Despite the story's obvious importance, Tacoma's daily newspaper, the News Tribune, is publishing not a word on the arrival of scores of workers arrested in Tuesday's immigration raid in Portland.  --  This is more than odd, because the story has national dimensions, intense human drama, and many fascinating aspects to explore.  --  In contrast, the oldest continuously published newspaper on the West Coast, the Oregonian, is pulling out the stops and publishing detailed coverage of all aspects of the case, including the involvement of the Northwest Detention Center.  --  On Friday, the Portland paper said that "Of the 167 workers detained during Tuesday's sweep, 131 were bused to cells in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.  Thirty-four were released for humanitarian reasons and are being monitored until they see a judge."[1]  --  Tim Smith, founder of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee-Tacoma, commented:  "One has to look OUTSIDE of this community to find news about the Detention Center located IN this community."  --  In a separate but related article published Friday, the Oregonian said the Portland raid was part of a "new approach" on the part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), one that is "expanding the arrests of ordinary undocumented employees in workplace raids" and is a "significant departure from the practice of targeting illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes."[2]  --  But the television station KOIN 6 called attention to a more sinister aspect of the case.  --  Its source:  Prof. Keith Cunningham-Parmeter, an expert in employment and immigration law who teaches at Willamette College of Law and worked as with the Oregon Law Center Farmworker Program, where he took a special interest in occupational health and workplace discrimination and was lead counsel in a victorious wage and hour class action lawsuit brought on behalf of food processing workers in Oregon that resulted in the largest settlement for agricultural workers ever in the state.  --  Prof. Cunningham-Parmeter told KOIN 6 the immigration bust amounted to revenge on workers who had complained about safety violations:  "This was a publicized settlement where immigration officials were aware that there was this group of workers who had complained about workplace violations and this is the first plant they go after in Oregon — I think it's more than coincidence."[3]  --  For background on this case, see the Oregonian's report of Aug. 10, 2006, which begins:  "It began as a request by 30 workers who wanted New Year's Eve 2004 off with their families."[4] ...

1.

Immigration sweep

MOST DETAINEES WAIT IN WASHINGTON STATE
By Esmeralda Bermudez

** After the arrests, buses take the migrants north, where the process starts **

Oregonian (Portland, OR)
June 15, 2007

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/118187612391250.xml&coll=7

Two days after Oregon's largest immigration raid in recent memory, most of the people arrested are waiting to stand before a judge at a detention center in Washington state.

Of the 167 workers detained during Tuesday's sweep, 131 were bused to cells in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. Thirty-four were released for humanitarian reasons and are being monitored until they see a judge.

Among those detained were two juveniles who were taken to a facility in El Paso, Texas, where they are expected to be deported. Their cases are being managed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Late Tuesday afternoon, detainees were bused from Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. to a regional government office in Tukwila, Wash. There, immigration officials worked into the night through Wednesday morning to fingerprint and interview detainees before driving them 18 miles south to Tacoma for booking.

They join about 800 detainees -- mainly from Oregon and Washington --with pending cases. Most men and women have been at the detention facility a few days or weeks, but others have been locked up for several months -- a few more than a year -- while cases are appealed. Housing each detainee costs about $90 a day.

Del Monte workers who want to see a judge immediately will have a hearing within three business days, said Lorie Dankers, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It's not clear whether the timeline for those three days has already begun. Detainees who choose to seek an attorney or want to wait before they see a judge will be given more time.

None of those detained will qualify for voluntary deportation -- permission that allows them to return to their native country without further penalty -- because they were working in the country illegally. Immigration officials are still poring through records of the 167 detainees, anticipating more charges. Some might face criminal prosecution.

"It's a matter of weeks," Dankers said.

Detainees may be released on bonds, which start at $1,500. According to North Portland resident Nicolas Siquina, the bond for his wife, Judith Sebastiana, was set at $15,000. There is no limit, but the amount is determined by two things: whether they pose a risk to the community or are a flight risk, Dankers said. As of Thursday morning, no one had been released on bond.

Of the small group that remained in Portland, most were women released for humanitarian reasons. Humanitarian release is offered to detainees who can prove they are sole caretakers of children or suffer from a chronic medical condition that must be treated by their personal doctor.

