December 20, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
Meatpacking workers detained during last week’s federal raids began
facing immigration judges Tuesday in Colorado and five other
states.
Some were released after relatives posted bond of at least $1,500.
In Colorado, Judge Donn Livingston saw 27 detainees at the regional
detention facility in Aurora and set court hearings where they are
to be informed of charges against them.
Meanwhile, a federal grand jury in Minnesota indicted 20 detained
workers on criminal-immigration offenses and charges related to
identity theft.
Now, the immigration authorities themselves – who last week stormed
six Swift & Co. plants in Greeley and other states based on
allegations that illegal workers stole U.S. identities to get jobs
– also are facing challenges in federal courts.
Labor-union leaders representing workers in Colorado have asked a
federal judge to release them, arguing that workers were mistreated
and denied access to lawyers.
The raids constituted “an outrageous abuse of police power,” and
the government’s criminal probe into identity theft “functioned as
the Trojan horse to effectuate an immigration raid,” said a
lawsuit filed by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local
7.
U.S. District Judge John Kane has ordered immigrant detainees from
the Greeley plant to remain in his jurisdiction, but the union said
some had been taken out of state. Union officials said Kane on
Tuesday asked them to provide more details of their allegations.
Some 75 out of 260 workers detained in Greeley already have been
returned to Mexico.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have filed a
legal response saying detainees were told why they were arrested,
were allowed to use phones and were advised they could get legal
help.
ICE officials routinely move detained immigrants around the country
to find beds.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo called Tuesday for more raids and urged the
government to target managers who hire illegal workers.
“This kind of enforcement action by ICE has been sorely missing
over the past decade, and I urge you to expand such operations to
other industries,” Tancredo, R-Colo., wrote in a letter to ICE
Assistant Secretary Julie Myers.
“Many in the agriculture industry prefer to use illegal labor
despite the availability of legal workers through the H-2A
(temporary worker) program, which as you know has no cap. I believe
an investigation would reveal that identity theft is rampant across
many sectors and industries, not only meatpacking,” Tancredo
said.
And “it strains credulity,” he said, to suggest that so many
illegal workers at Swift “could be employed, in six plants,
without the company’s management being aware of it,” as the
company has claimed.
December 17, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
New enforcement approach targets workers rather than companies
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
The flood from the border will continue unless government begins to hold companies accountable, say policy critics.
Homeland Security chiefs hailed last week’s raids on Swift & Co.
meatpacking plants as examples of newly aggressive work-site
enforcement against companies that rely on illegal foreign labor.
But the black-clad agents who stormed facilities in Colorado and in
five other states arrested only workers, leaving the managers who
hired them untouched. That’s increasingly the pattern in the
government’s new approach: targeting workers without holding
companies themselves accountable, as required by law, according to
government data and interviews with experts.
Fines against employers for hiring illegal workers have all but
ceased, data show, though authorities recently prosecuted a handful
of managers and executives successfully.
Until Congress demands a worker status-verification system and
enforcement that can really hold companies accountable, critics
contend, millions of job-seeking illegal immigrants can’t be
stopped.
“It has become apparent how employers are complicit in this
illegal-immigration picture,” said Doris Meissner, chief of the
Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000, now a
senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
“In a case like (the one involving Swift) where you are just
arresting the workers, it demonstrates how inadequate current
employer enforcement really is in reducing the availability of
jobs. The plant is up and running again,” said Meissner.
No charges had been filed against Swift officials Friday in the
crackdown on alleged identity-theft crimes involving suspected
illegal workers at slaughterhouses in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota,
Nebraska, Texas and Utah.
Some 1,300 workers were arrested, more than 100 for investigation
of possible criminal offenses. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
agents this weekend continued to question detainees, building a
case that federal prosecutors await.
The raids Tuesday brought total work-site enforcement arrests
nationwide to 4,383 this year – more than triple the 1,292 last
year.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff declared “a new
record this past year for work-site enforcement,” noting that more
than 700 of this year’s arrests were for investigation of criminal
immigration violations.
Yet the number of employers fined each year for hiring illegal
workers has plummeted from 1,023 in 1998 to only three in 2004, the
last year for which data were given.
“We’re not really doing fines anymore,” ICE spokesman Marc
Raimondi said in Washington, D.C.
Fines against companies “were almost seen as a cost of doing
business and were not seen as effective. We prefer to conduct
criminal investigations,” Raimondi said. “We’re having
unprecedented successes in conducting work-site enforcement investigations.”
On Thursday, two executives of a California fencebuilding company
pleaded guilty to hiring unauthorized workers.
In October, the president and two executives of two
temporary-labor companies pleaded guilty in Ohio to conspiring to
provide hundreds of illegal workers to an air cargo firm.
In July, officials at Kentucky-based corporations pleaded guilty
to immigration and money-laundering charges in an operation that
supplied illegal workers to Holiday Inn, Days Inn and other hotels
in Kentucky.
Also in July, Fischer Homes subcontractors pleaded guilty to
harboring illegal immigrants for construction work in Kentucky.
Two high-profile crackdowns this year included raids in Colorado,
yet those cases still are pending.
