alvarez’s arrest, a supervisor ordered the team “back into the field and make additional arrests.”

According to the report, the supervisor said they “needed more numbers.” News accounts of the raid indicated that out of 24 people arrested, eight had been previously deported and six had criminal records. Alvarez has no such record.

Warren Price, an Annapolis immigration attorney who is not involved in Alvarez’s case, said it was rare for a roundup of illegal immigrants to result in such a drawn-out legal battle. Alvarez is represented by the Immigrant Justice Center, based at American University’s Washington College of Law.

“These constitutional violations against members of the undocumented population happen all the time, but you rarely see these types of lawsuits in response,” Price said. “Usually they just get deported.”

nick.madigan@baltsun.com

Protecting undocumented workers

Legislation would expand the protection of ‘U visas’ to those who come forward to report workplace violations.

Op-Ed By Harold Meyerson | June 24, 2011 | Source: 0,7107661.story” target=”_blank”>LA Times.com

Farm workers load a truck with cucumbers on a farm in Leslie, Ga. Last week, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and California Reps. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) and George Miller (D-Martinez) introduced the POWER Act that would give workers provisional "U visas." (John Bazemore / AP Photo)

Nearly every day for three years, Josue Melquisedec Diaz reported to work by going to a New Orleans street corner where contractors, subcontractors and people fixing up their places went to hire day laborers. It was there, one day in 2008, that a contractor picked him up and took him to Beaumont, Texas, just across the Louisiana line, to work on the cleanup, demolition and reconstruction projects that Beaumont was undertaking in the wake of Hurricane Gustav.

Diaz was put to work in a residential neighborhood that had been flooded. The American workers who were involved in the cleanup, he noted, had been given masks, gloves, boots and sometimes special suits to avoid infection. No such precautions were afforded Diaz and his crew of undocumented immigrant workers. “We were made to work with bare hands, picking up dead animals,” he says. “We were working in contaminated water,” tearing down and repairing washed-out homes.

Diaz told his story last week to a gathering of legislators and others in a meeting room at the U.S. Capitol, just a few doors down from the Senate chamber. He said that he and his crew asked their boss for the same safety equipment given their American counterparts. Instead, Diaz said, the boss responded by cutting the undocumented workers’ pay in half — at which point, Diaz and 11 others went on strike. Soon after, both the local police and immigration officers showed up to haul off the workers. The strikers were first taken to a local jail, then transferred to a federal immigration jail.

Fortunately, Diaz was a member of the New Orleans Congress of Day Laborers, which managed to get him and his co-workers released after four months behind bars. Since then, three of the 12 workers have been deported, one has died, and Diaz faces a deportation hearing scheduled for July 20. At least until then, he is trying to publicize the cause of workers who labor in dangerous conditions, who are compelled to work long hours for no extra pay, who get cheated altogether out of their paychecks and who have, in this nation of laws, no legal recourse.

Undocumented immigrants are just one among many groups of workers who effectively lack the on-the-job protections that most Americans take for granted. When the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a national minimum wage and overtime pay, was enacted in 1938, it excluded restaurant employees and retail, domestic and farm workers. (Winning the votes of Southern senators required President Franklin D. Roosevelt to effectively exclude all occupations then largely filled by African Americans.)

In time, the act was expanded to cover some of those workers, but agricultural laborers still have no federal legal right to collect overtime, home healthcare workers have no right to the minimum wage and “tipped” workers such as waiters are entitled to a minimum of just $2.13 an hour. Nor are agricultural and domestic workers accorded the right to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act (though farm workers have won this right on the state level in California), and such low-paid independent contractors as port truckers and taxi drivers are similarly excluded.

As construction workers, the Diaz 12 actually came under the protections of wage, hour and unionization laws. But employers know they can violate these laws with impunity when their workers have no union contract and are undocumented. The odds are overwhelming that the outcome of such conflicts is worker deportation, not management fines. This de facto exemption of undocumented immigrants from the protection of workplace laws actually encourages employers to hire more undocumented workers. It is easy for management to ignore labor laws when employees can’t complain.