--Esmeralda Bermudez: 503-294-5961;ebermudez@ news.oregonian.com

2.

Immigration

RAID REFLECTS FEDS' NEW TACK: TARGET WORKERS
By Richard Read

** Workplace arrests surge as agents increasingly bust ordinary employees **

Oregonian (Portland, OR)
June 15, 2007

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1181879721194270.xml&coll=7

Federal agents are dramatically expanding the arrests of ordinary undocumented employees in workplace raids. That's a significant departure from the practice of targeting illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said this week's raid in Portland -- in which most of the 167 arrested were line workers, not kingpins -- represents the new approach.

Arrests for alleged criminal violations by managers, illegal immigrants and others in ICE work site raids have increased since the agency was formed in 2003. But arrests of workers solely for being in the country illegally have ballooned -- from 445 in fiscal 2003 to 3,667 during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2006.

This year's number -- which reached 3,226 in May -- will soar, given Portland's raid and operations such as the March arrests of more than 360 workers at a factory in New Bedford, Mass.

Some immigration attorneys accuse the Bush administration of staging the raids and driving up arrest numbers to push Congress into reforming the system. U.S. Senate leaders agreed Thursday night to revive stalled legislation, after a rare Capitol Hill visit by President Bush on the day of the Portland raid.

But ICE spokesman Marc Raimondi, who charges from one immigration raid to the next, brushes off all implications. Raimondi said ICE will pursue the managers who hire illegal immigrants, the criminals among the foreigners, and ordinary undocumented workers.

"When we go into a plant to arrest the managers, you can't just ignore the immigration violations," Raimondi said. "The lack of consequence for violating the law is an affront to those who play by the rules, who wait in line to come here."

The agency's predecessor, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, conducted relatively few workplace raids, concentrating on ringleaders when it did. But ICE continues cranking up the raids, arresting 136 people at a Missouri poultry-processing plant May 22.

"The administration is trying to emphasize in very public ways that they are doing something about enforcement," said Greg Siskind, a nationally known immigration attorney based in Memphis, Tenn. The raids, he said, are intended to emphasize the need for legislation that would give foreigners legal ways to enter the country for work.

Locally and nationally, fallout from the raids certainly affects the debate, said immigration attorney Brent Renison of Parrilli Renison LLC in Lake Oswego. Renison said the raids demonstrate that under current law, those arrested have entered the United States for economic reasons, something that those without professional skills have no way to do legally.

"What's really at the core of this is that the immigration law is completely and irrevocably broken," Renison said. "It serves no realistic function anymore."

Adding to the chaos, Renison said, the U.S. State Department picked this week to change rules that had required foreign professionals to wait years to apply for permanent residency. "All these things," he said, "tend to shake up the entire system."

ICE spokesman Raimondi said that agents aren't trying to arrest every illegal immigrant in every workplace regardless of additional criminal offenses. The agency began by targeting security-sensitive work sites such as airports and power plants and also now concentrates on egregious violators: Employers who have built unlawful hiring into their business plans.

Removals of illegal immigrants from the United States jumped 20 percent last year, he said. The agency is working through a backlog of as many as 620,000 fugitive foreigners. Last year, the agency deported 209,000 people of which 89,000 had been convicted of crimes in the United States.

Line workers at the plants who get caught up in the raids face particular hardships, said Portland immigration attorney Sherilyn Waxler, of Parker Bush & Lane. Those arrested at Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. in North Portland, for example, must post bond ranging from $1,500 to $15,000.

"If you're working at Del Monte cutting up pineapple," Waxler said, "that's probably going to be kind of hard to come up with."

Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Latino civil rights organization, said ICE is wasting resources on misdemeanor charges.

Whatever their national effects, the raids certainly influence local politics.

Like his counterpart Tom Potter in Portland, John DeStefano Jr., mayor of New Haven, Conn., blasted ICE after agents raided homes there to arrest illegal immigrants. The arrests June 6 came two days after New Haven became the first city in the country to approve a municipal ID card available to undocumented residents.

"This was a symbolic act of law enforcement by an agency that is not able to control its mission or how it executes its responsibilities," DeStefano told the New Haven Register. "This was an act of intimidation."