ICE officials have filed charges against seven officials of
Houston-based IFCO Systems North America, which supplied wooden
pallets. ICE agents arrested 1,187 IFCO workers nationwide after a
year-long probe that found more than half of IFCO’s workers in 2005
had invalid or mismatched Social Security numbers.
No information was available on the status of a case in which
dozens of suspected illegal workers for Hunt Building Co.
subcontractors were deported after raids at a military-housing
construction site near top-secret installations east of Denver.
The problem is that, despite a few exceptions, federal immigration
agents in general “aren’t doing the regular work of going after
the employers who hire illegal (workers). They’re trying for only
very spectacular things,” said Steve Camarota, research director
at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors
tougher enforcement.
“Americans are harmed by this, the Americans who have to send
their kids to overcrowded schools because of illegal aliens, the
Americans who face the job competition, who tend to be the poorest,
least-educated and most vulnerable American workers. The Americans
who are uninsured and don’t get health care because of all the
illegal aliens who need it,” he said.
It’s now well accepted among immigration experts that jobs are the
magnet that draws illegal workers from low-income countries into
the United States.
But employers who hire illegal workers “should be punished,” said
Meissner, the former INS chief. But holding them fairly accountable
requires a better status-verification and ID system, she said.
“If you are really going to have employer enforcement work,
everybody who applies for work, including U.S. citizens, has to
have an ID with biometric information. I believe most employers
want a reliable system – on the condition that they also have
access to labor.”
December 15, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
Lawyers and activists say detainees may have legal rights, but they don’t know who is being held or where.
Greeley – Federal agents deported scores of illegal workers
Thursday, continuing their crackdown on the alleged hijacking of
U.S. citizens’ identities at Swift & Co. meatpacking plants here
and around the country.
At a court hearing in Greeley, headquarters for Swift, five
shackled workers in orange jumpsuits stood as Weld County District
Judge Gilbert Gutierrez advised them through an interpreter of
forgery and criminal impersonation charges they face.
Nationwide, more than 100 workers now have been arrested for
investigation of criminal charges ranging from immigration
violations to identity-related offenses as a result of the 10-month federal probe.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials couldn’t give a
breakdown of suspected crimes, but they said arrests on criminal
charges will increase as agents interview more detainees, building
their case.
Total arrests in Swift plants around the country topped 1,300 – but
most were for routine administrative immigration violations.
“This was a major identity-theft scheme that was taken down. It used to be people would use fake IDs. These are IDs with real numbers. Additional criminal charges will be forthcoming,” ICE spokesman Jeff Dishart said in
Washington.
Swift officials who employed the workers at plants in Colorado,
Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Texas and Utah have not been charged,
Dishart said. Whether Swift will face any charges in this case “is
hard to say. The investigation continues,” he said.
Meanwhile, immigration attorneys, religious groups and labor-union leaders lambasted ICE for causing unnecessary suffering. They
complained that lawyers interested in representing detained workers
who may have legal rights haven’t been able to learn who is being
held or where.
ICE agents have whisked detainees to various federal and county
jails that cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security. Many
have been returned to Mexico and other home countries under a
procedure known as voluntary departure.
“Perhaps the biggest tragedy is that many of the immigrants may
have felt pressured into signing papers, waiving their rights, and
may be in the process of being returned before they ever had a
chance to consult with a lawyer,” said Donna Lipinski, a
spokeswoman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a
pro-immigration advocacy group in Washington.
A Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network delegation visited the
regional Homeland Security detention center in Aurora and learned
at least 80 detainees at that facility had been sent out of the
country, said Kim Salinas, a Fort Collins-based immigration
attorney who participated.
Some detainees in Colorado were bused through the mountains west of
Denver to county jails in Salida and Fairplay that are approved to
hold immigrants when the federal facility is full.
Federal agents hauled in 62 workers from Swift to the Park County
jail in Fairplay, then took 38 of them away again before noon
Wednesday and the rest on Thursday, Park County Attorney Steve
Groome said. “We have no idea where they were going,” Groome
said. “We had to do some moving, but everybody had a bed. A lot of
them were picked up before they were processed.”
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 lawyers “can’t serve
our members, can’t provide them with legal counsel, because we
don’t know where they are,” said Dave Minshall, spokesman for the
union.
Tuesday’s raid at the Greeley plant was overblown for a case that
led to 11 criminal arrests, Minshall said. ICE officials “brought
in a battalion – shotguns, bulletproof vests, snipers on a roof –
for 11 people? … Identity theft is a terrible thing. But 11
people?”
ICE officials defended their actions, asking for patience as agents
go about interviewing detainees as carefully as possible, gathering
details.
“We don’t have 1,300 people to interview each of the people who
were arrested. We have a limited number of people, so the
processing takes longer than a couple hours,” ICE regional
spokesman Carl Rusnok said.
Detainees “will be able to get that legal access as soon as the
processing is complete.” They also have access to telephones “as
long as they pay for long distance,” he said.
Reality hit hard for the first detainees moving into courts.