Last week, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez and California Reps. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) and George Miller (D-Martinez) introduced legislation (the POWER Act) that would give workers like Diaz provisional “U visas.” The visas were designed to provide temporary legal status to immigrant victims who come forward to report violent crimes, and the proposed legislation would expand the protection to those who come forward to report workplace violations. Such legislation, Menendez pointed out, would not only protect immigrants but keep unscrupulous employers from lowering labor standards generally. “When some workers are easy to exploit,” Menendez said, “conditions for all workers suffer.”

That’s also the message that Diaz brought to the Capitol last week. “When I was in jail, I met many workers with stories like mine, but whose voices are never heard,” he said. “I made a promise to them that I would bring their stories out with me.”

Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect and an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.

Stiffing Working Stiffs

Stiffing Working Stiffs

June 22nd, health 2011 | NATHAN GILLES | Source: Wweek.com

Lawmakers could have acted to shield day laborers from bosses who cheat them out of wages. Instead they turned their backs.

Stiffing Working Stiffs

JOB SEEKERS: The day laborers’ lot at the Voz Workers’ Rights Project on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. – IMAGE: Darryl James

Antonio Sanchez says he worked long hours for Enrique Hernandez in June 2009.

Sanchez had been standing on the corner of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. and Lloyd boulevards, order hoping for a day laborer’s job, when a man drove up and said his boss needed help. The driver took Sanchez to a site where Hernandez’s company, Henry’s Quality Underlayment, was ripping out carpet and putting down vinyl flooring.

Sanchez says Hernandez agreed to pay him $10 an hour, and that he worked long days—without lunch breaks—for four weeks at houses in Portland and Clatskanie. He says he was never paid $1,700 Hernandez owed him.

Stiffing Working Stiffs

D. MICHAEL DALE OF THE NORTHWEST WORKERS’ JUSTICE PROJECT Credits: Darryl James

Hernandez claimed Sanchez never worked for him. It was the driver who brought Sanchez to the site, he said, who had hired Sanchez. He didn’t owe Sanchez a dime.

“That’s when I decided to sue,” Sanchez says.

Sanchez says he was the victim of wage theft—when employers cheat their workers out of their pay. It’s a particularly big problem for immigrants and workers who take short-term jobs and often move from one employer to the next.

Wage theft can take many forms, from minimum-wage violations to cases like Sanchez’s, in which workers are promised money from employers who never deliver. A 2009 study by the National Employment Law Project, focusing on New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, found 1.1 million low-wage workers had been victims of wage theft, losing an average of about $2,600 from a $17,600 annual income.

In Oregon, the state Bureau of Labor and Industries, or BOLI, receives roughly 2,800 claims of wage theft each year.

Since 2000, the bureau has helped employees get back approximately $17 million in lost income.

But that’s little comfort for people like Sanchez.

“What happens in a typical case of wage theft is nothing,” says D. Michael Dale from the Northwest Workers’ Justice Project, a nonprofit legal service that helps immigrant workers fight wage theft. “It’s a huge problem. We are talking about millions of dollars of unpaid wages in the state of Oregon.”

Lawmakers had the chance to address the problem with five bills proposed by Dale’s group. But they caved in to business lobbyists. Democrats, after making a fainthearted effort to help workers, ditched the bills.

One measure, SB 611, would have helped workers like Sanchez by defining the employer-employee relationship, particularly for farm-labor and construction contractors. The bill died in committee after what Dale says was heavy lobbying from business groups.

“[SB 611] was just a very broad, far-reaching piece of legislation that would tremendously impact [the construction] industry,” said Jan Meekcoms, a lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, who testified against the measure. She called Dale’s bills “extreme.”

The bill died. But another measure that would help people caught in Sanchez’s situation passed the Senate.

Hernandez, whose company did the work, claims he never met Sanchez. “I didn’t negotiate any wages when he started the job,” Hernandez tells WW. Instead, he says, the driver who picked up Sanchez, a man named Javier Galvans, should have paid Sanchez’s wages.