--Richard Read: 503-294-5135; richread@aol.com

3.

WAS IMMIGRATION RAID RETALIATION?

KOIN 6 (Portland, OR -- a CBS affiliate) June 13, 2007

http://www.koin.com/Global/story.asp?S=6654263&nav=menu494_1

PORTLAND -- A local attorney says Tuesday's immigration raid in Portland was retaliation against worker complaints about safety violations.

Federal agents executed search and arrest warrants at three Portland locations. They say about 30 of those arrested were allowed to stay in Portland for health or family reasons. A busload of arrestees arrived Tuesday night at a U.S. Department of Homeland Security facility in Tukwila, Wash.

Officials say the raid was based on a federal investigation that began in January. But a local attorney and professor who represented Del Monte workers in a class-action lawsuit against the company says it was revenge.

"This was a publicized settlement where immigration officials were aware that there was this group of workers who had complained about workplace violations and this is the first plant they go after in Oregon -- I think it's more than coincidence," Keith Cunningham-Parmeter told KOIN News 6.

A state investigation found that eight workers were fired after complaining about safety problems.

Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent a response to KOIN: "ICE conducts all operations strictly in the interest of law enforcement and not for any other reason."

Portland Mayor Tom Potter said he's angry with the raid: "To go after local workers who are here to support their families is bad policy."

4.

DEL MONTE SETTLEMENT CONSIDERED VICTORY FOR LOW-WAGE WORKERS
By Brent Hunsberger

** Del Monte, ex-workers secure settlement deal **

Oregonian (Portland, OR)
August 10, 2006

http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonianextra/2007/06/past_coverage_del_monte_settle.html

It began as a request by 30 workers who wanted New Year's Eve 2004 off with their families.

It ends today with a $400,000 settlement agreement between Del Monte Fresh Foods and eight ex-workers. The former workers accused the food processor and a temporary staffing firm it worked with of violating state law by firing them for complaining about safety concerns and by withholding overtime pay, break periods, and safety gear from hundreds of workers in Portland.

Labor attorneys say the settlement -- which could benefit as many as 1,800 former workers -- is a rare victory for low-wage, temporary workers, most immigrants, who risk being fired when they complain about safety and working conditions. "Ninety-nine times out of 100, no worker is going to complain," said the workers' attorney, Keith Cunningham-Parmeter-Parmeter, of the Oregon Law Center. "This was the outlyer."

Del Monte denies any wrongdoing in the agreement, which will be filed today in Multnomah County Circuit Court. But it agreed to pay $5,000 to each of the eight fired workers who alleged discrimination and will deposit $301,709 into a settlement fund for the class-action claims.

The company's Portland attorney, Brad Stanford, said Wednesday that Del Monte "maintains that it is not liable for any of the plaintiffs claims in this case." He said company policy prohibits further comment.

The case stems from a dispute around a scheduled shift that was supposed to begin at midnight on New Year's Day 2005 at Del Monte's food processing plant in North Portland. On days the plant is busy, as many as 350 workers line the plant's conveyor belts, washing and slicing tomatoes, broccoli, onions, and other fruits and vegetables into party trays and bags sold to restaurants and supermarkets.

As the holiday neared, some workers posted signs around the plant inviting others to meet at their temporary employment firm, Quality Manual Labor Inc., to ask for the time off.

About 30 workers showed up at the firm's offices Dec. 30 to make their case to the firm's co-owner David Moore and his assistant, Laurence Rivera. The workers, who earned the then-minimum wage of $6.90 an hour, say they offered to come in early or work later to have the midnight hour with their families.

Rivera and Moore rejected the request and told them everyone was required to work, according to complaints and interview records filed with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and Multnomah County Circuit Court.

Angry, one worker, Rocio Simon-Zarate, then asked them to address ongoing safety complaints that she and others had raised, workers said. Their cloth gloves often tore and plastic aprons got wet and dirty, she recalls, but plant managers allegedly refused to replace them. She said workers had also slipped and fallen on wet floors and labored in cold conditions, she recalls.