In the Weld County courtroom, tears trickled down Karina Bartolo’s
face as she spotted her father Cirilo Bartolo in the crowd.
He’d heard from her once after she was arrested Tuesday during work
at the meat plant. She’d said she was surrounded by mothers crying
for their kids.
On Thursday, his daughter and the other four defendants asked Judge
Gutierrez for free legal representation. He set bail at $30,000
each.
Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput sent out a letter concerning the
raids late Thursday.
“These kinds of raids do not and cannot fix our broken immigration
system. In some ways, they only aggravate our national confusion
over immigration policy. Our country needs comprehensive
immigration reform, and we need it immediately,” Chaput wrote in
the letter, sent to pastors across northern Colorado.
“Maria of Guadalupe told us that she came to hear and remedy all
of our sorrows. I ask her today to intercede for all our immigrant
families, especially those that have been broken apart by these
events.”
December 14, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
“Unblinking reality” dizzying for spouses, kids of detainees
Greeley – Isabel Ramirez wept as she clutched her 18- month-old
daughter, Brenda, in the ramshackle trailer park where she lives.
Her husband, Juan, had been detained in the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement raid on the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant where he
worked, and she didn’t know where he was.
“He was the only one working. He paid for everything, the bills,
rent. I have three kids,” 33-year- old Isabel Ramirez said.
As she spoke, her 7-year-old daughter, Laura, was at school, and
her 3-year-old son, Juanito, kicking muddy snow by the trailer, was
having a very bad day.
His father “is in jail,” Juanito said. He threw a stick angrily
down at the snow and turned and banged his head against the side of
a broken trampoline.
As authorities began deporting workers rounded up in raids at
meatpacking plants here and in five other states, this city, which
for decades has run on illegal labor from Mexico, confronted an
unexpected challenge: what to do about kids left behind.
The raids left more than 100 children with no parents present,
church officials and community organizers said. Hundreds more
struggled in newly broken families, asking questions such as
“Where is my daddy?” and “Why does immigration exist?”
A niece and cousin whose deported husbands had phoned from Mexico
tried to console Juanito Ramirez and his mother. One drove to a
regional immigration jail east of Denver and begged for
information, to no avail.
Isabel Ramirez acknowledged that her son and 18-month-old daughter
are the only ones in her immediate family legally entitled to be in
the U.S.
This was the hard side of the sudden pressure ICE agents brought to
bear on Swift here and in Texas, Utah, Minnesota, Nebraska and
Iowa.
The agents who conducted simultaneous raids Tuesday tried their
best when interviewing detainees to determine whether they had
children, said ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok. “We do everything in our
power to avoid having children left home alone or at school,” he
said.
Still, “violating federal law can lead to tragic consequences,
sometimes affecting a great many people. That’s the unblinking
reality,” U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said in Denver.
Meanwhile, few if any relatives of detained workers turned to
government social- services agencies for help – mistrusting any
authorities.
Under new state and federal laws, “we can only provide assistance
to citizens – citizens only – and qualified aliens who have been
here for five years,” said John Kruse, assistant payments
administrator for Weld County Social Services.
Instead, friends and relatives worked their cellphones busily
trying to bypass government, keeping children whose parents weren’t
present in hiding, fearing that social-services agents would snatch
them away.
Naturalized U.S. citizen David Silva, an oil-field worker who used
to work at the meatpacking plant, said he was able to retrieve his
wife, Marisela, from a federal immigration detention center in
Denver late Tuesday by driving to the center and presenting her
legal residency papers.
Now with wrists bruised from handcuffs, Marisela was taking the day
off “trying to build up her confidence.” She joined others from
Mexico volunteering to take care of children whose parents were
gone.
Inside the meatpacking plant, “there was a lady crying because she
didn’t have anybody else here,” Silva said. “She asked my wife if
she wanted to adopt her child. Then she was taken away.”
Anglo citizens came forward offering to do the same around noon at
Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church. “We are all affected deeply.
But our most immediate concerns are for families that are suddenly
separated and for children who have no understanding of what is
happening in their lives,” the Rev. Bernie Schmitz said.
Temporarily adopting children of detained or deported workers “is
why we came here,” said Kris Kessinger, 45, a city traffic worker
whose wife is from Mexico.
Weld County school officials who saw attendance drop to 75 percent
during Tuesday’s raids, when Greeley residents flocked to the
meatpacking factory, said classrooms were about 90 percent full
Wednesday. But they had no way of knowing which children might be
without their parents. “We’ve asked ICE to provide a list (of
people arrested),” principal Paul Urioste said at Billie Martinez
Elementary School. “ICE hasn’t provided us with anything.”
Separately, the United Way of Weld County set up a fund for
affected families. The agency is accepting donations at P.O. Box
1944, Greeley, CO 80632, or donors can call 970-353-4300.
For Isabel Ramirez at her trailer, crying regularly gave her relief
as she, with borrowed cellphone in hand, waited for word from her
husband. Heading back to the family farm in central Mexico looked
likely, she said.
She tried to persuade her troubled little boy to cry instead of
banging his head.
“It’s OK to cry,” she told him.
