Farm bosses in Immokalee plead guilty in slavery scheme
Posted on Fri, Sep. 05, 2008
Miami Herald
BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com
Five farm bosses have pleaded guilty to a scheme to enslave Mexican and Guatemalan nationals as agricultural workers in southwest Florida, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
Cesar Navarrete, Geovanni Navarrete, Villhina Navarrete, Ismael Michael Navarrete and Antonio Zuniga Vargas were convicted of harboring undocumented immigrants for profit and identify theft in the farming community of Immokalee, authorities said.
Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete also pleaded guilty to beating, threatening, restraining and locking workers in trucks to force them to work.
They face up to 35 and 25 years in prison, respectively. The other defendants face 10 to 25 years in prison.
Previously, codefendant Jose Navarrete had pleaded guilty to harboring undocumented foreigners for profit. He faces up to 37 years in prison.
According to prosecutors, the defendants were accused of paying the workers minimal wages and driving them into debt, threatening physical harm if they left before their debts were repaid to the Navarrete family.
''In this case, we are given yet another example of how human trafficking of all kinds victimizes vulnerable human beings,'' said Grace Chung Becker, acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division.
This case was investigated by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI, assisted by the Collier County Sheriff's Department. Victim assistance was provided by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. It was prosecuted by the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Florida.
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Friday, September 5, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
The Great Immigration Panic
Opinion
The New York Times
June 3, 2008
Someday, the country will recognize the true cost of its war on illegalimmigration. We don't mean dollars, though those are being squandered bythe billions. The true cost is to the national identity: the sense ofwho we are and what we value. It will hit us once the enforcement feverbreaks, when we look at what has been done and no longer recognize thecountry that did it.
A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants inbondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemningits lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at theAmerican core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away.
An escalating campaign of raids in homes and workplaces has spreadindiscriminate terror among millions of people who pose no threat. Afterthe largest raid ever last month — at a meatpacking plant in Iowa —hundreds were swiftly force-fed through the legal system and sent to prison. Civil-rights lawyers complained, futilely, that workers had beensteamrolled into giving up their rights, treated more as a presumptivecriminal gang than as potentially exploited workers who deserved a fairhearing. The company that harnessed their desperation, like so manyothers, has faced no charges.
Immigrants in detention languish without lawyers and decent medical careeven when they are mortally ill. Lawmakers are struggling to imposestandards and oversight on a system deficient in both. Counties and towns with spare jail cells are lining up for federal contracts asprosecutions fill the system to bursting. Unbothered by the sight ofblameless children in prison scrubs, the government plans to build up tothree new family detention centers. Police all over are checking papers,empowered by politicians itching to enlist in the federal crusade.This is not about forcing people to go home and come back the right way. Ellis Island is closed. Legal paths are clogged or do not exist. Somebacklogs are so long that they are measured in decades or generations.
A bill to fix the system died a year ago this month. The currentstrategy, dreamed up by restrictionists and embraced by Republicans andsome Democrats, is to force millions into fear and poverty.There are few national figures standing firm against restrictionism.
Senator Edward Kennedy has bravely done so for four decades, but hisSenate colleagues who are running for president seem by comparison to bein hiding. John McCain supported sensible reform, but whenever hementions it, his party starts braying and he leaves the room. HillaryRodham Clinton has lost her voice on this issue more than once. BarackObama, gliding above the ugliness, might someday test his vision of anew politics against restrictionist hatred, but he has not yet done so.
The American public’s moderation on immigration reform, confirmed inpoll after poll, begs the candidates to confront the issue with courageand a plan. But they have been vague and discreet when they should beforceful and unflinching.
The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrantsdeserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize thatillegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended bymaking reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nationcontains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remainforever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes thepowers of the moment may devise.
Every time this country has singled out a group of newly arrivedimmigrants for unjust punishment, the shame has echoed through history.
