Street roots., May 01, 2009, Image 1

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CELEBRATING
A DECADE OF
MAY 1, 2009
rodts
Education ♦ Dialogue ♦ Independence
SQUATTERS RIGHTS
IN THE AGE OF
FORECLOSURES
An interview with visiting speaker
Max Rameau of Take Back the Land
Page 8
The
Raid
Two years after a
devastating raid at the
Del Monte plant in
Portland, the women
who came together to
survive the aftermath
Push for greater
understanding of the
immigrant experience
BY ROBIN SCHAUFFLER
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
ow, when they talk about it, Zaida Villatoro
and the other women refer to it simply as
“La Redada,” The Raid: an event that
stands between one life and another. A few of
them have made it their business to talk about it,
to share their stories with those willing to hear.
June 12, 2007 was another cold day in the plant
- cold and damp. Villatoro was cutting fruit at the
Del Monte Fresh Produce food processing center
in North Portland. She’d been handling vegetables
for several weeks, chopping them for salads to be
sold in plastic boxes, but when fruit season came
she was reassigned.
She heard a co-worker yell, “Run, run! La
migra!” Agents of United States Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) were raiding the
premises.
Everyone fled, Villatoro says, and it was chaos.
She saw people climbing on piles of crates, and
others racing out the back door. About eight
scrambled up and hid near the ceiling. She thinks
N
also were allowed to stay and make a case for not
being deported — the legal term is “protest of
removal proceedings.” After being processed at the
ICE detention center in Tacoma, Wash., about 20
women were sent back to Portland, heavy
electronic tracking bracelets clamped on their
ankles.
Villatom was one of those sent back to Portland,
while her children are in Guatemala. She is
applying for asylum, an option for those who
cannot return home because of persecution or
torture based on politics, religion, social group,
nationality or race. She says that her husband,
back in Guatemala, is an abuser, a drunk; that he
total of 168 people were detained that day,
kept a knife hidden under their mattress and often
accused of working illegally in the United
threatened to kill her.
States. Most were swiftly deported to Mexico and
The women, who spoke little or no English, got
Central America, although a federal grand jury
a quick education in American legal rights because
indicted 13 for alleged document fraud, identity
as the raid was taking place, volunteer lawyers
theft, and immigration offenses. Eight of them
arrived on the scene. According to Siobhan
have since been convicted.
Women with young children in the United States Sheridan-Ayala, then with the immigration law
were given permission to remain temporarily to
See THE RAID, page 12
care for them; some with serious health problems
they stayed until dark and somehow snuck out
One woman climbed high and fell, and an
ambulance took her away.
The workers were herded through a hallway and
onto a platform where ICE agents took their
names and searched them — their hair, clothes,
everything.
“I wanted to run to the bathroom and vomit,”
Villatoro says, “I was so afraid.”
She had been working at the plant for
approximately three months. It was her first job in
the United States.
A
MOTHER S DAY VIGIL
On May 9, The Oregon
New Sanctuary
Movement will take a
bus people to attend a
Mother's Day Vigil
outside the ICE
Detention Center in
Tacoma, Wash. The bus
will leave at 9 a.m. and
return by 5 p.m. to
Portland. Contact
Oregon New Sanctuary
Movement 503-550-
3510 or write
portlandsanctuary®
gmail.com
Immigrant workers face extremes of economic crisis
Some of the
lowest-wage
workers face
being blamed
for the economic
downturn as
they struggle to
survive it
BY MARA GRUNBAUM
AND JOANNE ZUHL
STAFF WRITER
rowing up in the riverfront manufacturing
I —town of St Helens, Yesenia Sanchez knew
vJ only a handful of other Latino families.
Bom in Oregon to Mexican immigrant parents,
she was one of the only non-white students in her
class. Still, she says, she was never aware of any
significant racial tension.
That changed last year, when economic troubles
stirred political unrest, which in turn brought
animosity bubbling to the surface.
Columbia County, where St Helens is located,
has a small but fairly settled Latino community.
Some, like Sanchez, are citizens, some are legal
residents, and others are undocumented
immigrants.
In November, Columbia County voters passed a
ballot initiative to penalize businesses that
employed undocumented workers with a $10,000
fine or revocation of their business license.
Another measure, which was voted down, would
have required construction sites to display large
signs .declaring them for legal workers only.
Latinos in the community, regardless of their
immigration status, felt targeted.
“I’d never really experienced overt racism, or at
least not that I can remember,” says Sanchez, now
a college student at the University of Oregon in
Eugene “I never thought that part of my
community wanted to essentially kick me out -
didn’t want me there, my family there.”
Columbia County isn’t the only place Latinos
are feeling the pressures of the recession in full
force.
Oregon is home to almost 400,000 Latinos,
most from Mexico. Their median income in 2007
was just over $18,000 per person a year,
a c cordin g to th e Pew His panic Center; the
average for Oregon is about $25,000. Latinos were
already more likely than other Oregonians to live
in poverty and less likely to own their own homes.
Gloria Wiggins, who manages the Latino
Services Division of Catholic Charities in the
Portland Metro area, says her organization is now
seeing twice as many people as usual seeking
help.
“In the past, coming to the center, we had 30
to 50 (people) a day,” Wiggins said. “Now we are
seeing 80 to 100 on any given day, and getting
about 200 calls a day from people looking for
resources in rent assistance, food, health care,
jobs.”
With centers in Portland and Gresham, Catholic
Charities’ Latino program serves low-income
people who work hard, but have limited skills and
See EXTREMES, page 10