“No. I’m embarrassed,” the 3-year-old said.
“If you feel sad, you should cry.”
“It hurts my heart,” Juanito said, delicately pointing to his
chest.
December 13, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
GREELEY SITE PART OF FEDS’ 6-STATE STING SEEKING ILLEGAL WORKERS
Greeley – After massive raids on Swift & Co. meatpacking plants
here and in five other states, immigration authorities are building
a new kind of case against illegal workers: accusing them of
hijacking the identities of U.S. citizens.
Authorities contend workers bought or stole names and Social
Security numbers of U.S. citizens and legal residents and used them
to get jobs at Swift plants here and in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska,
Texas and Utah.
“The issue here is that U.S. citizens have been victimized by
illegal aliens,” said Carl Rusnok, spokesman for U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security.
“This is a situation where it’s not just getting fraudulent
identification. It’s actually stealing U.S. identities.”
Some local district attorneys around the country have tried to
fight illegal immigration using identity-theft, criminal
impersonation and forgery statutes. Tuesday’s simultaneous raids
mark the first time ICE agents working on a national scale have
made identity theft the focus of a major worksite investigation.
Armed federal agents at dawn surrounded Swift’s plants in Greeley
and elsewhere, rounding up thousands of workers, questioning
hundreds of them and detaining an undetermined number. At the
Greeley plant, agents loaded detained workers onto four white,
45-seat buses and drove them away.
Tuesday’s raids capped a 10-month federal investigation into
identity theft involving immigrant workers at Greeley-based Swift.
In March, federal officials issued subpoenas for 1,500 employment
records, and the company cooperated, Swift president and chief
executive Sam Rovit said.
“We offered repeatedly to make ourselves available in any way or
to manage any criminal behavior and couldn’t get a meeting until
September,” Rovit said. “They were absolutely unwilling to
help.”
Rovit said investigators told the company that complaints of
identity theft filed with the Federal Trade Commission matched up
with 170 Swift workers. Yet Tuesday’s raids, he said, disrupted the
work of 7,000 employees nationwide.
“If they did know who those 170 were, they could have gone and
identified them and taken them away,” Rovit said. “We don’t see
why they had to come in to do something that was this highly
disruptive.”
The company, he said, has never knowingly hired an illegal
immigrant.
No charges filed Tuesday
Starting as soon as today, some detained immigrants may be deported
without being charged with identity crimes. Authorities are
considering filing criminal charges against others, Rusnok said. No
charges were filed Tuesday.
Swift is one of the world’s largest meat-processing companies, with
$9.4 billion in annual sales. No one at Swift has been charged with
a crime. “We do not believe that we will be charged with anything
or fined for anything,” Rovit said.
The raids turned the lives of workers and their families
upside-down and reignited the immigration debate from factory fence
lines to Congress.
Parents and siblings of Greeley workers flocked to the factory
after hearing of the raids.
“How am I supposed to explain to the children that their dad’s not
coming home?” 27-year-old Sara Zarate said, crying as she peered
through the gray fence at the factory. Her husband, Candido, is an
illegal immigrant from Guatemala whose $12.20-an-hour wage at the
plant supports them and their five children.
The four buses, with green stripes on the sides, had just rumbled
away. Zarate didn’t know if her husband was on one or where the
buses would go.
“Who’s going to help me and my kids on Christmas? They’re
expecting their dad on Christmas,” she said.
Meanwhile, Greeley activist Joy Breuer, who opposes illegal
immigration, welcomed the raids.
“I’m all for what happened today,” Breuer said. “We need to
start obeying the laws around here. A lot of people are saying the
town is falling apart.”
Breuer blames illegal immigration for various problems around
Greeley: an overburdened health-care system and increased gang
activity and drug sales.
City officials worried about economic damage.
“I’m concerned this will affect how people will view our community
– employers as well as people coming here to live,” Mayor Tom
Selders said. “I’m concerned that this be done with respect for
people’s civil rights.”
The economic and humanitarian harm inflicted by Tuesday’s raids
“is what happens when we have a do-nothing Congress which refuses
to act,” U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar said. “What is happening at Swift
… sends a strong signal to Congress that we must act with all due
speed to enact comprehensive immigration reform. When Democrats
take control in January, I hope today’s occurrences will motivate
us to act.”
An all-but-open secret
A labor union filed for an injunction in court shortly after the
raids began around 7 a.m.
The use of falsified documents to get work in Greeley and other
meatpacking towns has been an all-but-open secret for years.
Even factory supervisors know about it, said former Swift worker
David Silva, 35, a naturalized U.S. citizen now working in oil
fields, whose wife, Marisela, 32, was detained.
“I don’t know where they took her,” Silva said. “My kids?
They’ve never been to Mexico. They don’t even know that country.”
Federal Social Security Administration officials over the past five
years sent out 8 million “mismatch” letters to employers
nationwide flagging possible problems with worker-identifying
information.
Under federal immigration law, it’s up to companies to verify the
legal status of workers. Swift officials say they participated in a
government pilot program to make such checks.
ICE agents began their investigation in February.