Think of the Chinese and Irish, Catholics and Americans of Japaneseancestry. Children someday will study the Great Immigration Panic of theearly 2000s, which harmed countless lives, wasted billions of dollarsand mocked the nation’s most deeply held values.
From http://www.nytimes. com/2008/ 06/03/opinion/ 03tue1.html
The New York Times
June 3, 2008
Someday, the country will recognize the true cost of its war on illegalimmigration. We don't mean dollars, though those are being squandered bythe billions. The true cost is to the national identity: the sense ofwho we are and what we value. It will hit us once the enforcement feverbreaks, when we look at what has been done and no longer recognize thecountry that did it.
A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants inbondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemningits lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at theAmerican core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away.
An escalating campaign of raids in homes and workplaces has spreadindiscriminate terror among millions of people who pose no threat. Afterthe largest raid ever last month — at a meatpacking plant in Iowa —hundreds were swiftly force-fed through the legal system and sent to prison. Civil-rights lawyers complained, futilely, that workers had beensteamrolled into giving up their rights, treated more as a presumptivecriminal gang than as potentially exploited workers who deserved a fairhearing. The company that harnessed their desperation, like so manyothers, has faced no charges.
Immigrants in detention languish without lawyers and decent medical careeven when they are mortally ill. Lawmakers are struggling to imposestandards and oversight on a system deficient in both. Counties and towns with spare jail cells are lining up for federal contracts asprosecutions fill the system to bursting. Unbothered by the sight ofblameless children in prison scrubs, the government plans to build up tothree new family detention centers. Police all over are checking papers,empowered by politicians itching to enlist in the federal crusade.This is not about forcing people to go home and come back the right way. Ellis Island is closed. Legal paths are clogged or do not exist. Somebacklogs are so long that they are measured in decades or generations.
A bill to fix the system died a year ago this month. The currentstrategy, dreamed up by restrictionists and embraced by Republicans andsome Democrats, is to force millions into fear and poverty.There are few national figures standing firm against restrictionism.
Senator Edward Kennedy has bravely done so for four decades, but hisSenate colleagues who are running for president seem by comparison to bein hiding. John McCain supported sensible reform, but whenever hementions it, his party starts braying and he leaves the room. HillaryRodham Clinton has lost her voice on this issue more than once. BarackObama, gliding above the ugliness, might someday test his vision of anew politics against restrictionist hatred, but he has not yet done so.
The American public’s moderation on immigration reform, confirmed inpoll after poll, begs the candidates to confront the issue with courageand a plan. But they have been vague and discreet when they should beforceful and unflinching.
The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrantsdeserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize thatillegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended bymaking reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nationcontains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remainforever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes thepowers of the moment may devise.
Every time this country has singled out a group of newly arrivedimmigrants for unjust punishment, the shame has echoed through history.
Think of the Chinese and Irish, Catholics and Americans of Japaneseancestry. Children someday will study the Great Immigration Panic of theearly 2000s, which harmed countless lives, wasted billions of dollarsand mocked the nation’s most deeply held values.
From http://www.nytimes. com/2008/ 06/03/opinion/ 03tue1.html
Friday, May 2, 2008
In Solidarity With Economic Refugees
March, rally smaller but still spirited
City immigration event draws about 15,000
By Antonio Olivo, Vanessa Bauzá and Carlos Sadovi Tribune reporters
9:14 PM CDT, May 1, 2008
Thursday's crowd of marchers was much smaller than those in years past, but for several hours they filled downtown Chicago with the echoing beats of drums and deafening chants for Immigration reform.
Nearly 15,000 demonstrators—a tenth the tally at last year's May Day march, far short of the estimated 400,000 in 2006—made up for their numbers with youthful energy, in what Chicago police said was a peaceful event.
Taking advantage of the warm, sunny weather, crowds of high school and college students skipped classes to join a movement that had been made up mostly of labor unions, older immigrants and middle-aged activists.