After she raised her concerns, as Simon-Zarate and her colleagues remember it, Moore and Rivera declared all of them fired. Many workers quickly left the room, stunned they had lost their jobs. But at least eight remained behind, pressing Rivera about why they had been fired.

In coming days, co-workers chastised those who did speak, the workers say.

On Feb. 25, 2005, according to the complaint, someone called in to a radio show on the Portland Spanish-language radio station KGDD 1520 AM to criticize the fired workers. The caller to the show, known as "Chanclazo," or "old shoe," allegedly called the fired workers "mitoteros" or "mouthy people," and "chismosos" or "gossips," the workers allege.

In the meantime, the workers pursued their legal options.

On Jan. 28, 2005, all eight filed complaints with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries alleging QML violated state law by firing them for opposing a safety hazard.

The following month, they met with Cunningham-Parmeter at the Oregon Law Center, a nonprofit legal services organization that represents low-income clients. The 32-year-old attorney, who works exclusively on farmworker cases, helped the workers clarify their complaints with state investigators.

In September, while waiting for the labor bureau to complete its investigation, Cunningham-Parmeter filed a lawsuit in Multnomah County Circuit Court against Del Monte, repeating allegations made against QML.

During the case, Cunningham-Parmeter requested wage records from QML and Del Monte. He said he discovered that workers on numerous occasions had worked 12, 14 or 16 hours a day with no overtime. "I myself worked twice more than 19 hours," Simon-Zarate said.

State law requires that employers pay overtime rates to workers who put in more than 10 hours in one day, regardless of how many hours they work in a week, Cunningham-Parmeter said.

In November, Cunningham-Parmeter threatened to file a class-action lawsuit against Del Monte and QML, alleging the companies also had violated state wage-and-hour rules by failing to provide daily uninterrupted meal periods and 10-minute rest periods for every four hours employees worked.

He also accused the company of requiring workers to put on and take off their protective aprons and gloves off-the-clock and to purchase protective work gloves for 50 cents a pair, in violation of state law.

In December, a labor bureau investigator found that QML had violated the workers' rights under state law. A month later, the employment firm and its owners vanished, Cunningham-Parmeter said. On Feb. 27, Del Monte and Cunningham-Parmeter met and reached a settlement with the help of a U.S. Department of Agriculture mediator.

Cunningham-Parmeter said the class action could benefit as many as 1,800 people who worked at Del Monte from 2003 to 2005. But he said he expects 300 to 600 claims, resulting in payouts of $500 to $1,000 a person.

Oregon Law Center will receive $58,291 for attorney fees and costs.

As part of the settlement, Del Monte also agreed to ensure that it pays overtime, provides meal breaks, and pays workers for putting on and off protective uniforms.

Nelson Zepeda, the disc jockey of the show "Chanclazo," no longer works at KGDD, but hosts the same show on KXOR 660 AM in Eugene. Zepeda on Wednesday said he could not recall any mention of Del Monte workers on his show but said he discourages callers from naming people or employers.

"If the people mention names, they're the ones who say it. We try to avoid it," said Zepeda, who describes the show as a humor show.

Quality Manual Labor's former co-owner, Moore, could not be reached for comment. His former assistant, Rivera, now the office manager of Avante Employment Services in Portland, declined to discuss the matter by phone.

In an interview last year with a labor bureau investigator, Rivera said he did not remember the workers raising safety issues during the hourlong meeting. He said eight workers were fired because they refused to work New Year's Eve. He said he had never heard complaints about gloves being withheld until a labor bureau investigator brought them up.

For her part, Simon-Zarate said she's glad Del Monte agreed to pay some of the wages she believes is owed workers. But she believes the company and its new temporary hiring form continue to violate laws.

Leticia Rodriguez-Gonzalez, one of Simon-Zarate's co-plaintiffs, said Wednesday she went back to work at Del Monte in June but quit Aug. 3 because "nothing had changed a bit." She said the plant's new staffing firm requires them to buy their own gloves, don and doff protective gear off-the-clock and to wait until the end of their shift to take two paid 15-minute breaks.

The plant's new temp agency, American Staffing Resources, did not return a call Wednesday seeking comment.

--Brent Hunsberger: 503-221-8359; brenthunsberger@news.oregonian.com