Investigators used Federal Trade Commission records to track
workers using names and numbers of U.S. citizens. Then they
contacted the U.S. citizens – who in many cases indicated a
willingness to press charges, according to some 25 search
affidavits filed in Weld County Court.
“ICE takes very seriously aliens who use false IDs, and especially
those who steal identities, to illegally gain employment,” said
Jeffrey Copp, ICE special agent in charge in Denver.
In Congress, there has been no resolution of the immigration issues
that dominated debate this year. Lawmakers still are divided.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who strongly opposes illegal
immigration, issued a statement congratulating law enforcement
agencies involved in Tuesday’s raids.
“My hope at this point is that the U.S. government has the courage
to prosecute the Swift & Co. executives who may have been complicit
in their hiring,” Tancredo said.
ICE officials said they would offer details about the raids at a
news conference this morning in Washington.
Staff writers Christine Tatum, Christopher N. Osher and David
Migoya contributed to this report.
Recent immigration raids
COLORADO
September 2006: Agents arrest 120 suspected illegal workers at a
Buckley Air Force Base housing project.
April 2006: Agents arrest 38 undocumented workers at pallet-supply
company IFCO Systems in Commerce City. Raids occur simultaneously
at IFCO plants in 25 other states, resulting in a total of 1,200
arrests.
July 2003: Federal agents arrest 31 civilian workers at the Air
Force Academy for using false identification to enter the facility.
Most are believed to be illegal immigrants.
September 2002: Agents arrest 110 Denver International Airport
workers, mostly illegal immigrants, for using fake or stolen Social
Security numbers.
OTHER STATES
October 2006: Agents arrest 28 undocumented workers in a raid on
Torrey Farms in Barker, N.Y., about 40 miles east of Buffalo.
September 2006: In a week-long sweep, more than 161 illegal
immigrants are captured in southwestern Florida. Separately, agents
raid a chicken-processing plant and several homes in and around
Emanuel County, Ga., arresting more than 120 undocumented workers.
September 2006: Agents raid a chicken-processing plant and several
homes in and around Emanuel County, Ga. More than 120 undocumented
workers are arrested.
August 2006: Agents and Houston immigration officers arrest 326
immigrants during a week-long operation in Texas.
Sources: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Nexis
COMPILED BY BARBARA HUDSON OF THE DENVER POST RESEARCH LIBRARY
December 10, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Globalization, Human Rights, Immigrants, Migration, Security, U.S. Role in the World
FBI SUED OVER DELAYS
Muslim immigrants often wait years for a background check to become Americans. But officials say they’re not being singled out.
Zuhair Mahd of Denver made all the right moves to become a U.S.
citizen after escaping poverty and rejection as a blind
Palestinian-refugee teenager in Jordan.
He found a banker to buy him a ticket to Boston. He excelled in
U.S. schools. He pioneered Arabic text-to-speech software and
worked for IBM, honing skills that recruiters for the CIA and other
agencies covet for the war on terrorism.
Then he applied for citizenship, passed the tests and waited for an
FBI background check.
And waited. And waited.
After waiting for two years, Mahd, 33, sued the FBI.
Now his case is pending in federal court along with hundreds of
other lawsuits nationwide by Muslims who made the grade to become
citizens but have been delayed while waiting for FBI checks for up
to five years.
Applicants for U.S. citizenship come from many nations and
cultures, but most of the lawsuits filed recently in Colorado
involve Muslim immigrants.
Federal law says immigrants who pass citizenship tests must be
granted citizenship in 120 days.
The lawsuits are getting results. An internal government memo
indicates suing can accelerate FBI action.
Yet the core problem is getting worse: a mounting FBI backlog of
unfinished background checks as the nation seeks greater protection
against terrorism. Today’s backlog tops 440,000.
FBI officials won’t say how many of those waiting for background
checks are Muslims but insist that the agency is not targeting any
particular group.
“There is a backlog,” Special Agent Jeff Lanza said at FBI
headquarters in Washington. “We’re not using ‘backlog’ as a
euphemism for discriminating against Muslims.”
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the government began
requiring FBI background checks on all immigrants poised to become
citizens, increasing the FBI’s workload to about
4 million checks a year. The checks are seen as essential to weed
out terrorists.
Now these very delays are raising security concerns. People whose
names trigger computer “hits” against federal databases remain in
the country for years.
“If there are concerns about these people, why are we just letting
them sit here?” said Crystal Williams, deputy director of the
American Immigration Lawyers Association, a pro-immigration group
in Washington.
“This system isn’t working … and nobody’s taking responsibility,”
Williams said.
The delays also foster ill will – just as the U.S. government
launches a new campaign to persuade more eligible immigrants to
apply for citizenship. Record numbers choose not to apply.
“This is injurious in so many ways. You’re sitting here, singled
out, hanging, with no indication why it’s taking so long,”
Jordanian immigrant Mahd said last week during a defense industry
job fair in Colorado Springs.
There, a recruiter who initially was eager to hire him balked when
he learned Mahd still lacked the citizenship required for security
clearances.
FBI agents twice visited him at home in Denver, he said, asking if
he’d be willing to work as an informant or monitor online chat
rooms for anything suspicious.