“I did not discuss wages, hours or other working conditions with Javier, rather only with [Hernandez],” Sanchez wrote in a Construction Contractors Board complaint.

SB 612 would have blocked employers from passing their responsibility to pay workers onto others. The measure requires day-labor drivers such as Galvans to register with BOLI as construction labor contractors. Bosses who get workers from unlicensed labor brokers would be on the hook for wages and civil fines.

The Senate passed the bill May 5 in a party-line vote of 16-13. Sen. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Northwest Portland), the bill’s carrier, said the measure would have “help[ed] to ensure workers receive the wages they are owed in an industry in which this has become a particular concern.” Republicans offered a different proposal that wouldn’t have made the contractor liable for the wages.

After that, the bill was orphaned in the House, where an even split between Republicans and Democrats means no bill gets a hearing without both parties’ agreement.

Since then, Bonamici says, she hasn’t pushed the matter any further. “I spoke on the bill because I was asked to carry it,” she says.

Dale says he hopes to build more support for his group’s measures in the 2012 session.

Meanwhile, Sanchez says he struggled to get by after he was denied his wages, and that his wife had to borrow money to pay bills. Last fall—more than a year after Sanchez did the work—the state contractors’ board worked out a settlement: Hernandez agreed to pay $1,000 of the $1,700 Sanchez says he was owed. Hernandez admitted no wrongdoing.

“I suffered a lot,” Sanchez says, “because he did not pay me what he told me he would pay me.”

Migration and labor centers

Migration and labor centers

By DONNA SHEARER | Originally Posted in PressDemocrat.com
Published: Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 11:58 p.m.

Migration and labor centers

Donna Shearer (credit: Press Democrat website)

Of all the ideas swirling around the public conversation about a potential day labor center for Petaluma, a crucial one is notably absent: The inevitability of demographic changes due to worldwide labor migrations.

The movement of people in search of food has been a normal aspect of life on the planet since the origins of humankind; but with the development of nation-states at the turn of the last century, the flow of people across international boundaries — regulated by visas and passports — is a relatively recent phenomenon. What makes this issue particularly problematic in the current era is a combination of events that are greatly accelerating the magnitude and pace of these migrations.

Globalization is one of these. The outsourcing of industry and labor to other countries not only negatively affects the wages and livelihoods of countless Americans, it also impacts the livelihoods of millions of people across the world. Farmers and small businesses who grow, process and distribute rice, beans or corn in Central or Latin America, for example, aren’t able to compete with a newly arrived Wal-Mart that can sell these commodities at far cheaper rates. The result can deprive already stressed local communities of the ability to make a living; shantytowns — where many lack employment and are malnourished — expand. A last resort then compels the well-known high-risk migrations to the United States in search of work, a story that is repeated a thousand-fold throughout the world.

But globalization is only the tip of this demographic iceberg. Refugees fleeing war and persecution feed the mix, as do corrupt governments, failing financial institutions and the unintended consequences of the industrial revolution (e.g. large deforestation projects that not infrequently leave droughts, flooding, soil erosion, and, increasingly, severe water shortages, in their wake).

It is not only the developing countries that have been experiencing these kinds of economic stresses. In the United States, a patchwork of distressed regions across the country (think Detroit) has prompted people to move to other regions in the country; and an increasing number of under-employed or unemployed Americans are currently looking for work across international borders — including Mexico — and not always with “papers.” In the end, as economic pressures on global communities mount, the eternal search for work as the primary means of survival places all of humanity in the same boat.

None of this has to mean these problems can’t be solved. Demographers (and others in the environmental and social sciences) believe there are ways of turning human migrations across the world into advantages for the countries impacted by them. Postwar Europe addressed the migrations of workers across borders by absorbing them into local communities, and providing legal protections for them. A few generations later, many of their descendants are today’s middle-class Europeans.

Randal Johnson, vice president of the immigration division of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, contends that immigration, including migrant workers from Central and Latin America, “… will continue to be an important labor force needed to replace the aging U.S. workforce” — a view that explains the Chamber’s position against penalizing migrant workers. (For details, see the United States Chamber of Commerce document: www.uschamber.com/immigrationmythsfacts.jpg).