As the younger marchers made their way from Union Park to an afternoon rally in Federal Plaza, iPods dangling from ears, they carried a hardening conviction that the struggle is not over, even with hopes for congressional reforms fading. Read On
All people are created equally and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights including Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, except if you're trying to escape a desperate, poverty-stricken environment and improve your family's quality of life. In that case, you should expect to be vilified, terrorized, abused, and exploited. -EF Swagee
City immigration event draws about 15,000
By Antonio Olivo, Vanessa Bauzá and Carlos Sadovi Tribune reporters
9:14 PM CDT, May 1, 2008
Thursday's crowd of marchers was much smaller than those in years past, but for several hours they filled downtown Chicago with the echoing beats of drums and deafening chants for Immigration reform.
Nearly 15,000 demonstrators—a tenth the tally at last year's May Day march, far short of the estimated 400,000 in 2006—made up for their numbers with youthful energy, in what Chicago police said was a peaceful event.
Taking advantage of the warm, sunny weather, crowds of high school and college students skipped classes to join a movement that had been made up mostly of labor unions, older immigrants and middle-aged activists.
As the younger marchers made their way from Union Park to an afternoon rally in Federal Plaza, iPods dangling from ears, they carried a hardening conviction that the struggle is not over, even with hopes for congressional reforms fading. Read On
All people are created equally and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights including Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, except if you're trying to escape a desperate, poverty-stricken environment and improve your family's quality of life. In that case, you should expect to be vilified, terrorized, abused, and exploited. -EF Swagee
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Foreign-born soldiers earn US citizenship by dying in combat
Irish Examiner
25 March 2008
A YOUNG, ambitious immigrant from Guatemala who dreamed of becoming an architect. A Nigerian medic. A soldier from China who boasted he would one day become an American general. An Indian native whose headstone displays the first Khanda, emblem of the Sikh faith, to appear in Arlington National Cemetery.These were among more than 100 foreign-born members of the US military who earned American citizenship by dying in Iraq.
Jose Gutierrez was one of the first to fall, killed by "friendly fire" in the dust of Umm Qasr in the opening hours of the invasion.
In death, the young marine was showered with honours his family could only have dreamed of in life. His sister was flown in from Guatemala for his memorial service, where a Roman Catholic cardinal presided and top military officials saluted his flag-draped coffin.
And yet, his foster mother agonised as she accompanied his body back for burial in Guatemala City: Why did Jose have to die for America in order to truly belong?
Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who oversaw Gutierrez’s service, put it differently.
"There is something terribly wrong with our immigration policies, if it takes death on the battlefield in order to earn citizenship," Mahony wrote to President George Bush in April 2003. He urged Bush to grant immediate citizenship to all immigrants who sign up for military service in wartime.
"They should not have to wait until they are brought home in a casket."
Read On
25 March 2008
A YOUNG, ambitious immigrant from Guatemala who dreamed of becoming an architect. A Nigerian medic. A soldier from China who boasted he would one day become an American general. An Indian native whose headstone displays the first Khanda, emblem of the Sikh faith, to appear in Arlington National Cemetery.These were among more than 100 foreign-born members of the US military who earned American citizenship by dying in Iraq.
Jose Gutierrez was one of the first to fall, killed by "friendly fire" in the dust of Umm Qasr in the opening hours of the invasion.
In death, the young marine was showered with honours his family could only have dreamed of in life. His sister was flown in from Guatemala for his memorial service, where a Roman Catholic cardinal presided and top military officials saluted his flag-draped coffin.
And yet, his foster mother agonised as she accompanied his body back for burial in Guatemala City: Why did Jose have to die for America in order to truly belong?
Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who oversaw Gutierrez’s service, put it differently.
"There is something terribly wrong with our immigration policies, if it takes death on the battlefield in order to earn citizenship," Mahony wrote to President George Bush in April 2003. He urged Bush to grant immediate citizenship to all immigrants who sign up for military service in wartime.
"They should not have to wait until they are brought home in a casket."
Read On
Monday, March 10, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