“I told them I’m not willing to fill in the blanks when I don’t
know the full story,” he said.
“Why the delay? What did I do?”
Hundreds of lawsuits against the FBI and Department of Homeland
Security are pending in federal courts nationwide, including
class-action cases in California, Illinois and New York, according
to judicial records and attorneys.
The lawsuits ask judges to order completion of background checks –
or waive the checks – so that citizenship is granted within 120
days as required.
In Colorado, 31 of the lawsuits have been filed this year. At least
10 cases recently were settled, with the FBI agreeing to expedite
checks, presumably encouraging more lawsuits. At least 21 cases by
26 plaintiffs are pending, and federal attorneys report a couple of
new lawsuits filed every week.
Colorado Muslim leaders warn that citizenship delays feed a
deepening discontent.
“If you want people to be good citizens, you have to make them
feel welcome, not discriminated against,” said Colorado Muslim
Society Imam Ammar Amonette at Denver’s Abu Bakr mosque.
Some of those delayed for citizenship have served the U.S. military
as translators in Iraq.
Training Iraq-bound U.S. soldiers at Fort Carson, Iraqi refugee
Sattar Khdir, 52, a father of two who needs citizenship to join the
soldiers in battle, said he feels “ashamed. I’m sitting, eating
with the TV, seeing U.S. troops getting killed helping my
people.”
Khdir begged FBI and immigration officials repeatedly for a year to
finish his case – “Why don’t you let me go?” – before hiring an
attorney this fall.
“This is extremely unfair,” said Denver lawyer Jihad Muhaisen,
whose firm has filed more than 15 lawsuits. Government lawyers
swiftly arranged expedited checks in each case settled so far,
Muhaisen said.
Meanwhile, citizenship applications for non-Arab clients “go
through” without delay, he said. “If (Muslims) qualified for
citizenship, they should get citizenship.”
A Department of Homeland Security memo reveals that the FBI now
considers a “lawsuit pending in Federal Court” as grounds for
speeding up stalled background checks.
FBI agents say they’re working as fast as they can. Lawsuits won’t
intimidate anyone into doing sloppy work, said FBI Special Agent in
Charge Richard Powers in Denver. “We’re going to do it right,
because in some cases to make an error could be grievous. …
Certainly, security is an issue,” Powers said.
Suing the government “is an unfortunate way to try to resolve what
is a system that generally works at a very high capacity,” he
said.
Frustrations in Denver reached the point last week that Muslim
community leaders, with Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman acting as
a bridge, visited FBI offices. Powers met with the delegation,
explaining how checks are done.
Computers at FBI headquarters cross-check names against multiple
databases. Some 62,000 names a week are sent electronically for
background checks. Nearly half are immigrants who have qualified
for citizenship; 85 percent of the checks are completed within
three days.
The problem: Names that trigger computer hits require agents to
ferret out data that may span the globe.
Demand to do more checks is growing. In 2001, the FBI faced
requests to conduct 2.8 million name checks. Last year, the
requests topped 3.3 million.
Federal officials say the backlog is growing as well.
Homeland Security officials recently began refusing to schedule
citizenship interviews and tests for anyone until FBI checks are
complete – an effort to reduce the government’s legal exposure.
Meanwhile, the government is struggling to reverse what Congress
and others have identified as a worrying trend: More than 7 million
immigrants eligible for citizenship haven’t applied.
The government just launched a $6.5 million “Americanization”
campaign to encourage more eligible immigrants to become citizens,
said Alfonso Aguilar, Homeland Security’s chief of citizenship.
“Until now, we’ve kind of taken assimilation for granted. The
truth is, we’ve come to the point that Congress and the
administration realize we need to strengthen our assimilation
efforts. If we don’t, we could have a problem” with lack of unity
in the future, Aguilar said.
“You cannot preserve a stable democracy if your people aren’t
united by common values.”
Meanwhile, government lawyers say they increasingly are diverted
from fighting crime to defending the FBI.
U.S. Attorney for Colorado Troy Eid estimated that for the amount
of time his staff has devoted this year to defending the FBI, it
could be “putting 50 or more bad guys behind bars.”
“This problem appears to be getting worse, not better. … One
obvious solution that could be considered would be to increase the
resources available to the FBI” for checks, he said. “These
background checks need to be done. How they get them done on time
is a public-policy issue that needs to be addressed.”
Pressuring the FBI
Civil-liberties advocates are demanding that the FBI set and meet
deadlines for background checks on immigrants poised to become U.S.
citizens.
Otherwise, the post-9/11 system of having the FBI check names of
all applicants “means they can just keep people waiting for years
and years,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Ranjana
Nataranjan said.
“The question is: Are there legitimate reasons to delay so many
people? We think the answer is no. Somebody isn’t connecting the
dots here. And, if there are real security issues, we don’t want
the FBI to sit on those.”
A growing FBI backlog of unfinished checks, and a new immigration
policy of refusing to schedule citizenship tests until FBI checks
are done, is causing havoc and feeding discontent. Hundreds of
mostly Muslim immigrants who have been delayed for up to five years
allege unfair treatment.