In view of the larger demographic picture, day labor centers are extraordinarily modest adaptations to the inevitability of labor migrations worldwide. The day labor centers in both Healdsburg and Graton won the approval of a coalition of merchants, residents, police and civic leaders in part because of the remarkably low impact of these projects, and in part because of the obvious gain to their communities: Alleviating the loitering of workers near s and residences, the provision of minimum protections for the workers in the form of shelter from extreme weather, a fair hiring system that cuts down on worker exploitation and a bathroom.

Petaluma has little to lose and much to gain by supporting a day labor project in town.

(Donna Shearer is a Petaluma resident and an anthropologist with a background in international relations. World labor migrations are a recent interest.)

(Source: PressDemocrat.com)

Latino Union’s Elisa Ringholm interviewed on WBEZ 91.5 FM’s Worldview segment: “Chicago as a fair trade city”

Written by Worldview May, 05, find 2011 | WBEZ.org

Listen to the Story here.

Fair Trade Day in Chicago is on May 6. Chicago has officially become a fair trade city and there’s even a website to track its progress. But what does this mean for the city? We examine the benefits of fair trade and discuss efforts to bring fair wages and just working conditions to local workers.

Joining the discussion are:

Nancy Jones, executive director of Chicago Fair Trade. They work with businesses, faith-based organizations, non-profits, universities and activists to support fair trade through education, advocacy and consumer campaigns.

Elisa Ringholm, development director of Latino Union, an immigrant workers rights organization.

Jose Gallardo, a co-op member of Café Chicago, a fair trade, organic coffee-roasters cooperative.

Federal labor officials host summit on Latino, immigrant worker safety

Source: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | First Posted: June 05, 2011 – 4:07 pm

BRIDGETON, case N.J. — Federal labor officials say Latino workers suffer workplace injuries and deaths on the job at a higher rate than all other workers combined.

Experts say in New Jersey, stuff the problem is prevalent among migrant farmworkers or those hired as day laborers; two groups often exposed to wage abuses or workplace safety hazards.

The U.S. Department of Labor is hosting a summit on the issue Sunday in Bridgeton to educate people on workplace safety and federal wage protections.

Latino workers accounted for nearly one quarter of the total number of New Jersey worker fatalities in 2009, according to the most recent numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Organizers were expecting participation from more than 200 people, including workers, representatives from community groups, unions, faith-based organizations, and federal and state agencies.

Day laborers face hardships

Day laborers face hardships

By Philip Riley & Chris Samson
ARGUS-COURIER STAFF | Posted in the PressDemocrat.com

Published: Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, June 1, 2011 at 3:26 p.m.

(Editor’s note: This is one in a series of stories about Latinos in Petaluma. This article shares the personal stories of some of the day laborers.)

Day laborers face hardships

Terry Hankins/Argus-Courier Staff Day laborers Humberto Lopez, left, and his brother, Nazario Lojas, pass the time as they await an offer to work.

passing by the Shell station on the corner of Washington and Howard streets has likely seen them — men gathered, waiting for a slowing car or a honking horn, hoping for any sign of work.

These day laborers, or jornaleros, as they are called in Spanish, have been a fixture in the community for many years. Most are hired by residents for temporary work in their homes or yards, but others find sporadic work with local businesses or vineyards.

As many as 70 workers gather along the one-block stretch of Howard Street at the busiest times of the year. But last Friday, about 25 to 30 men were waiting in a light drizzle near the corners of Washington Street and Western Avenue. All cite better wages as their reason for coming to Petaluma from their home countries in Latin America, and their stories highlight the economic forces at play in a complex global economy.

For many workers, the amount they earn in a single day is equal to working as much as a week back home. They typically find work a few days each week, work eight hours per day, and earn $10 to $15 per hour, many sending most of their wages to family back home.

Noe Castillo, 25, is a native of Veracruz, Mexico and an undocumented resident. He arrived in Petaluma six years ago to earn a living and said he has taken English as a Second Language classes to help him improve his situation.

