A recent series of raids by the US Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) service signals a new era of anti-immigrant hysteria in America.
In September in the New York City suburb of Nassau County, ICE undertook a massive raid to capture gang members. It declared the raids a success, claiming that of the 186 arrested, 157 were gang members or associates.
However, county executive Thomas Suozzi denounced the raid, insisting that only 'eight were active gang members and one is a gang associate'. He added, 'The result was that many wrong residential addresses were raided, and in one instance, ICE sought a 28-year-old defendant using a photograph taken when he was [a] seven-year-old boy.'
Not only were American citizens and legal residents picked up, but in one case, a house was searched for a man who had moved out in 2003. The family living there were US citizens, except for a child who was a legal resident awaiting naturalisation. Suozzi, joined by county police commissioner Lawrence Mulvey, is calling for a federal investigation of the raid.
This raid was but the latest in a series of ICE anti-immigrant actions taking place throughout the US during the last couple of months. Federal agents picked up 51 workers at an Iowa egg farm. In Reno, Nevada, upwards of 100 suspected illegal workers were arrested in raids at McDonald's restaurants. Agents raided meatpacking plants, egg farms and a leather factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts. And in the San Francisco area, ICE agents were spotted prowling for undocumented immigrants at East Bay supermarkets, day-labourer sites, Home Depot and Wal-Mart outlets and even public libraries and schools.
Even more disturbing, in New Haven, Connecticut, two days after the city approved ID cards for undocumented residents, an ICE raid resulted in the arrest of at least 29 workers. Although denied by ICE, many residents insist the raid was as a punitive action — a reprisal for the city's commitment to civil liberties.
Estimates vary as to the size of the undocumented immigrant population in America. Extrapolating from US Census Bureau data, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that as of 2006 there were 11.5 to 12 million non-documented foreigners residing in the country, two-thirds of whom have been in the US for ten years or less. Pew estimates 7 million of these immigrants were employed, making up five per cent of the US