“When a group is singled out, that’s contrary to our principles,”
said Lema Bashir, legal adviser for the Arab-American
Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Delayed immigrants also seek help from members of Congress,
including Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.
“Prompt and thorough background checks are essential for our
nation’s security,” Salazar said Friday. “But we must also
guarantee no one is being denied for the wrong reasons.”
To become a U.S. citizen, you must:
Live as a legal resident in the country for five years (three if
married to a U.S. citizen) with no absence of more than one year
and at least 30 months of total presence, including three months in
one state or district.
Be at least 18 and of good moral character, meaning not a criminal
or habitual drunkard or person who has refused to support
dependents or lied under oath.
Pass English-language and civics tests and an interview with a
federal adjudicator.
Swear to support the Constitution and obey laws, renounce any
foreign allegiance, and bear arms or perform other government
services when required by law.
Give fingerprints for submission to the FBI.
Receive FBI clearance after a background check is completed.
Average wait time for all applicants: eight months after filing
application.
Average number of immigrants who become citizens each year: 5,700
in Colorado; 604,000 nationwide.
Number of applications rejected a year: 108,000.
Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of
Homeland Security
December 10, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration
Muslim immigrants often wait years for a background check to become Americans. But officials say they’re not being singled out.
Zuhair Mahd of Denver made all the right moves to become a U.S.
citizen after escaping poverty and rejection as a blind
Palestinian-refugee teenager in Jordan.
He found a banker to buy him a ticket to Boston. He excelled in
U.S. schools. He pioneered Arabic text-to-speech software and
worked for IBM, honing skills that recruiters for the CIA and other
agencies covet for the war on terrorism.
Then he applied for citizenship, passed the tests and waited for an
FBI background check.
And waited. And waited.
After waiting for two years, Mahd, 33, sued the FBI.
Now his case is pending in federal court along with hundreds of
other lawsuits nationwide by Muslims who made the grade to become
citizens but have been delayed while waiting for FBI checks for up
to five years.
Applicants for U.S. citizenship come from many nations and
cultures, but most of the lawsuits filed recently in Colorado
involve Muslim immigrants.
Federal law says immigrants who pass citizenship tests must be
granted citizenship in 120 days.
The lawsuits are getting results. An internal government memo
indicates suing can accelerate FBI action.
Yet the core problem is getting worse: a mounting FBI backlog of
unfinished background checks as the nation seeks greater protection
against terrorism. Today’s backlog tops 440,000.
FBI officials won’t say how many of those waiting for background
checks are Muslims but insist that the agency is not targeting any
particular group.
“There is a backlog,” Special Agent Jeff Lanza said at FBI
headquarters in Washington. “We’re not using ‘backlog’ as a
euphemism for discriminating against Muslims.”
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the government began
requiring FBI background checks on all immigrants poised to become
citizens, increasing the FBI’s workload to about
4 million checks a year. The checks are seen as essential to weed
out terrorists.
Now these very delays are raising security concerns. People whose
names trigger computer “hits” against federal databases remain in
the country for years.
“If there are concerns about these people, why are we just letting
them sit here?” said Crystal Williams, deputy director of the
American Immigration Lawyers Association, a pro-immigration group
in Washington.
“This system isn’t working … and nobody’s taking responsibility,”
Williams said.
The delays also foster ill will – just as the U.S. government
launches a new campaign to persuade more eligible immigrants to
apply for citizenship. Record numbers choose not to apply.
“This is injurious in so many ways. You’re sitting here, singled
out, hanging, with no indication why it’s taking so long,”
Jordanian immigrant Mahd said last week during a defense industry
job fair in Colorado Springs.
There, a recruiter who initially was eager to hire him balked when
he learned Mahd still lacked the citizenship required for security
clearances.
FBI agents twice visited him at home in Denver, he said, asking if
he’d be willing to work as an informant or monitor online chat
rooms for anything suspicious.
“I told them I’m not willing to fill in the blanks when I don’t
know the full story,” he said.
“Why the delay? What did I do?”
Hundreds of lawsuits against the FBI and Department of Homeland
Security are pending in federal courts nationwide, including
class-action cases in California, Illinois and New York, according
to judicial records and attorneys.
The lawsuits ask judges to order completion of background checks –
or waive the checks – so that citizenship is granted within 120
days as required.
In Colorado, 31 of the lawsuits have been filed this year. At least
10 cases recently were settled, with the FBI agreeing to expedite
checks, presumably encouraging more lawsuits. At least 21 cases by
26 plaintiffs are pending, and federal attorneys report a couple of
new lawsuits filed every week.
Colorado Muslim leaders warn that citizenship delays feed a
deepening discontent.
“If you want people to be good citizens, you have to make them
feel welcome, not discriminated against,” said Colorado Muslim
Society Imam Ammar Amonette at Denver’s Abu Bakr mosque.
Some of those delayed for citizenship have served the U.S. military
as translators in Iraq.