Castillo gets occasional work as a tile-setter for a local company. But there was no work last week, so he went to the street corner hoping someone would hire him. On Friday morning, he was still waiting for his first work of the week.

Day laborers face hardships

Day laborers stand under a tree at the corner of Howard and Washington streets to escape rain on Friday as they wait for work. Terry Hankins/Argus-Courier Staff

Castillo shared stories of mis from those who hired him and other workers. One employer did not alert workers before he threw lumber down to them off of a 15-foot porch, almost hitting one worker in the head. He said some of the toughest workers have been degraded to the point of tears.

“This man yells and mistreats all the workers,” said Castillo. “He calls us ‘dogs.’”

Alejandro Guzman, 55, also said his experience as a day worker has not been a good one.

“They don’t always treat you well,” he said. “Sometimes the person who hires you says (at the end of the day) that they need you to work tomorrow and they will pay you then, but they never come back.”

He and other workers suffer harassment and other indignities.

“People look at us with non-accepting eyes,” he said. “They say, ‘What are you doing here? Why are you standing on this corner?’”

He says the owner of the Shell station treats them well, but a business owner at a different location called the police because he didn’t want the laborers standing in front of his store.

Guzman, who has no other job at the moment, says he gets hired about two days a week on average. He is experienced as a carpenter, as well as in concrete, sheetrock and landscaping work.

His undocumented status makes it difficult to find regular work. He said he has worked at local companies, but when they find out he does not have a Social Security card, they lay him off.

He left Veracruz, Mexico, 10 years ago seeking work in the United States to support his family — a wife and two children now 13 and 20 years old — and has not been able to return since. He sends his family as much money as he can.

“I wish we could get labor permits so that we can go back to see our families and return,” he said. Even more, he wishes that conditions would change so that he could bring his family to the United States. But it’s “very expensive and very dangerous” to cross the border as an undocumented resident, he said.

Nazario Lojas, 38, immigrated from Peru in 1992 and became a naturalized citizen. He attended Casa Grande High School and Santa Rosa Junior College, but has to supplement his income as a part-time landscaping worker by seeking day work.

“I come here every morning, Monday through Saturday,” said Lojas, who said he is usually hired three or four days a week for concrete and masonry work.

Unlike other day workers, Lojas says he has never had a bad experience. “I’ve never had to chase anybody to pay me,” he said. “I always show them my identification and Social Security card.”

Lojas, who is unmarried, has a brother and sisters who live in the area. One of them, Humberto Lopez, was also waiting for work on Friday.

Lopez sends money he earns to his wife and 12 children in his home country of Peru. Back home, he found more stable work in construction and other labor jobs, but came to Petaluma because of the higher price he could get for his work.

Lopez has been trying to become a legal resident, but said that the cost to finalize his paperwork has halted that process. His mother is a U.S. citizen and has filed forms to help him immigrate. But hiring an immigration lawyer can cost thousands of dollars.

“Whatever little money I have, I have to send back to my family,” he said.

Earlier this year, a group of local residents announced plans to create a hiring hall to help the workers connect with employers, learn job skills and provide shelter. The hiring center would also let employers give feedback on the work they receive and would help workers report abuse.

Members of the group, called Petaluma Latinos Active in Civic Engagement, or PLACE, say that the building would help formalize an informal workforce that “is already here and not going anywhere.” All of the workers interviewed (with translation help from PLACE members) said that they would welcome a hiring hall.

“It would be a magnificent opportunity,” said Lopez. “There are many who share the same feelings and thoughts. Learning English would be helpful.”

“It would make everything better for all of us,” said Guzman about a hiring hall.

The hiring hall could also provide information and resources to workers on issues such as find finding food, housing and the language barrier, said members of PLACE.

“Some of them have to choose between paying their rent or ing food,” says Gloria McCallister, a PLACE member.

“The Mexican culture is very proud,” McCallister added. “They want to work. They don’t tend to seek out social services because they consider it begging. They just want some simple respect.”

(Contact the writers at philip.riley@arguscourier.com and chris.samson@arguscourier.com)