Training Iraq-bound U.S. soldiers at Fort Carson, Iraqi refugee
Sattar Khdir, 52, a father of two who needs citizenship to join the
soldiers in battle, said he feels “ashamed. I’m sitting, eating
with the TV, seeing U.S. troops getting killed helping my
people.”
Khdir begged FBI and immigration officials repeatedly for a year to
finish his case – “Why don’t you let me go?” – before hiring an
attorney this fall.
“This is extremely unfair,” said Denver lawyer Jihad Muhaisen,
whose firm has filed more than 15 lawsuits. Government lawyers
swiftly arranged expedited checks in each case settled so far,
Muhaisen said.
Meanwhile, citizenship applications for non-Arab clients “go
through” without delay, he said. “If (Muslims) qualified for
citizenship, they should get citizenship.”
A Department of Homeland Security memo reveals that the FBI now
considers a “lawsuit pending in Federal Court” as grounds for
speeding up stalled background checks.
FBI agents say they’re working as fast as they can. Lawsuits won’t
intimidate anyone into doing sloppy work, said FBI Special Agent in
Charge Richard Powers in Denver. “We’re going to do it right,
because in some cases to make an error could be grievous. …
Certainly, security is an issue,” Powers said.
Suing the government “is an unfortunate way to try to resolve what
is a system that generally works at a very high capacity,” he
said.
Frustrations in Denver reached the point last week that Muslim
community leaders, with Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman acting as
a bridge, visited FBI offices. Powers met with the delegation,
explaining how checks are done.
Computers at FBI headquarters cross-check names against multiple
databases. Some 62,000 names a week are sent electronically for
background checks. Nearly half are immigrants who have qualified
for citizenship; 85 percent of the checks are completed within
three days.
The problem: Names that trigger computer hits require agents to
ferret out data that may span the globe.
Demand to do more checks is growing. In 2001, the FBI faced
requests to conduct 2.8 million name checks. Last year, the
requests topped 3.3 million.
Federal officials say the backlog is growing as well.
Homeland Security officials recently began refusing to schedule
citizenship interviews and tests for anyone until FBI checks are
complete – an effort to reduce the government’s legal exposure.
Meanwhile, the government is struggling to reverse what Congress
and others have identified as a worrying trend: More than 7 million
immigrants eligible for citizenship haven’t applied.
The government just launched a $6.5 million “Americanization”
campaign to encourage more eligible immigrants to become citizens,
said Alfonso Aguilar, Homeland Security’s chief of citizenship.
“Until now, we’ve kind of taken assimilation for granted. The
truth is, we’ve come to the point that Congress and the
administration realize we need to strengthen our assimilation
efforts. If we don’t, we could have a problem” with lack of unity
in the future, Aguilar said.
“You cannot preserve a stable democracy if your people aren’t
united by common values.”
Meanwhile, government lawyers say they increasingly are diverted
from fighting crime to defending the FBI.
U.S. Attorney for Colorado Troy Eid estimated that for the amount
of time his staff has devoted this year to defending the FBI, it
could be “putting 50 or more bad guys behind bars.”
“This problem appears to be getting worse, not better. … One
obvious solution that could be considered would be to increase the
resources available to the FBI” for checks, he said. “These
background checks need to be done. How they get them done on time
is a public-policy issue that needs to be addressed.”
Pressuring the FBI
Civil-liberties advocates are demanding that the FBI set and meet
deadlines for background checks on immigrants poised to become U.S.
citizens.
Otherwise, the post-9/11 system of having the FBI check names of
all applicants “means they can just keep people waiting for years
and years,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Ranjana
Nataranjan said.
“The question is: Are there legitimate reasons to delay so many
people? We think the answer is no. Somebody isn’t connecting the
dots here. And, if there are real security issues, we don’t want
the FBI to sit on those.”
A growing FBI backlog of unfinished checks, and a new immigration
policy of refusing to schedule citizenship tests until FBI checks
are done, is causing havoc and feeding discontent. Hundreds of
mostly Muslim immigrants who have been delayed for up to five years
allege unfair treatment.
“When a group is singled out, that’s contrary to our principles,”
said Lema Bashir, legal adviser for the Arab-American
Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Delayed immigrants also seek help from members of Congress,
including Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.
“Prompt and thorough background checks are essential for our
nation’s security,” Salazar said Friday. “But we must also
guarantee no one is being denied for the wrong reasons.”
—————————
To become a U.S. citizen, you must:
Live as a legal resident in the country for five years (three if
married to a U.S. citizen) with no absence of more than one year
and at least 30 months of total presence, including three months in
one state or district.
Be at least 18 and of good moral character, meaning not a criminal
or habitual drunkard or person who has refused to support
dependents or lied under oath.
Pass English-language and civics tests and an interview with a
federal adjudicator.
Swear to support the Constitution and obey laws, renounce any
foreign allegiance, and bear arms or perform other government
services when required by law.
Give fingerprints for submission to the FBI.
Receive FBI clearance after a background check is completed.
Average wait time for all applicants: eight months after filing
application.
Average number of immigrants who become citizens each year: 5,700
in Colorado; 604,000 nationwide.
Number of applications rejected a year: 108,000.
Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of
Homeland Security
A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
